Full text of "A standard history of Oklahoma; an authentic narrative of its development from the date of the first European exploration down to the present time, including accounts of the Indian tribes, both civilized and wild, of the cattle range, of the land openings and the achievements of the most recent period"

See other formats

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2016

https://archive.org/details/standardhistoryo05thob

A Standard History

OKLAHOMA

An Authentic Narrative of its Development from the Date of the
First European Exploration down to the Present Time, includ-
ing Accounts of the Indian Tribes, both Civilized and Wild,
of the Cattle Range, of the Land Openings and
the Achievements of the most Recent Period

JOSEPH B. THOBURN

. Assisted by a Board of Advisory Editors

\J^

VOLUME V

G/C/

T 3W

y ^ ILLUSTRATED

THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

CHICAGO AND NEW YORK

1916

THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

1535239

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Boy M. Johnson. An aggressive and strenuous young
business man of Ardmore, Carter County, Boy M. John-
son had the foresight and good judgment to profit largely
through his associations with industrial and financial
enterprises in Oklahoma. He was best known for a
number of years as head of the principal republican
newspaper in Southern Oklahoma, but the chief objects
of his attention are now banking and the oil industry
in his section of the state. He is an alert and progressive
young man of affairs, and has discovered and accepted
many opportunities for disinterested public service.

He was born at Cashton, Monroe County, Wisconsin,
July 11, 1881. His parental grandfather was born and
reared in Norway, and on coming to the United States
in 1850 settled in Illinois, but later became a pioneer
settler in Wisconsin. He finally established his home
near Cambridge, Dane County, that state, where, as a
prosperous farmer, he spent the remainder of his life.
Mr. Johnson's maternal grandfather was Dr. John B.
Skinner, whose ancestors had come to America in early
colonial times. He was an early country physician in
Wisconsin, went from that state as a soldier of the
Union during the Civil war, and was member of a
regiment of Wisconsin cavalry until incapacitated by
sunstroke, from the effects of which he never fully re-
covered. He was a resident of Cashton at the time of
his death in 1880.

Prof. O. Andrew Johnson, father of the Ardmore
business man, was' born in Illinois in 1851 and was a
child when taken to Dane County, Wisconsin. While
growing up he acquired a liberal education in schools
and colleges, and is a man of high scholarship who has
been an influential figure in educational affairs and also
in the Seventh Day Adventist Church. His home was
in Wisconsin until 1882, when he removed with his fam-
ily to Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, where he continued his
evangelic labors for a decade. In 1892 he became a
member of the faculty of Union College at Lincoln, Ne-
braska, but in 1894 returned to Wisconsin and served
three years as president of the Adventist Conference
of that state.- In 1897 he resumed his professorship in
Union College, where he remained until 1900, and then
went to Norway, the land of his ancestors, and became
president of the Norwegian Adventist Conference. In
1908 he resigned from that position and has since held
the chair of Bible History in Walla Walla College, the
Adventist institution in Walla Walla, Washington. He
is one of the most distinguished representatives of the
I'ifeligious organization of the Seventh Day Adventists,
and his wife was also a devout and zealous member
of the same body. Professor Johnson married in Wis-
consin Miss Sarah M. Skinner, who was born in Illinois
in 1851. She died at Walla Walla, Washington, in May,
1915. Boy M. Johnson is the older of their two sons,
while Harry Lynn, who is becoming distinguished in the
field of mechanical inventions, is now president of the
Johnson Automatic Machinery Company of Battle Creek,
Michigan.

It was in the public schools Of Nebraska that Boy M.
Johnson acquired his early training, followed by a course
in Union College, where he was graduated A. B. in 1899.
In the meantime he had also been a student for three
years in Milton College at Milton, Wisconsin. Mr.

Johnson learned the printer ’s trade at Battle Creek,
Michigan, where he lived from 1900 to 1903, except the
summer of 1902 spent with his parents in Norway. For
four years, 1903-07, he followed his trade at Beaumont,
Texas, employed alternately in the offices of the two
daily papers of that city.

In 1907, the year Oklahoma became a state, Mr. John-
son established his home at Ardmore and founded the
Ardmore Statesman. In a short time he had made this
one of the model weekly papers of the state and was its
editor and publisher until the spring of 1915, when he
sold the plant and business to Edward L. Gregory of
Lawton. The Statesman has been an effective exponent
of the republican party, and under Mr. Johnson’s con-
trol it became the official republican organ for a large
part of Southern Oklahoma, and in fact was the only
important republican paper in the South Central section
of the state.

Practically from the time he established his home at
Ardmore Mr. Johnson was convinced that the city was
the center of what would ultimately prove a great
petroleum oil district. His confidence was one of action,
and several years ago he mortgaged his newspaper plant
for $2,000 and with some progressive associates leased
a tract of land in the Healdton District. Their activi-
ties brought in the now celebrated field, which, though
only one third developed, gives a yield of 100,000 barrels .
a day. Mr. Johnson’s individual holdings in this field
are valued at approximately over half a million dollars.

He is now president of the Crystal Oil Company, a
heavy stockholder in the Bess Tucker Oil Company, the
Vernon Collins Oil Company, and the Seivally Petroleum
Company, as well as a stockholder in several developing
companies. His judicious investments have also extended
to farm land, and he is the owner of a large amount of
that class of property in Carter County. His largest in-
come is from his royalties in his oil properties in the
Healdton fields. He is a director of the Guaranty State
Bank of Ardmore and a stockholder in several other
banking institutions in Southern Oklahoma.

It was as a sincere and straightforward republican
that Mr. Johnson became so successful in making' the
Ardmore Statesman a leading organ of his party in
the new state. For a number of years he has been a man
of prominence and influence among Oklahoma republi-
cans, is a member of the E'epublican State Central Com-
mittee from Carter County and in 1914 served as presi-
dent of the Eepublican Press Association of Oklahoma.
There has been less of personal ambition than of broad
civic loyalty in his work as a partisan and citizen, and
his name might be justly linked with all the important
movements and enterprises for the good of his section
of the state. He is one of the directors of the Ardmore
Chamber of Commerce, a member of the Dornick Hills
Country Club, the Chickasaw Lake Club, the Ardmore
Bod and Gun Club, and he and his wife are members of
the Presbyterian Church of Ardmore, of which he is a
deacon.

For a number of years he has been actively interested
in fraternal work, especially in the various branches
of the Masonic Order. His affiliations are with Ard-
more Lodge No. 31, A. F. & A. M.; Ardmore Chapter
No. 11, B. A. M. ; Ardmore Council No. 11, B'. & S. M.

1762

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Ardmore Commandery No. 9, K. T.; Indian Consistory
No. 2, Scottish Kite at McAlester, and Indian Temple
of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine at Oklahoma City.
He is also a member of the Ardmore Lodge of the
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Knights of
Pythias and the Woodmen of the World.

On April 22, 1913, at Dallas, Texas, he married Miss
Odessa Otey, of Huntsville, Texas. Her parents died
while she was a young girl, and before her marriage she
was a popular teaeher in the Ardmore schools. They
have one son, Otey, born July 14, 1914.

William H. Mitchell. One of the most important
municipal positions of the City of Guthrie is that of
commissioner of public safety and chief of police, offices
which at this time are being capably filled by William
H. Mitchell. He is one of the strong figures of the day
who are boldly standing for political reform, and none
of the officials of Guthrie has a better record or a more
appreciative audience. Mr. Mitchell was born March 29,
1863, at Salem, Massachusetts, and is a son of Robert
P. and Margaret H. (Costello) Mitchell.

Robert P. Mitchell was born in Ireland, in 1831, and
came to America with his brother, James Mitchell, in
1841, taking up his residence at Salem, which continued
to be his home until his death in 1913. He was a good
business man and for many years carried On operations
in grain, and through honorable business ' methods and
straightforward transactions won a firmly established
place in the esteem and confidence of those among whom
his fortunes were cast. Mr. Mitchell was married in
1853 to Miss Margaret H. Costello, a native of England,
born in 1831, who died in 1910. They became the parents
of three daughters and four sons, namely: Lizzie K.,

who is single and resides at Salem; Charles H., who is
deceased; William H.; Mrs. Rachael Park, who is de-
ceased; Emma, who died unmarried; and George M.,
who has also passed away.

William H. Mitchell was reared in the City of Salem,
where his education was secured in the public schools.
After graduating from the high school in 1876 he started
to work for his father in the grain business and con-
tinued to be so occupied until 1884, thus gaining experi-
ence that was to prove invaluable to him in later years.
In the year mentioned he went to Worcester, Massa-
chusetts, where he accepted a position as a traveling
salesman and went on the road as the representative of
wholesale tea and coffee houses. In 1887 he came to
the West, locating in Kansas, and in the following year
engaged in' the retail grocery business at Winfield, an
enterprise which he conducted for two years. In 1889
he participated in the original opening of Oklahoma,
when he located at Guthrie, and here engaged in the
real estate business. At the time of the opening of the
Sac and Fox reservations, in 1892, he secured a claim
on Bear Creek, in Logan County, a property which he
still owns. In 1893-4 he served capably and energetically
as deputy sheriff of Logan County, and at the outbreak
of the Spanish- American war he enlisted in Troop K,
First United States Volunteer Cavalry, the famous
“ Rough Riders” under Col. Theodore Roosevelt. He
was with that regiment in all its engagements and move-
ments in Cuba, including the battle of San Juan Hill,
where he was in the thickest of the fight. While he was
never seriously wounded, on one occasion he had a narrow
escape, having the heel of one of his boots shot off.
He was intensely loyal to his regiment, his country and
his comrades, was one of the most cheerful and faithful
members of his troop, and did a great deal of helpful
work in caring for the sick and wounded. Mr. Mitchell
was mustered out of the United States service at Mon-
tauk Point, New York, from whence he went to his

boyhood home at Salem and there remained two years
with his parents. In 1901-2 he was with Col. W. F.
Cody (“Buffalo Bill”) as sergeant of rough riders,
touring the United States, and in 1903 joined the police
department of Guthrie. In this department his executive
ability, his detective powers and his fearless performance
of every duty devolving upon him won him constant
promotion, and in 1906 he was finally made chief of the
police department, an office in which he capably served
until 1912. In 1915, under the commission form of
government, he was elected commissioner of public safety,
the prerogatives of which office include police, streets
and alleys, public buildings and lighting of streets.

As to the movements directly concerned with the civic
reform of Guthrie, he has been one of the city’s most
helpful men. He has always been an enthusiastic worker
for good roads, and many substantial improvements have
made their appearance under his administration, includ-
ing the inauguration and installation of a modern * ‘ white
way” system. He was the promoter of the plan also
to utilize the labor of the city prisoners in the improve-
ment of the streets, thus reducing taxes. Elected on the
reform platform, he has faithfully fulfilled every promise
made during his campaign. Commissioner Mitchell is
active in all Masonic bodies of Guthrie, is a thirty-second
degree Mason and a member of the finance committee
of the Masonic Temple of this city and holds member-
ship also in the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
Altogether he is a man who touches and improves life
on many sides. As his thorough official requirements
have been reinforced by extensive travels, during which
he has been a thoughtful student of affairs, he has
acquired a depth as well as a breadth of view which
is enjoyed by few men now before the people.

Commissioner Mitchell was married at Worcester,
Massachusetts, September 20, 1905, to Miss Alice M.
Cheney, daughter of Wheeloek A. and Lovina (Brown-
ing) Cheney. She was born at Salem, Massachusetts,
July 8, 1859, and learned the printer’s trade there under
her father, who was a publisher of that city. Mr. and
Mrs. Mitchell have no children.

Rev. Robert Carr. A lifelong resident of the old
Creek Nation, Rev. Robert Carr has found opportunity
for usefulness and service to his people both as a farmer
and for many years as a preacher. He is one of the
old timers well worthy of the distinction of historical
record.

He was born west of Fort Gibson on the Arkansas
River in the Creek Nation, about 1845, a son of Thomas
and Sally (Russo) Carr. His parents were natives of
Alabama and were members of the Creek tribe. Thomas
Carr was a well educated man, having been sent to a
boarding school in Kentucky. The mother came to Indian
Territory first, and she lived in the territory until her
death, in 1871. She died about a mile from where her
son, Rev. Robert, now lives. The father was a soldier
in the Confederate army, and died at one of the refugee
camps about 1863. His business was that of stock raiser.
Of the two children the son Richard served all
through the Civil war, and died in 1867.

Robert Carr during his boyhood attended the Asbury
Mission School, and learned to read, but after the
school was broken up at the beginning of the war he
had no further education. In a business way he has
found employment for his energies and accumulated a
considerable estate by farming and stock raising. Since
the close of the war he has had his home in what is
now Hughes County, and his 110 acre homestead adjoins
the little city of Wetumka on the southeast. Until
Wetumka was founded, in 1900, the nearest town was

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1763

Eufaula. All members of Mr. Carr’s family have their
allotments.

Rev. Robert Carr was for several years sheriff, or
light horse captain, in the Creek Nation. In politics
he is a democrat. In 1871 he joined the Missionary
Baptist Church, and ten years later was ordained as a
preacher, and has been active in the work ever since.
For many years' he traveled as a missionary among his
own people and the Cherokees, and served as pastor of
local missions.

In 1871 he married Elizabeth Barnette, who was a
Creek Indian and was born near Eufaula, April 13,
1855. She has spent practically all her life in this
one locality. Her parents were Daniel and Sally Bar-
nette, the former a Creek Indian and the latter possessing
half white blood. Mrs. Carr’s mother died along the
Red River during the war, while her father was a Con-
federate soldier and died near Fort Smith. Of the three
sons and three daughters in the Barnette family two are
now living, Louisa Gray, near Wetumka, and Mrs. Carr.

Mr. and Mrs. Carr lost three sons in infancy, and
their five living daughters are: Mrs. Nettie Frazier, who
lives in the same neighborhood as her parents, and has
one child; Addie Smith, of Wetumka; Ida McCoy, who
lives at Wetumka, and has seven children ; Lulu Canard,
of Wetumka, and the mother of one child; and Anius
Canard, of Wetumka, who has two children.

James C. Stewakt. The profession of education has
no worthier or more efficient representative in Grady
County than James C. Stewart of Rush Springs, super-
intendent of city schools and a man who has passed
practically his entire career in the calling to which he is
now devoted. His advance has been steady and con-
sistent and has come as a result of personal merit and
close application, inherent and peculiar talent for impart-
ing to others his own broad knowledge, and a deep
and comprehensive sympathy that attracts his pupils to
him and make easy their control. He has likewise dis-
played the possession of marked executive ability and
in the management of the affairs of his office has shown
no little business acumen.

James C. Stewart was born at Russellville, the county
seat of Pope County, Arkansas, July 14, 1884, and is
a son of T. B. and Margaret (Allen) Stewart. As the
name would suggest, the family originated in Scotland,
James C. Stewart, the grandfather of James C. of this
notice, and for whom he was named, having been a
native of Scotia and an emigrant to the United States
from the City of Edinburgh. On his arrival in this
country the grandfather became a pioneer planter and
lumberman in Tennessee and through a long life of
industry rose to a place of prominence and financial inde-
pendence, and died at Franklin, Tennessee, well advanced
in years, and standing high in the esteem of his fellow-
citizens.

T. B. Stewart, father of James C. Stewart, was
born at Stephensville, Alabama, in 1852, and as a young
man removed to Winchester, Tennessee. In 1881 he
removed to Russellville, Arkansas, where he remained
until 1886, then going to Pottsville, Arkansas, where he
followed his vocations of farmer and lumberman until
1906. In that year he retired from active participation
in business and agricultural life and moved to South
Pittsburg, Marion County, Tennessee, where he still
resides. Mr. Stewart is a deacon in the Baptist Church,
and in political matters is a democrat. He married Miss
Margaret Allen, who was born at Winchester, Franklin
County, Tennessee, in 1853, and she died at Russellville,
Arkansas, in 1906. They became the parents of four
children, as follows: John, who died at the age of two

years; Jack, who married T. B. Lax, superintendent of
schools of Mulberry, Arkansas; Minnie, who is the wife
of John Dane, a farmer of Russellville; and James C.

As a youth, James C. Stewart attended the public
schools of Pottsville, Arkansas, where he was graduated
from the high school with the class of 1900. During the
next two years, desiring to see something of the country,
lie traveled extensively from Canada to the Gulf of
Mexico in all the states east of the Rocky Mountains,
and not only derived much pleasure from his travels,
but also an education which could have been gained in
no other way, and experience that has proved of immeas-
ureable value to him since that time. For one year,
also, he was in the service of the Iron Mountain Rail-
road. In 1903 Mr. Stewart enrolled as a student at
Washita College, Arkansas, and graduated therefrom in
1907. He next spent one year at the University of
Chicago, which he left in 1908, and* this training was
later supplemented by a full course at the Central State
Normal School, from which he was graduated in 1914.
In the meantime, he had started upon his educational
career in 1902, when he began to teach a summer school
near Russellville. He rose steadily in his calling from
that time on, and in 1907 was appointed principal of
Willow Point (Oklahoma) School, two years later being
made principal of the high school at Comanche, where he
remained two . years. In 1910 he received the appoint-
ment as superintendent of schools at Loco and retained
that office until the fall of 1915, when he was given
his present position as superintendent of city schools of
Rush Springs. He bears an excellent reputation as an
educator, and while a strict disciplinarian has always had
the esteem and friendship, as well as the confidence, of
his teachers and pupils. Mr. Stewart is a democrat in
politics. He belongs to the Baptist Church, and is
fraternally affiliated with Loco Camp, Woodmen of the
World, in which he is past consul commander, and Loco
Lodge No. 361, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, in
which he is past grand. He has numerous friends in
both orders, as he has also in professional life.

Mr. Stewart was married in 1908, at England, Lonoke
County, Arkansas, to Miss Alma Swain, daughter of the
late J. H. Swain, deceased, who was a merchant, banker
and oil man of England, Arkansas. To Mr. and Mrs.
Stewart there have come two children: Pearl, born June
8, 1910; and Ruby, born May 5, 1911.

Hon. J. L. McKeown, as an expert accountant, has
been prominently identified with various departments of
the government of the State of Oklahoma and retired
from the office of financial secretary of the Oklahoma
Agricultural and Mechanical College at Stillwater,
Payne County, when he was elected a representative of
that county in the fifth general assembly of the State
Legislature. Entering the Legislature with an experi-
ence of a number of years as an expert accountant in the
service of the state, both as a member of the official staff
of the state examiner and inspector and as financial sec-
retary of the state board of agriculture, Mr. McKeown
came to his new duties specially well equipped, par-
ticularly for the service assigned to him in connection
with committee, work, in which capacity he became one
of the influential members of the house of representatives
in the legislative session of 1914-15.

Mr. McKeown was born in Wisconsin in the year 1873,
and is a son of Patrick and Julia McKeown. His father,
a native of Ireland, came to America when a young man
and for many years was a successful representative of
the great basic industries of agriculture and stock-grow-
ing— first in Wisconsin and later in Missouri. He whose
name initiates this article was a child at the time of

1764

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

the family removal to Missouri, where he received his
preliminary educational discipline in the public schools.
In 1899 he was graduated in the Missouri State Normal
School at Warrensburg, and he then turned his atten-
tion to the pedagogic profession, of which he was for
five years one of the successful and popular representa-
tives, as a teacher in the public schools of Missouri.
Later he completed a thorough course in scientific ac-
counting, in the Spaulding Business College in Kansas
City, that state, and for the ensuing five years he gave
his attention to work as an expert accountant, a portion
of the time through assignment to important special
work in Oklahoma Territory. When the state government
was organized in 1997, Mr. McKeown assisted in plan-
ning and executing the first work of the office of state
examiner and inspector, and upon his retiring from this
department he entered the service of the state board of
agriculture, by which he was assigned to the position of
financial secretary at the Oklahoma Agricultural and
Mechanical College at Stillwater, a post of which he
continued the efficient and valued incumbent until his
election to the lower house of the State Legislature, in
1914. Prior to his election to this office Mr. McKeown
had accomplished valuable service for the state through
his interposition and investigation as an expert ac-
countant, and it is specially worthy of note that he
effected in this capacity the discovery of the issuing of
fraudulent state warrants to the amount of $37,000, this
discovery having resulted in the prosecution and con-
viction of a trusted attache of the office of the state
auditor.

In the fifth Legislature Mr. McKeown was assigned
to the following named committees of the house of repre-
sentatives: appropriation, education, general agriculture,
banks and banking, initiative and referendum, manu-
facturing and commerce, and oil and gas. He was
specially concerned in legislation affecting the oil and
gas industries and that pertaining to the State Agri-
cultural and Mechanical College with which he had been
actively identified. He took an active interest in the
preparation, championship and enactment of the note-
worthy oil conservation bill, especially by reason of the
fact that he is personally interested in the oil industry,
as an operator in the celebrated Cushing field, a part of
which is in the county of which he is a representative.
He is secretary of the Cimarron River Oil and Gas Com-
pany and vice president of the Cimarron Oil Company,
both of which have valuable producing wells in the
Cushing field of Oklahoma. Mr. ' McKeown was joint
author of the admirable good roads measure that was
passed by the Fifth Legislature, this being considered
one of the most important passed at that session in
touching the interests of the rural communities of the
state. He was joint author also of measures fixing
proper penalties for the desertion of wives and children
by recalcitrant husbands and fathers. Mr. McKeown was
zealous in the supporting of adequate appropriations for
the Oklahoma Agricultural & Mechanical College in his
home City of Stillwater, one of these appropriations
having been for the replacing of buildings that had been
destroyed by fire and the loss of which seriously crippled
the work of the college.

The political allegiance of Mr. McKeown is given to
the democratic party; he is affiliated with Guthrie Lodge
No. 426, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, in the
City of Guthrie and also with the Modern Woodmen of
America. In addition to his interests in the oil and gas
industry he is a stockholder of the Employes Building &
Loan Association of Guthrie.

In 1906 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. McKeown
to Miss Effie Lovell, of Guthrie, this state; they have no

children. Mr. McKeown has two brothers and two sis-
ters: James is a farmer near Eldorado Springs, Mis-

souri; William T. is engaged in the practice of law
in the City of Kalispell, Montana, and is one of the
representative members of the bar of that section of
the Treasure State; Mrs. A. J. Clark resides in Portland,
Oregon, where her husband is foreman of the repair
shops of the Oregon Railroad & Navigation Company;
and Miss Kate McKeown is a resident of Kansas City,
Missouri.

Walter Wallace Housewright. Since his arrival at
Devol, Oklahoma, September 28, 1908, at which time he
opened the Farmers State Bank, Walter Wallace House-
wright has been intimately identified with the interests,
business and financial, of this thriving and energetic
little city of Cotton County. In the capacity of cashier
of the institution mentioned, he has become well and
widely known in banking circles, as a citizen he has been
a factor in fostering and bringing to a successful con-
clusion several movements which have meant much to his
community, and in social affairs he has taken an active
part.

Mr. Housewright was born at Wylie, Collin County,
Texas, October 22, 1888, and is a son of William and
Henrietta (Wallace) Housewright. The family orig-
inated in Germany and was founded in this country in
Mississippi, where, in 1835, was born William House-
wright. He was a pioneer of Collin County, whence he
went from Mississippi thirty years before the founding
of the Town of Wylie, and was engaged practically all
of his life as a farmer and stock raiser. During the
war between the North and the South, he joined a Texas
regiment, and throughout the conflict served ably and
bravely under the flag of the Confederacy. He was a
member of the Masonic fraternity. Mr. Housewright
died at Wylie, Texas, October 20, 1889, aged fifty-four
years. Mrs. Housewright, also a native of Mississippi,
survives her husband and lives at Wylie. There were
eight children in the family, as follows: Panola, who
married Charles Anderhub, a farmer, and lives at Wylie;
Ponta, deceased, who was the wife of H. R. Riffe, also
a farmer at Wylie; Estella, who is the wife of W. W.
Combs, engaged in farming in the vicinity of Wylie;
W. R., who is engaged in horse dealing and lives at Hot
Springs, Arkansas; Ernest, a resident of Wylie, where
he is engaged in painting and decorating; Hester, who
is unmarried and resides with her mother; Jick, a rural
free delivery mail carrier, residing at Wylie; and Walter
Wallace, of this review.

Walter Wallace Housewright was given good educa-
tional advantages in. his youth, attending first the public
schools at Wylie, where he was graduated from the high
school in 1904, and next going to the Commercial Col-
lege, at Tyler, Texas, where he completed his course in
1905. When only sixteen years of age, he entered the
Bank of Temple, Oklahoma, as bookkeeper and stenogra-
pher, and rapidly won promotion through the display of
unusual ability and fidelity to duty, so that he rose to
teller and subsequently to the position of assistant
cashier. Mr. Housewright remained at Templ6 until
March, 1908, when he removed to Hot Springs, Arkansas,
and for a short time was employed in the Arkansas
National Bank. On September 28, 1908, he came to
Devol, Oklahoma, opened the bank here, and became
cashier of the Farmers State Bank, a position which he
has since retained. He has shown marked ability in the
discharge of his duties, has risen steadily in favor with
the depositors, and has established himself firmly in the
confidence of his associates. The Farmers State Bank
occupies the first building completed at Devol, at the

AND FAMILY ON TIGER CREEK FARM

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1765

corner of Wichita Avenue and Mulberry Street, and bears
an excellent reputation among the financial institutions
of Cotton County. It is capitalized at $10,000, with a
surplus of $2,000, and its present officers are: A. J.
Emery, president ; W. T. Huff, vice president, and W. W.
Housewright, cashier.

Mr. Housewright is a democrat, but practically con-
fines his political activities to supporting men and meas-
ures which he believes will be beneficial to the interests
of his community. His fraternal connections include
membership in Devol Lodge No. 420, Ancient Free and
Accepted Masons, of which he is past master by service;
Devol Chapter, Order of the Eastern Star; Devol Lodge
No. 548, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and the local
lodges of the Woodmen of. the World and the Modern
Woodmen of America. He takes a keen interest in fra-
ternal affairs, and is decidedly popular with his fellow
lodge members.

On April 15, 1909, at Temple, Oklahoma, Mr. House-
wright was united in marriage with Miss Erma Tipton,
daughter of I. W. Tipton, a merchant and rancher of
El Paso, Texas. Mr. and Mrs. Housewright have had no
children.

Bev. Louis M. Miller. One of the most influential
representatives of the old Creek Nation, Louis M. Miller
has spent his active lifetime in Hughes and Seminole
counties and is now a resident of near Holdenville. For
many years he has been a prosperous farmer in that
community, but in addition to the management of his
private affairs has also mingled closely with his own
people and has been a leader in' public and religious
life. He is now pastor of the Indian church in his local-
ity. He was born at Coweta, December 22, 1862, his
parents, Daniel and Sophia (Jacobs) Miller, having
had their home two and a half miles west of that
place. His father was a fullblood Creek and was born
in Alabama. His mother was a halfblood Creek, her
father, Eli Jacobs, having been a white man. The mother
was born in 1823, and came to Indian Territory when
ten years of age, and died in 1873. The father passed
away about 1872, at the age of sixty-five. They spent
their married lives along the Arkansas Biver near the
eastern border of the state, in the Creek Nation. Daniel
Miller was a farmer and stock raiser, and also made a
good living. During the war he served with the Con-
federate army in the First Creek Begiment, under Col.
D. N. McIntosh. Though a man without education, he
had a practical training in those arts which were most
useful to a people living in a frontier community, and
he was greatly aided by his wife, who was a woman of
excellent education. They were members of the Mis-
sionary Baptist Church. Mrs. Daniel Miller had three
children by a former marriage, and three by her second
union, named Louis M., Sam of Sasakwa, and Dora
McGirt, the last being now deceased.

Louis M. Miller grew up near Muskogee and Cheeota,
and after the death of his mother came to what is now
Hughes County at the age of eleven, and completed his
education in boarding schools and in the Asbury Manual
Labor School at Eufaula, under Bev. Theodore F. Brewer,
who was on the advisory board. He had the regular
English course and enjoyed the advantages of the com-
mercial school at Quincy, Illinois. At the age of nine-
teen he entered the employ of Gov. John F. Brown
and the latter’s brother, A. J. Brown, at Wewoka, in
their store. He was one of their trusted clerks for
twelve years, and then spent three years on their ranch,
thus giving fifteen years of service to these prominent
leaders of the Seminole Nation. Since 1893 Mr. Miller
has been an independent farmer.

On March 5, 1893, he married Lily Thomas, who was

born a mile and a half north of Wewoka, in Seminole
County, in April, 1874. She is a three-quarter-blood
Creek, and was educated in the common schools. Since
his marriage Mr. Miller has been farming on his present
place, situated a mile north and half a mile east of
Holdenville, and containing 240 acres, most of it well im-
proved and under cultivation. His enterprise has brought
him considerable note as a stock raiser and he raises
registered Hampshire hogs.

One of the features of his farm is that a portion of
the land is occupied by the Tiger Creek Baptist Church.
Mr. Miller was one of the principal builders of this church
in 1910 and his brother Sam H. Miller was the first
pastor, but for the last two years Louis M. Miller has
been its spiritual leader and director. This is one of the
important centers of Indian religious life. The services
are held every fourth Sunday, and according to the cus-
tom that has long prevailed in Indian Territory, the
meeting begins on Saturday and holds over until Sun-
day night, the time being spent in preaching, singing and
prayer service, and on each quarter a community service
is held. On this occasion the worshipers begin to assemble
on Friday and the services continue until Monday morn-
ing. These quarterly services are somewhat in the
nature of a “camp meeting.” Every family brings its
supply of provisions and all the features of camp life pre-
vail. At such times preachers come from all over the
Seminole and Creek Nation, and while there are easily
upwards of two hundred camps some of the meetings
frequently bring out as many as a thousand. The whites
also come and attend these meetings with their Indian
brethren.

Another distinction that belongs to Mr. Miller is that
he was the last district judge of the Wewoka District
at the time the tribal government was discontinued. At
the coming of statehood he was elected a county com-
missioner of Seminole County, but he did not qualify.
His family were all reared as democrats, but he main-
tains a rather independent attitude and votes for the
best man. Mr. and Mrs. Miller have five children : Lizzie,
wife of Jackson Hill; Thomas O., Sam H., Jr., James
A. and Josie J.

Harry Emerson Austin. Among the city officials of
Clinton who are contributing to the general welfare by
capable and faithful performance of duty, one who is
winning the community’s gratitude and commendation is
Harry Emerson Austin, the young and energetic city
clerk. During the short period of his incumbency he has
shown an earnest desire to maintain a high standard in
his department, one of the most important in the city
service.

Mr. Austin was born at Knoxville, Tennessee, Septem-
ber 14, 1890, and is a son of William B. and Corda
(Burkhart) Austin, and a member of an old family of
Virginia, which was founded in the Old Dominion in
Colonial days. His father was born in Knox County,
Tennessee, in 1861, and as a young man adopted the
vocation of educator, which he pursued for several years
at Dandridge, Tennessee. Later, however, he turned
his attention to pharmacy, and for more than twenty
years was the proprietor of a drug store at Knoxville,
where he died in August, 1904. He was a democrat in
his political views, a member of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, and belonged to the Knights of Pythias. Mrs.
Austin, who survives him, makes her home at Knox-
ville. There were three children in the family, namely:
Ethel Louise, who married Earl Sterchi, who is engaged
in the furniture business at Knoxville, Tennessee; Harry
Emerson ; and William, who is engaged in the automo-
bile garage business at Newkirk, Oklahoma.

Harry Emerson Austin received his early education in

1766

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

the public schools of Knoxville, following which he took
a business course at Hill’s Business College, Oklahoma
City, from which he was graduated in 1912. From
February until June of that year he was identified with
the Bray Drug Company, of Clinton, and then returned
to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he was for thirteen
months associated with the Knoxville Outfitting Company.
In July, 1913, he returned to Clinton and again entered
the employ of the Bray Drug Company, with which
concern he continued to be identified until April 15, 1915.
In the meantime, on April 6, 1915, he had been elected
city clerk of Clinton on the democratic ticket, and since
that time he has occupied offices in the City Hall. Mr.
Austin is generally popular with his associates and
has proved himself a young man whose ambitions and
abilities combine to make him one to whom much higher
honors will probably come. He is a member of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, and is fraternally affiliated
with Lodge No. 83, Knights of Pythias, at Clinton.

Mr. Austin was married at Oklahoma City, Oklahoma,
to Miss Nora Le Febvre, in June, 1912. Mrs. Austin
is a daughter of E. I. Le Febvre, who is a retired agri-
culturist and resides at Eldorado Springs, Missouri. Mr.
and Mrs. Austin have no children.

E. D. McLauchlin.' A young attorney, already well
established in practice at Blanchard, E. D. McLauchlin
was for nearly ten years before entering the law engaged
in the mercantile business at Denver, Oklahoma.

He was born December 27, 1885, at Love Station, De
Soto County, Mississippi. His father was R. B.
McLauchlin, who was born in Mississippi, in 1847, and
was left an orphan by the death of his mother when he
was seven years of age. His father, who died five years
earlier, had emigrated from Scotland to North Carolina.

R. B. McLauchlin was reared in Mississippi, and becam^
dependent upon his own resources at an early age. He
was married in De Soto County, Mississippi, to Miss

S. E. Perry, who is now living with her son, Dr. J. R.
McLauchlin, ten miles east of Norman, Oklahoma. In
1889 R. B. McLauchlin moved with his family to Claren-
don, Arkansas, and he died there in 1896. For many
years he was an active school man, later a farmer, and
at the time of his death was serving as county surveyor
of Monroe County, Arkansas. He was a democrat, and
very active in the Baptist Church, and fraternally was
associated with the Knights of Honor. His wife was
born in De Soto County, Mississippi, in 1843. Their
children were: Emma, deceased, whose husband, Robert
Haines, is a music teacher at Clarendon, Arkansas; D. D.,
who was actively associated with his brother, E. D.
McLauchlin, in merchandising until his death; Mattie
married Henry Harris and both are now deceased; R. J.
lives as a farmer near Paragould, Arkansas; Fannie is
the wife of John Hatcher, a farmer near Chickasha,
Oklahoma; Sallie, who died at the age of eighteen; Alice,
wife of Sam Cooper, a farmer at Paragould, Arkansas;
Essie, who died at the age of twenty-four, was the wife
of Tom Vaughn, a teacher in the public schools at
Cordell, Oklahoma; J. R., a physician and surgeon at
Denver, Oklahoma, ten miles east of Norman, who is a
graduate M. D. from the Oklahoma State University; and
E. D. McLauchlin, the youngest of the ten children.

The last named attended the public schools in Claren-
don, Arkansas, and continued his education in Para-
gould in Greene County, when his mother removed to that
town in 1898. When twenty-eight years old he left
school and at once engaged in the mercantile business
at Denver, Oklahoma, with his brother, D. D., under
the firm name of McLauchlin Brothers. His older
brother, D. D. McLauchlin, died February 7, 1914. At

that time the junior member of the firm sold the business
and during 1914-15 was a student of law in the Cumber-
land University at Lebanon, Tennessee, where he gradu-
ated LL. B. in 1915. After four months at Norman,
Oklahoma, he took the bar examination and was admitted
to practice in June, and on the first day of July opened
his office at Blanchard. He has his offices in the court
house and his ability has already attracted a profitable
practice, especially in civil cases. He has been called upon
to act as special county judge and is now city attorney
for Blanchard.

In politics he is a democrat and is affiliated with Camp
No. 10835 of the Modern Woodmen of America at Frank-
lin, Oklahoma. On January 24, 1910, at Norman, he
married Miss Ethel Cohee, whose father, J. K. Cohee,
is a retired farmer at Capitol Hill, Oklahoma.

James H. Adams, of Dewey, Oklahoma, is one of the
prominent young business men of the state, and is
naturally proud of his prominent Indian ancestry.

He was born at Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, December 4,
1895, a son of Richard C. and Carrie F. (Meigs) Adams.
His father was descended from the famous Captain
White Eyes, who was chief of the Delaware Indians in
Revolutionary times. His mother is a descendant of the
noted John Ross, and also of Colonel Meigs of Revolu-
tionary fame, and another maternal connection was the
Bigelow family.

James H. Adams attended school in Washington, D.
C., but left school at the age of seven. In 1910 lie was
employed in the folding room of the national capital,
and from 1914 to 1916 was a member of the national
guard at Washington, District of Columbia. At his home
in Dewey he busies himself largely with oil lands.

A. A. Baldwin. Ope of the most progressive and
enterprising of the newspapers of Southwest Oklahoma
is the Hollis Tribune, which is published at Hollis, the
county seat of Harmon County, by A. A. Baldwin, a man
of broad and varied business experience and of much
journalistic ability. Since taking charge of the editing
of this newspaper, in 1914, Mr. Baldwin has built up an
excellent circulation, and is now giving his readers a
newsy, interesting and well-printed sheet which supports
local interests and industries.

Mr. Baldwin is a native of the Hoosier State, and was
born at Albion, the county seat of Noble County, Indi-
ana, May 13, 1863, a son of Howard and Lorena
(Douglas) Baldwin, and a member of a family of Seoteh-
Irish extraction which settled in Ohio in the days of the
Western Reserve. Howard Baldwin was born in Ohio, in
.1837, and as a young man moved to Albion, Indiana,
where he completed his preparation for the legal profes-
sion and settled down to practice. He had but started on
a successful career, and had served as county attorney of
Noble County, when he was called by death, in 1870,
when only thirty-three years of age. He was one of the
influential young democrats of his community and a man
universally admired and respected, and was a member
of the Masonic fraternity. He was married in Noble
County, Indiana, to Miss Lorena Douglas, who was born
in 1839, in Illinois, and who still survives him, her home
being at Wichita Falls, Texas. There were three children
in the family, as follows: Helen, who died at the age
of fifteen years; A. A., of this review; and Lucy Edith,
who married L. E. Miller, of Alexandria, Texas, where
he is the proprietor of a cotton gin and she is serving as
postmistress.

A. A. Baldwin was a lad of seven years when his
father died, and was fourteen when he accompanied his
mother and sisters to Hood County, Texas. His educa-

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1767

tion was limited to the training he could secure in the
public schools, for it was necessary that he assist in the
support of the family, and when he was only fifteen
years old he began his struggle with life by becoming an
apprentice to the painter’s trade. After mastering that
vocation he became a journeyman, and continued to
follow painting as an occupation until 1883, at which
time he entered a printing office at Granbury, Texas, and
there served another apprenticeship, this one of three
years. His next location was Alexandria, Texas, where
he leased the Alexandria News for one year, and then, in
partnership with E. A. Anderson, founded the Blanket
Herald, at Blanket, Texas, which they conducted for
twelve months. Disposing of his interests in that ven-
ture, Mr. Baldwin next went to Erath County, Texas,
and for three years was engaged in farming, then enter-
ing upon a career in mercantile lines which extended over
a long period. For five years Mr. Baldwin was the pro-
prietor of a country grocery store in Galveston County,
Texas, and at the end of that time first came to Okla-
homa, taking up his residence, in 1903, at Cordell, where
for three years he conducted a grocery establishment.
He next spent a like period at Gunter, Texas, and in
1909 moved to Higgins, Texas, where he remained for
three years. Mr. Baldwin returned to Oklahoma in 1911,
and, establishing his home at Hollis, was engaged in car-
pentering and other work until 1914, when he leased the
Hollis Tribune, which he has continued to edit to the
present time. This paper, founded in 1910, is a demo-
cratic -organ" of some influence, and circulates in Harmon
and the surrounding counties. Its office and plant are
located on Main Street, near Broadway, in the business
section of the village, and are well equipped not only for
the printing of the newspaper, but for all kinds of first-
class job work. As a molder of public opinion, the
Tribune has contributed its full share in advancing the
interests of Hollis, and both in the columns of the paper
and personally Mr. Baldwin has warmly supported all
movements promising progress and civic welfare. Mr.
Baldwin is a stanch democrat, and with his family be-
longs to the Christian Church. His fraternal connec-
tions are with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and
the Knights of Pythias. A man of much experience, he
has lived his life amid the scenes that have gone to
make up the history of the Southwest, and has learned
to view human nature with a broad understanding.

Mr. Baldwin was married December 24, 1889, in Erath
County, Texas, to Miss Mamie A. Bass, daughter of B.
F. Bass, a farmer of Ranger Lake, New Mexico. Five
children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin, as
follows: Benjamin Ulice, educated at Arlington Heights
Training School, Forth Worth, Texas, and now a member
of the ministry of the Christian Church, stationed at
Shreveport, Louisiana; Edith Amelia, who was deputy
register of deeds of Harmon County, at Hollis, until
1915, and is now attending the Oklahoma City Business
College ; Marguerite, who is a member of the senior
class at Hollis High School; Charles Anson, who is a
student in the public schools of Hollis; and Fred Allen.

Henry Mead Harris. Antlers at one time was the
seat of a United States Court with jurisdiction over
the greater part of the Choctaw Nation. Here such
men as Judge Clayton and Judge Thomas C. Humphries
presided, and during court sessions many tribes and
many nationalities assembled at the seat of justice.
During those sessions Antlers was probably the most
populated and busiest town of the Choctaw Nation. Here
were enacted many historic and many tragic events,
growing out of the conflicting interests and the mul-
tiplicity of charges against men brought here for trial.

At that time, in 1904, Joseph R. Foltz was clerk of
the United States Court, and Henry M. Harris, a young
man recently come over from Red River County, Texas,
was a deputy. The events of that period are among
the most cherished memories of Mr. Harris, who has
for a number of years lived in this section of the old
Choctaw Nation, and is now deputy county treasurer at
Antlers. Other experiences in succeeding years brought
him nearer to the scenes of actual and vital history, for
he was secretary to Thomas Latham, a United States
commissioner stationed at Antlers, during a period when
in a few months the number of probate eases filed in
his court increased from 200 to 2,100. This increase was
due to an Act of Congress providing for the allotment
of lands in preparation for statehood. It was a period
of great activity for the grafter who sought wrongful
possession of Indian property, and his kind was in evi-
dence in all shades of color, nationality and profession.
Indian wills were stolen from the records. Indians
were robbed boldly on the highway. Every device that
scheming minds could conceive for separating the In-
dian from his property or money was attempted. Such
activities as these, however, had a wholesome effect on
the welfare of the Indians, since it taught Congress that
more stringent laws were necessary for his protection.

Henry Mead Harris was born in Red River County,
Texas, in 1886 and was a son of Frank M. and Nannie
B. (Parks) Harris. His father, who died in 1898, came
from Virginia to Texas in the ’80s. He was a civil en-
gineer and did considerable map and plat work all over
North Texas, some of it under the direction of the state.
Before establishing in Clarksville, Texas, he was engaged
for a while in the cattle business in the southern part
of the - Choctaw Nation. The mother of Mr. Harris
now lives in Antlers. In the family are also a daughter
and two other sons, Mrs. W. N. John, wife of a physi-
cian in Hugo; Max Harris, a dry goods salesman in El
Paso; and R'oy C. Harris, employed by the railway com-
pany at Hugo.

After attending public school in Red River County,
Henry M. Harris was a student for one year in the
Southwestern University at Georgetown, Texas, and he
also attended school for a time in Antlers. His first
employment was as clerk in the drug store of J. T.
Hackett & Company in Antlers. He then became a dep-
uty clerk of the United States Court, and on retiring
from the service of the Government he became timber
appraiser for the Guy & Ralph Gray Lumber Company
of Cleveland, Ohio, a concern that contemplated estab-
lishing lumber mills and railroads in the commercial
timber section of the Choctaw Nation. For several
months he traveled over the Kiamichi and other moun-
tains in this work. At one time his camp was pitched
at Waterhall, an old settlement of the Choctaw Nation
which sat beside the military highway. Another time
his camp was at the Mullins place, situated on an old
Indian camping ground near Daniel spring and beside
Jack trail, a rough and narrow highway used by Indians
and other early settlers in their journeys to and from
Tuskahoma, capital of the Nation. Settlements were
few and game plentiful. The guns of the party brought
its members plenty of venison and turkey. The scheme
of the Gray Company, had it been carried out, would
have been a big factor in the development of the north-
ern part of the Choctaw Nation. Antlers would have
been the western terminus of the company’s railroad
lines. One of these lines, headed northeast, would have
crossed Little River seven times, had the engineers’ pre-
liminary surveys been followed.

At the time of statehood Mr. Harris became clerk
in the office of County Judge L. P. Davenport, and later
was assistant county clerk. In 1911 he moved to Choc:

1768

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

taw County, and became under sheriff under the Lofton
administration. Still later he was deputy treasurer of
Pushmataha County, and he now has his home at Antlers
and is giving most of his time and attention to his duties
as deputy county treasurer.

At Antlers in 1905 Mr. Harris married Miss Bessie
Eubank. They are the parents of two children: Henry
Mead Jr. and James.

Hon. Clarence Eugene Gannaway. In the life of
Clarence Eugene Gannaway, who is now serving his
second term as mayor of Clinton, there may be found
an illustration of the high awards to be attained through
adherence to industry and integrity and the following
out of an honorable ambition. Commencing his career as
a youth of eighteen years, with only the advantages of a
high school education, he has directed his activities so
capably and prosecuted them so vigorously that today,
still in the prime of life, he finds himself at the head
of important business interests in a thriving and pros-
perous community, and the possessor of the unqualified
confidence of the best element of the people.

Mr. Gannaway was born at Union ville, Tennessee,
January 14, 1870, a descendant of Irish ancestors who
emigrated to America during Colonial days and settled
either in Virginia or North Carolina. His father, John
A. Gannaway, was born in Rutherford County, Tennessee,
in 1824, and passed his entire life in that state, where
he followed farming and merchandising, served as justice
of the peace, and for a period of thirty years acted as
postmaster of the Town of Bellbuckle, Bedford County,
where he died in 1911. He was a democrat in politics,
steward in the Methodist Episcopal Church and a mem-
ber of the Masons and Odd Fellows. Mr. Gannaway mar-
ried Rex Tarpley, a native of Tennessee, who resides
at Hot Springs, Arkansas, and they were the parents of
eleven children: Emma, who is the widow of the late
Dr. W. E. Harrison, a physician, and makes her home
at Nashville, Tennessee; Maggie, who is the widow of
the late W. A. Winsett, a farmer and merchant, and
resides in California; John, an attorney, who died at
Victoria, British Columbia; James W., who is a traveling
salesman with headquarters at Oklahoma City; Nannie,
who is the wife of B. A. Clary, a merchant of Bell-
buckle, Tennessee; Cassie, who is the wife of C. H.
North, a farmer and trader of Christiana, Tennessee;
E. T., who was a mechanic and engineer and died in
Texas; Cora, who is the wife of Dr. E. M. Williams,
a physician and surgeon of Hot Springs, Arkansas;
Clarence Eugene; Horace B., who is in the life insur-
ance business at Oklahoma City; and C. V., who is
a member of the board of city commissioners of Teague,
Texas.

Clarence Eugene Gannaway received his education in
the graded and high schools of Unionville, Tennessee,
and upon leaving school at the age of eighteen years,
became the organizer and teacher of a brass band,
which he instructed in the evenings after he had spent
the day in clerking in a store at Statesville. Later he
engaged in the same pursuits at Woodbury, Watertown
and Pittsburg, Tennessee, and in 1898 came to El Reno
and became clerk in a store. A short time later he
removed to Enid, where he was employed in a drug store
for six months, and at the end of that period secured
employment as a traveling salesman for a dry goods
house, a capacity in which he traveled throughout Okla-
homa until 1904. That year saw Mr. Gannaway ’s
entrance upon the field of banking, at Sayre, Oklahoma,
where he remained until 1907, on May 27 of which year
he came to Clinton as cashier of the First National Bank.
In 1909 he was made vice president of that institution,

a position which he still retains, although since October,
1914, he has not been actively engaged at the bank,
because of ill health. At this time he is engaged in the
farm loan, real estate and insurance business, with
offices in the Thurmond Building, Fourth Street and
Frisco Avenue. He is the owner of 440 acres of farming
land in Custer County, Oklahoma,, as well as property in
Beckham County, city lots in Oklahoma County, and his
residence at Clinton. Mr. Gannaway is an enthusiastic
citizen, who has studied his community’s situation and
incomparable resources, ‘and has unbounded faith in its
possibilities of growth and business. He has not feared
to venture his own capital in buying lands here or to
advise his clients to do so, for while many fortunes
have been built up in Oklahoma in commerce, in manu-
facture, and in corporate control and management, there
has been no surer road to fortune than that offered
by real estate. While he has pursued with undeviating
steadiness of purpose his business transactions, he has
not been unmindful of civic duties. In the spring of
1913, as the democratic candidate, he was elected mayor
of Clinton, and his first term contributed so greatly
to the city ’s good, that in 1915 he was elected to suc-
ceed himself. He is a member and regular attendant
of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Mayor Gannaway
is prominent in fraternal life, being a member of Clin-
ton Lodge No. 339, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons;
Clinton Chapter No. 69, Royal Arch Masons; Sayre
Commandery, Knights Templar; India Temple, Ancient
Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, Oklahoma
City; Clinton Lodge No. 83, Knights of Pythias, of
which he is past chancellor commander; Clinton Lodge
of the Brotherhood of American Yeomen; and Clinton
Chapter, Order of the Eastern Star.

In 1904, at Elk City, Oklahoma, Mr. Gannaway was
married to Miss Florence Thurmond, who was born in
1881, in Tarrant County, Texas, only daughter of E.
G. and Amanda (Harmon) Thurmond, her father now
being a retired banker of Elk City, Oklahoma. Mayor
and Mrs. Gannaway are the parents of one daughter:
Florence Amanda, who was born August 1, 1912, at
Clinton.

Oscar Holmes Thurmond. Western Oklahoma con-
tains a great many able men who have adopted finance
as the field in which to conduct their activities. That
all should be equally successful in such a career would
be an impossibility; the high rewards in this field come
to but few, and the fortunate must be gifted with
qualifications of a diversified character, including not
only intelligence, good judgment, prudence, industry,
sagacity and integrity, but a thorough understanding of
political economy as it affects the great industries of
production and distribution, a quick and accurate per-
ception of character, skill in determining the dominant
influences that control human action, and a comprehensive
knowledge of the principles of finance. Among the
financiers of Western Oklahoma few possess these quali-
ties in a greater degree than Oscar Holmes Thurmond,
president of the First National Bank, who, with his
brothers, E. K., A. L., I. C. and J. P. Thurmond, owns
eleven banks in this state.

Mr. Thurmond is a Texas by nativity, born in Tarrant
County, sixteen miles northwest of Fort Worth, at Dido,
September 26, 1869. The family is of Irish-German
descent and in pioneer times was founded in Kentucky,
in which state, in 1844, E. G. Thurmond, the father of
Oscar H. Thurmond, was born. E. G. Thurmond became
one of the early ranchmen of Tarrant County, Texas,
where, during the Civil war, he enlisted in the Texas
Rangers. In 1885 he removed to Wheeler County, in

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1769

the Texas Panhandle, where he resided on a ranch for
seven years, and in 1892 came to Cheyenne, Roger Mills
•County, Oklahoma, there purchasing another ranch on
which he made his home until 1901. Since that year he
has lived at Elk City and is practically retired from busi-
ness affairs. He is a democrat in politics, and his reli-
gious connection is with the Baptist Church. Mr. Thurmond
married Miss Amanda Harmon, a native of Tennessee,
and they became the parents of six children : Oscar
Holmes; A. L., born in 1872, cashier of the First National
Bank of iftk City, Oklahoma, a member of the firm of
Thurmond Brothers, and a thirty-second degree Mason;
E. K., born in 1875, president of the First National
Bank of Sayre, Oklahoma, where he resides, and of the
First National Bank of Elk City, a member of the firm
of Thurmond Brothers and a thirty-second degree Mason ;
I. C., born in 1878, a banker of Oklahoma City, also
a thirty-second degree Mason, and a member of the firm ;
Florence, born in 1881, who is the wife of Hon. C. E.
Gannaway, mayor of Clinton, Oklahoma, and a well
known operator in farm loans, real estate and insur-
ance; and J. P., a member of the firm, who lives at Elk
City with his parents.

Oscar Holmes Thurmond attended the public schools
of Tarrant County and was sixteen years of age when
he went with the family to the Panhandle. Subsequently
he accompanied his father to the ranch near Cheyenne,
and remained there until the spring of 1903, when he
went to Erick, Oklahoma, and founded the First State
Bank, of which he was first cashier and was later made
president, a position which he retains. The Thurmond
Brothers began their extensive operations in the field
of finance in 1895, when they organized the Bank of
Cheyenne, and since that time they have constantly
increased their interests in this direction until at present
they control the following concerns: First National Bank
of Clinton; First National Bank of Elk City; First
National Bank of Sayre; State Bank of Strong City;
State Bank of Foss; State Bank of Carter; Cordell
National Bank, of Cordell; First State Bank of Camargo;
State Bank of Hammon; Bank of Cheyenne, and First
State Bank of Erick. Oscar H. Thurmond has been
president of the First National Bank of Clinton since
1907, but did not come to this city to reside until July
3, 1913. Since that time he has entered actively into
business, financial and public life here, and has con-
tributed materially to the development and upbuilding
of the community. The Thurmond Brothers own and
control in partnership some 13,000 acres of land in
Texas and Oklahoma, and in addition to this Oscar H.
Thurmond owns personally 550 acres in Custer and Beck-
ham counties. As a financier Mr. Thurmond is quick of
perception, intuitive in judgment, rapid in conclusions
and generally accurate in his estimate of character. His
ability, displayed in the management of the institution
of which he is the head, and of his various other interests,
is recognized by his brethren of the banking profession,
by whom he is held in the greatest confidence. He has
taken an unshrinking part in whatever movements have
been set on foot for the betterment of his community,
and among the positions of honor and dignity which
he has been called to fill is that of president of the
Clinton Chamber of Commerce, representing in its mem-
bership the most important branches of business and
the most active industries of the city. In politics a
democrat, while a resident of Cheyenne he served as
postmaster during President Cleveland’s administration,
and was alderman for several years while a resident of
Erick. He is a deacon in the Baptist Church, and has
been liberal in his support of its movements.

In 1903, at Erick, Mr. Thurmond was married to Miss

Sallie Longmire, daughter of Mrs. E. J. Longmire, who
makes her home with her daughter and son-in-law.

Daniel R. Dial of Mangum, dealer in real estate and
loans since 1904, when he first came to this city, is one
of the best established business men in the community.
His business activities extend through Greer, Harrison,
Jackson, Beckham, Kiowa and Comanche counties, Okla-
homa. He is a son of S. W. Dial, and was born in
Miller County, Missouri, on March 6, 1874.

The Dial family is Scotch-Irish in its ancestry, and
they were early pioneers in Tennessee, where S. W.
Dial was born in 1833. He died at Martha, Okla-
homa, in the spring of 1897, and is there buried. When
a very young man he went to Miller County, Missouri,
where he married and made his home. He was a prominent
farmer and stock man there for forty-eight years. In
1883 he went to Anderson County, Kansas, five years
later coming to Greer County, Texas (now Oklahoma),
and settled on a farm about ten miles south of the
Town of Mangum.

Mr. Dial was a republican in his political faith, and
he served in the Federal army throughout the Civil war
as a member of the Forty-eighth Missouri Volunteer
Infantry. He was a lifelong member of the Christian
Church, of which he was an elder, as well as a preacher.
He married Nancy E. Lovell, who was born in Illinois in
1838, and died in Martha, Oklahoma, in 1897. Five
children were born to them : Sheridan, who died in July,
1913, in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, was a banker; Lettie A.
married P. W. Myers, a prosperous farmer of Lone Elm,
Kansas; Dora R. married M. Harris, a mail carrier in
Mangum, where they live; Daniel R., of this review, was
the fourth child, and Maggie, the youngest born, lives in
Guthrie, Oklahoma, where she is cashier of the Pioneer
Telephone Company.

Daniel R. Dial attended the public schools in Anderson
County, Kansas, and finished his schooling in Greer
County, when he was graduated from the high school in
1890. After that he gave his attention to farming and
stock raising in Greer County, Oklahoma, until 1904. In
that year he moved to Mangum, giving up his farming
activities, and established himself in the real estate and
loan business. The success he has enjoyed has been
very marked, and mention has already been made of
the many counties in which he operates. He has his
offices in the Mangum National Bank Building.

Mr. Dial was married in January, 1900, to Miss Eula
McAuley, daughter of C. McAuley, a retired farmer of
Martha, Oklahoma, now living in Mangum. They have
three children: Elmer, a freshman in the Mangum High
School, and LeRoy and Wilma, in the grade school of
the city.

Mr. Dial is an elder in the Christian Church, in which
he has membership with his family, and his politics are
those of a republican.

Omek Schnoebelen. An active participant in the life
of Mooreland, both business and civic, since his arrival in
1903, Omer Schnoebelen has made himself more and more
a necessary factor in the development of this thriving
Oklahoma community. As a publisher of the Mooreland
Leader he has been foremost in advancing movements
of a beneficial character, while in various official capaci-
ties he has rendered his fellow citizens signal service, and
at present, in the office of postmaster, is handling the
Mooreland mail in a manner that is bringing him com-
mendation from all sides.

Mr. Schnoebelen was born February 10, 1884, at River-
side, Iowa, and is a son of Nicholas and Mary (Bouquot)
Schnoebelen. His father was born December 8, 1833,

1770

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

in Alsace Lorraine, France (now Germany), and was
three years of age when brought to the United States
by his parents, the family settling at Riverside, Iowa.
There the lad grew to sturdy young manhood, receiving
a public school education and learning the trades of
blacksmith and mechanic, lines in which he built up a
good patronage. In 1865 the lure of the West, with
the promise of large fortune, called him and he made
his way to Omaha, Nebraska. During the days of the
frontier, with its hostile Indians, its outlaws and hold-up
men, and various other dangers, he conducted a freight-
ing outfit between Omaha and Denver, Colorado, and in
the five years he was so engaged met with numerous
thrilling experiences. While so engaged Mr. Schnoebelen
was married, in 1868, to Miss Mary Bouquot, who was
born August 28, 1844, at Burlington, Iowa, daughter of
Joseph and Mary Bouquot, natives of France. Ten
children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Schnoebelen: Rose,

now a nun in the Order of the St. Vincent de Paul, with
mother house at Emmitsburg, Maryland; Crescencia, who
is unmarried and resides at Riverside, Iowa, with her
parents, a musician of unusual talent; Anna R., who is
the wife of Judd Brown of Lincoln, Nebraska; Marcella,
who is the wife of George d ’Autremont, a Canadian
farmer; Omer, of this review; Marietta, who is the wife
of Oscar d’Autremont, a merchant of Portland, Oregon;
Celestine and Hugh, who are deceased ; Clair, who is
editor and publisher of the Quinlan Advance of Quinlan,
Oklahoma; Lillian, the wife of Bert Tilford, of Waynoka,
Oklahoma; and Herman, residing with his parents. With
the coming of the railroads to the West, the freighting
business began to be unprofitable, and in 1870 Nicholas
Schnoebelen disposed of his outfit, returned to his home
at Riverside, and there continued to be engaged in the
blacksmithing business for many years. He is now living
in quiet retirement at that place, enjoying the fruits of
his many years of industrious and well-directed labor.

Omer Schnoebelen was educated in the public schools
of Riverside, Iowa, and when but sixteen years entered
the vocation which he was to make his life work by
starting to learn the trade of printer. He was only
nineteen years of age when he took up his residence at
Mooreland, where, April 18, 1903, he founded the Moore-
land Leader, of which he has since been editor and owner.
His start was made in a modest way, but when the citi-
zens of this rapidly-growing community saw the young
man had come to remain and recognized the worth of
the sheet which he was publishing, they began to give
him their support, and he was able to enlarge his plant
and paper and to give his readers a more advanced news-
paper He now has a plant modern in every respect,
his equipment including up-to-date presses, a linotype
machine and other machinery for the publishing of a
twentieth century paper, while his circulation and adver-
tising have grown by leaps and bounds. Mr. Sehnoe-
belen has never been backward about supporting the
movements or men whom he has believed to be beneficial
to his community. The paper maintains an independent
policy in regard to political affairs, and it is the aim
of the editor to not only give his readers all the news
in an authentic way, but to publish each side of every
question of public importance that may arise.

Personally, Mr. Schnoebelen is a democrat and has
been active in county and state polities, frequently at-
tending county, state and congressional conventions as
a delegate and giving his stanch support to his party’s
candidates. He was a member of the first board of
trustees after the town was incorporated and has since
served as a member of the town council, his services
on which have been of an energetic and helpful character.
On July 26, 1914, he was appointed by President Wilson
to the position of postmaster of Mooreland, and is now

acting in that capacity. Mr. Schnoebelen is a member
of the Knights of Columbus. While the greater part
of his time is devoted to his newspaper, he has at times
been interested in outside enterprises, and during 1911
and 1912 was employed as assistant cashier of the
Security State Bank of Mooreland.

On January 12, 1904, Mr. Schnoebelen was married to
one of Mooreland ’s young ladies who had served for
two years as assistant to the postmaster, Miss Edna
Knittel, who was born at Riverside, Iowa, November
17, 1883, a daughter of F. J. and Louise (Kortzborn)
Knittel, the former a native of France and the latter of
Iowa. They are the parents of three children: Rita,

born May 11, 1907; Omer, Jr., born November 5, 1912;
and Hugh, born December 13, 1914.

Hon. T. J. Leahy ie widely known as a man of high
attainments, of profound' erudition and practical ability
as a lawyer, and as one who has achieved success in his pro-
fession. He is one of the most interesting of the prominent
characters whose worth and merit have graced the history
of Oklahoma as a state and territory, and was one of the
two members elected to the Constitutional Convention
from the Fifty-sixth District. In that high position he
performed particularly notable work as a member of the
Committee on Public Service Corporations, as such, mak-
ing a thorough study and unprejudiced investigation of
the great problems in connection with the governmental
regulation of public service corporations, giving his best
thought and judgment in an effort to arrive at a just
solution of this modern and somewhat complex phase of
legislation. The constitutional provisions result of this
committee ’s work in the convention are conceded to be of
the greatest beneficence to the state.

Mr. Leahy is one of the strong leaders of the bar in
Oklahoma. For several years he conducted a large crimi-
nal practice, which is still a feature of his legal business,
having an established reputation for success in that line.
His practice as a whole, however, is of a general nature,
extending into several states in addition to the Oklahoma
State and Federal courts and the Interior Department.
He was chairman of the commission that investigated the
status and value of the segregated coal and other mineral
lands of the Indian Territory and made recommenda-
tions as to the advisability of having the state purchase
those lands. He spent much time and labor on the work
of this commission, the report of which was submitted to
the governor of Oklahoma in 1908. Mr. Leahy was also
father of the measure, which was made a part of the Bill
of Rights, providing that the right of the state to enter
into public enterprise for public purposes should not
be denied. The labor unions and laboring element gen-
erally were particularly pleased with Mr. Leahy’s cham-
pionship of measures in their interest in the Constitu-
tional Convention. He is democratic in politics.

Mr. Leahy is a member of a family well known in the
Osage Nation for many years back, and his cousin, W. T.
Leahy, and uncle, Thomas Leahy, stockmen and bankers
and residents of Pawhuska, have been- prominently identi-
fied with various interests in this country since the early
eighties. But the Hon. T. J. Leahy is a native son
of Kansas, born in Neosho County, in 1868, his parents
brtn natives of Ireland, being early settlers in that state.
His father died in 1869, but his mother is still living.
Her home is in Pawhuska. Mr. Leahy was reared in
Neosho County, Kansas, receiving a common school and
normal education. He studied law in both Kansas and
Oklahoma and was admitted to the bar in 1892. In that
year he settled permanently in Pawhuska, the capital
of the Osage Nation, although he had been in the Nation
back and forth since 1884. He belongs to the Masonic

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1771

I Order, and also the Knights of Pythias, of which latter
I he is past grand chancellor of Oklahoma.

I Mr. Leahy married in Pawhuska, Miss Bertha Rogers,
who was born and reared there, a member of an old
family of part Osage Indian blood, and daughter of Hon.

I Thomas L. Rogers, whose sketch is found in another
I page of this volume. Mr. and Mrs. Leahy have four
I children: Thomas Rogers, Cora Willella, Mabel Ann and
I Edward Arthur.

Stratton D. Brooks. Dr. Brooks has been president
I of the University of Oklahoma, Norman, since 1912, is a
I native of Everett, Missouri, where he was born Septem-
I ber 10, 1869. At the age of twenty-one he graduated
I from the Michigan State Normal College, and subse-
I quently the following degrees were conferred upon him:
B. Pd., 1892, and M. Pd., 1899, by the Normal College;

I A. B., by the University of Michigan, 1896; A. M., by
I Harvard University, 1904; LL. D., Colby University,
" 1912.

Doctor Brooks served as vice president of the Mt.
Pleasant (Michigan) Normal School in 1893 ; as principal
of the high school at Danville, Illinois, in 1890-2, and
held a similar position at Adrian, Michigan, in 1896-8,
and at LaSalle, Illinois, in 1898-9. In 1899 Doctor
Brooks was appointed assistant professor of education
and high school inspector of the University of Illinois,
and thus continued for three years; served as assistant
superintendent of the Boston (Massachusetts) schools in
1902-06, as superintendent of schools at Cleveland, Ohio,
from January to March, 1906, and was at the head of
the Boston schools in 1906-12. In May of the latter year
he was called to the presidency of the University of
Oklahoma, which he has since ably filled. He has served
as a trustee of the Massachusetts College and is a mem-
ber of the national council of the National Educational
Association and of the fraternity Phi Beta Kappa.
Doctor Brooks is also a leading writer in his professional
field, being assistant editor of the School Review and
Journal of Pedagogy, and author of text books on
composition, rhetoric, elementary composition and
reading.

Laurence L. Cowley. Since 1901 Mr. Cowley has
been engaged in the practice of his profession in Okla-
homa, and since 1913 he has been one of the repre-
sentative members of the bar of Okmulgee, in which
city he now controls a large and important law business,
besides which he is serving as secretary of the board of
trustees of the Okmulgee Public Library.

At Columbus, the judicial center of Cherokee County,
Kansas, Laurence L. Cowley was born on the 18th of
Eebruary, 1877, a date that denotes that his parents
could claim pioneer honors in the Sunflower State. He
is a son of William R. and Elorenee J. (Smith) Cowley,
the former of whom was born in the Borough of Boston,
Lincolnshire, England, in 1843, and the latter of whom
was born at Oskaloosa, Iowa, in 1848, a member of one
■of the early pioneer families of that section of the
Hawkeye State, where her marriage to Mr. Cowley was
solemnized about the year 1868.

William R. Cowley was a lad of about eight years
I when he accompanied his parents on their immigration

i to the United States, in 1851, and the family home was
H established at Hudson, Ohio, in which state he was reared
I and educated. Prior to attaining to his legal majority
| he established his residence in Iowa, and in 1871, about

I three years after his marriage, he removed thence to

I Kansas and established his residence at Columbus, where

I soon afterward he entered the legal profession and en-

gaged in active practice, in which he there continued,
as one of the leading lawyers and highly honored citizens
of Cherokee County, until the time of his death, which
occurred on the 13th of July, 1914. He served for thirty-
two years as general attorney for the Log-Bell Lumber
Company, a large and important corporation. Prior to
engaging in the practice of law he had been ordained
a clergyman in the Christian Church, and he continued
one of its active and zealous members until the close of
his long and useful life. His widow, who continued to
reside at Columbus until her death, December 30, 1915,
was likewise a devoted adherent of this church. Mr.
Cowley was a gallant soldier of the Union in the Civil
war, in which he first served as a member of the Sixty-
fourth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and later as a member
of the Fifteenth Iowa Volunteer Infantry. His service
covered a period of about three years, he was promoted
to the office of sergeant and he took part in numerous
engagements marking the progress of the great conflict
through which the integrity of the nation was preserved,
a prominent part of his military career having been that
in which his regiment accompanied General Sherman
on the ever memorable march from Atlanta to the sea.
He was an effective and stalwart advocate of the prin-
ciples and policies of the republican party and was
affiliated with the Grand Army of the Republic. Of the
six children the eldest is William Frederick, who is en-
gaged in farming and stock raising in Southeastern
Kansas ; Minnie is the wife of Charles S. Huffman, M. D.,
who is engaged in the practice of his profession at
Columbus, Kansas; Clement Sidney died in childhood,
as did also Anna B. ; Laurence L., of this review, was
the next in order of birth; and Clare J. holds a re-
sponsible position in the general offices of the Long-Bell
Lumber Company, at Kansas City, Missouri.

In the public schools of his native place Laurence L.
Cowley acquired his early education, and from 1892 until'
1893 he attended the public schools of Akron, Ohio. He
then entered the literary department of the University
of Kansas, at Lawrence, in which he was graduated as a
member of the class of 1899 and from which he re-
ceived the degree of Bachelor of Arts. In the law de-
partment of the same institution he was graduated in
1901, and soon after receiving his degree of Bachelor
of Laws he came to Oklahoma and engaged in practice
at Perry, the present judicial center of Noble County.
There he continued his successful professional activities
until 1913, when he removed to the City of Okmulgee,
where he has found a broader field, in which his success
has been unequivocal, as sliown by his substantial and
representative practice and his high reputation for effi-
ciency and versatility as a trial lawyer and as a well
fortified counselor. In 1910 he was elected county at-
torney of Noble County, of which office he continued the
incumbent one term, comprising two years. He also
served as referee in bankruptcy in Noble County, prior
to the admission of Oklahoma to statehood. He is un-
wavering in his allegiance to the republican party and
has given yeoman service in support of its cause. He
is a member of the official board of the Christian Church
at Okmulgee, in which Mrs. Cowley also is a zealous
worker, and he is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity
and the Knights of Pythias, besides which he is actively
identified with the Okmulgee County Bar Association and
the Oklahoma State Bar Association.

On the 10th of June, 1903, was solemnized the mar-
riage of Mr. Cowley to Miss Gertrude M. Chapman, who
likewise was born and reared in Kansas: they have no
children.

1772

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Sam R. Hawks, Jr. Since his arrival at Clinton, in
1908, there have been few activities, commercial, civic
or political, that have not been participated in by Sam
R. Hawks, Jr. He has contributed to the upbuilding
of the city by the erection of the Grace Hotel, has encour-
aged its business interests as secretary of the Chamber
of Commerce, and has been known in the journalistic
field as part owner of the Clinton News and the Clinton
Chronicle, and since 1913 has capably served in the
capacity of postmaster, a position which he won fairly,
both because of merit and his loyalty to and hard work
in the interests of the democratic party in Custer County.

Mr. Hawks was born at Lebanon, Tennessee, March
8, 1882, a descendant of Scotch ancestors, who came
to Virginia in Colonial days. His father, Sam R.
Hawks, Sr., was born near Lebanon, Tennessee, in 1855,
and for a number of years was general manager for
the Cedar City Mills, an ice and light plant, but in
1911 came to Clinton, Oklahoma. After a short stay
he removed to Amarillo, Texas, and is now manager for
the State of New Mexico of the Red Star Milling Com-
pany, a large and well known Kansas concern. Mr.
Hawks is a democrat, belongs to the Knights of Pythias,
and is a member of the Christian Church. He married
a native of Lebanon, Tennessee, Miss Carrie Smith, and
they are the parents of five children: H. C., who is
engaged in the grain and milling business and in farm-
ing at Lebanon; Sam R., Jr.; Miss Lou Kate, who
lives with her parents; Virginia, who is the wife of K. C.
Alexander, a cotton buyer of Clinton, Oklahoma; and
Miss Christine, who lives with her parents.

Sam R. Hawks, Jr., attended the public and high
schools of Lebanon, Tennessee, and after his graduation
from the latter, in 1897, at once became identified with
the milling and grain business, with which he was
connected until 1908, in June of which year he came
-to Clinton. Here his first venture was the erection of
the Grace Hotel, without a doubt one of the best hostelries
in Western Oklahoma, of which he is still the owner,
although he has never conducted it personally. In 1909
he became secretary of the Clinton Chamber of Commerce,
this time bought a half interest in the Clinton News
a position which he held for two years, and during
and the Clinton Chronicle, in which newspapers he is
still interested. In September, 1913, he received the
appointment as postmaster of Clinton from President
Wilson. Mr. Hawks was one of the original Wilson men
of Oklahoma in 1912, being the manager of the cam-
paign in his district, and also took an active interest in
the campaign of Senator Owens, his ability as a political
manager having been demonstrated by the large votes
which his candidates received in his district. He has
attended state and county conventions of his party since
1908, and has been a faithful and tireless worker in the
cause of democracy, so that his appointment to the post-
mastership came as a reward for service cheerfully given
and capably rendered. That he is well fitted for the
position has been shown by the entirely efficient man-
ner in which he has conducted the affairs of the mail
service during his incumbency. He belongs to Lotus
Lodge No. 20, Knights of Pythias, of Lebanon, Tennes-
see, of which he is past prelate, and to the Oklahoma
State Press Association, and with his family holds
membership in the Christian Church.

Mr. Hawks was married at Lebanon, in 1907, to Miss
Frances Jones, daughter of J. L. Jones, engaged in the
plumbing and tinning business at Lebanon. Three
children have been born to this union : Catherine, Pres-
ton and Jim Woodrow, the first-named of whom has
started to attend the public schools.

Pearl A. Little first became identified with Okla- ® j
homa as a member of a painting crew operating in Y
various districts of Western Oklahoma, and for nearly tp]
fifteen years has had his home at Frederick. Largely
by private study and practical experience Mr. Little has-! s, ’
made himself an expert civil engineer, and for a number
of years has served as county surveyor and city engineer i j
of Frederick and has a substantial private practice in jL
the profession. Born in Ralls County, Missouri, August .J
24, 1879, Pearl A. Little is a son of John W. and Mary A
(McAllister) Little. The Little and McAllister families , (
moved to Missouri from Kentucky and John W- Little was 1 ■

also born in Ralls County, Missouri, in 1856, and died ll ‘
there in 1889. He was a farmer and stock raiser andl( y(;l
was accidentally killed by a horse while running cattle. L
His church was the Catholic, and he took a prominent fa
part in local affairs as a democrat, and belonged to the j
Grange, and also to a local organization known as the i t
Wheel. His wife, Mary McAllister, was born in Mis- ii;i|
souri, and now resides at Quincy, Illinois. Pearl A.
was the oldest of their six children. Roy, the next in i M
age, is a street railway conductor at Quincy, Illinois; sl]
Alice is the wife of Chris Schrand, a cigar manufacturer • ^
at Quincy ; Lambert, a farmer in Ralls County, Missouri ; „

Annie lives with her mother; and Mary died when nine |jj
months of age. jg

In 1889 Mr. Little’s mother removed from Ralls County n
to Monroe County, Missouri, and in 1890 to Shelby
County, and his education came from attendance at the a(
schools of all those places. He received the equivalent ^
of a high school education, and in June, 1897, was j
graduated from St. Francis College, at Quincy, Illinois, fJ
with a diploma as Master of Accounts. During the next j,
year he kept books for John J. Rogers, proprietor of K
a department store at Monroe City, Missouri, and then y

engaged in different lines of occupation up to 1900. j

Going to Pratt, Kansas, he found work on a farm until x
the fall of the year and then joined a painting crew ,

working in Kansas, and in December, 1900, came with j

that organization to Enid, Oklahoma. On March 15, ,

1901, he went to Kingfisher, Oklahoma, and on November
24, 1901, arrived at Frederick, which has been his home
practically ever since. Up to July, 1906, Mr. Little
continued his work as a painter, and then took a review
course in engineering covering the freshman and sopho-
more years in the Agricultural and Mechanical College
at Stillwater. Returning to Frederick in 1908, he began
practice as a surveyor and engineer and since that time
has performed the duties of city engineer, though he was
not regularly put under bond for the office until 1914.

In 1911 he became county surveyor of Tillman County
and has been regularly returned to that office without
opposition. On September 17-18, 1915, he successfully
passed a civil service examination given by the highway
department of Oklahoma for engineers who wished to
practice as county engineers in Oklahoma. Since then
he has been appointed county engineer for Tillman,
Harmon and Jackson Counties.

Mr. Little is a democrat, and a member of the
Catholic Church. On November 25, 1903, at Lawton,
Oklahoma, he married Miss Lillie McClellan, whose
father, George R. McClellan, is a farmer at Del Norte,
Colorado. Their home has been blessed with the birth
of six children: Catherine, who attends a parochial
school at Quincy, Illinois; Paul, Lawrence and Alice, in
the public Schools at Frederick; and Rita and Annie,
who are not yet of school age.

Fred H. Clark, M. D. For twelve years Doctor Clark
has given his services as a widely experienced and capable
physician and surgeon to the community of El Reno.

HISTOEY OF OKLAHOMA

1773

via. Doctor Clark is one of the best known figures in medical
: ij circles of the Southwest, and is a man of broad range
at|y of experience and activities in the world.

;ely Fred H. Clark was born on a farm near Vernon, Miehi-
liaa gan, May 15, 1864, a son of Jesse and Eliza Jane (Pratt)
;ift Clark. Like many successful men in the profession he
,.er considers himself fortunate to have spent his early youth
jj in the environment of the country. While living on a
rjjj Michigan farm he attended the common schools, and in
1885 was graduated from the high school at Owosso,
jJ Michigan, where he afterwards held the position of
jjj teacher in the city schools two years and for a like
jjj period had a commercial position. The following ten
uj years of his life were devoted to work as secretary of
tle Young Men’s Christian Associations, largely in Michigan,
though his last service in this capacity was at Kansas
tig City, Missouri.

,je In Kansas City Doctor Clark pursued his studies in
jj, medicine at the University Medical College, and was
£ graduated M. D. in 1900. In order that his equipment
ijJ might be brought up to the highest grade of efiieiency
Ig. and tested by association with men of eminence he has
,fj subsequently taken post-graduate work in Chicago three
,j, times and once in New York City. For about three
a’ years Doctor Clark was engaged in practice in Kansas
City, then came to Oklahoma and spent about a year at
, Minco and since the fall of 1903 has been located at

■ El Reno.

J The wide scope of his professional interests is indi-
, eated by his membership in the following organizations:
" The Canadian County and Oklahoma Medical societies,
s the American Medical Association, the Southwest Medi-
) cal Society of the Southwest, the Rock Island Railway
Surgeons, the Central Oklahoma, the Western Oklahoma
and Missouri River Medical associations, the Mississippi
j1 Valley Medical Association, and the Association of

■ a —p vie an Railway Surgeons. Doctor Clark is con-

sulting surgeon for the Rock Island Railway. He is

j7 secretary of the Southwest Medical, Society of the
: Southwest, and the official organ of that society, known

'> as the Southwest Journal of Medicine and Surgery, has
r been owned and published by Doctor Clark for the past
6 three years.

! Doctor Clark is a Knight Templar Mason and a
' member of the Temple of the Mystic Shrine, belongs
| to the Baptist Church and in politics is a republican.

! In 1887 he married for his first wife Miss Rose Johnson,
who died in 1897, leaving one daughter. In 1899 Doctor
Clark married Miss Elizabeth Phillips, who is the mother
of one daughter. For the past eleven years Doctor Clark
has been connected with the state military service in the
medical department, With the rank of major and has
charge of the field hospitals.

Peter W. Hudson. One of the younger men in the
official life of Eastern Oklahoma, Peter W. Hudson is
now court clerk of Pushmataha County, with home at
Antlers. He is a native of Indian Territory and his
people have been closely identified with the educational
and official and business life of that section for many
years.

To erect a state government and keep it in operation
during the period of its infancy is necessarily expensive.
In Oklahoma the actual expenses of state government
proper have not been exorbitant. However, every county
and municipality paid the price for their individuality
as entities of the larger state government. Hence, for
a few years taxes were unusually high. Every campaign
of every character conducted since 1907 has in one way
or another involved the principle and issue of economy.
The candidate who has convinced the people that he
would maintain efficiency at the lowest possible cost has

won in a majority of campaigns. Usually these candi-
dates have found it quite a difficult thing to make good
a pledge of economy, so heavy and numerous have been
demands for public improvement.

Among those who kept the faith was Peter W. Hud-
son. It is probable that no other county court clerk in
Oklahoma up to 1915 had conducted his office without
any expense of assistance. It has required long hours
of arduous work and much candle power of night. Dis-
trict Court dockets have been heavy and the duties of
the clerk onerous, but Mr. Hudson inaugurated and
strictly followed a system whereby at the end of a ses-
sion his records were written and ready for the approval
of the District Court before the judge was ready to de-
part for another court center. The saving to Pushma-
taha County has been considerable, and this has been
an important reason why Mr. Hudson has been- in office
ever since the year of statehood. After Frank Trigger,
the first elected district clerk of Pushmataha County,
had been in office about a month he died and the county
commissioners appointed Peter W. Hudson to fill the
vacancy. The following year he was elected to the office,
on the democratic ticket, without opposition. He was
re-elected in 1910 and again in 1912. The legislature
then passed an act consolidating certain county offices
and the duties of clerk of the County Court and those
of the clerk of the District Court were imposed on an
official designated as court clerk. In 1914 Mr. Hudson
was elected to that office.

Even before statehood he had clerical experience as
clerk in the Choctaw Legislature. He held the position
five years under the administration of Principal Chief
MeCurtain. He was in that position during the McCur-
tain-Hunter contest at Tuskahoma, and kept the minutes
of the meeting held under the shade of trees or in a
hotel while the Hunter faction was in possession of the
council house. Meantime he was also in the employ as
clerk of W. H. Isherwood, a merchant at Tuskahoma,
and did some work for his uncle Peter J. Hudson, who
was at that time superintendent of the Choctaw Female
Academy at Tuskahoma.

Peter W. Hudson was born August 29, 1877, and is a
son of Washington and Frances (Bohannan) Hudson.
His father, who was born at Eagletown in Indian Ter-
ritory, was a farmer and merchant during most of his
life, and died in 1897. Washington Hudson’s brother
Daniel was a Confederate soldier and for sixteen years
served as sheriff of Eagle County in the Choctaw Nation.
James Hudson, the maternal grandfather of Peter W.
Hudson, was a Presbyterian minister, was educated in
English, and his labors among the Indians were directed
by the missionary board of the Presbyterian Church.
Other children in the family of Washington and Frances
Hudson were: Roy, a farmer at Eagletown; George, a

student in Jones Academy; Mrs. Byington, Mrs. Jeffer-
son and Mrs. Lewis, all of them wives of farmers at
Haworth.

Peter W. Hudson was educated in the neighborhood
schools near his birthplace at Eagletown, and spent five
years in Spencer Academy. While in the academy he
was a classmate of Gabe Parker, who later became com-
missioner to the Five Civilized Tribes. In 1901 Mr. Hud-
son married at Tuskahoma Miss Myrtle Campbell. Their
three children are named Lillian Thelma, Dorothy and
Peter W., Jr. Mr. Hudson is a member of the Methodist
Episcopal Church South. Fraternally his associations
are with the Woodmen of the World, the Independent
Order of Odd Fellows and the Masonic Order, and he is
senior warden of the Blue Lodge, a member of the Royal
Arch Chapter at Hugo and the Knight Templar Com-
mandery and the Mystic Shrine at Muskogee.

1774

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

John Sheetzer. During the past ten years the firm
Shertzer Bros, have been among the largest operators
and producers in the Dewey oil district. Both these
brothers are experienced oil men, having become identi-
fied with the practical details of the business back in
Ohio, where they served their apprenticeship during the
high tide of oil production in that state.

John Shertzer, the older of the two brothers, was
born in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, December 25,
1869, a son of William and Samantha (Studebaker)
Shertzer, both natives of Pennsylvania and of old Penn-
sylvania Dutch stock. The family lived in Pennsylvania
until 1877, and then removed to Gibsonburg, Ohio, where
the mother died in 1910 at the age of fifty-four. The
father is now living at Bartlesville, having come to that
city about three years ago. He was engaged in the
business of lime manufacturing until 1885 and has since
been an oil well contractor and producer. John Shertzer
was the oldest of five children, the others being: C. P.

Shertzer, the junior member of the firm of Shertzer
Bros.; Effie, wife of Raymond Pryor of Lake View, Ohio;
Elsie, wife of James Neely of Lima, Ohio; and Ollie,
wife of A. C. White, who is general manager of the
American Express Company at Cleveland, Ohio.

John Shertzer was about eight years of age when the
family removed to Ohio, and grew up in Gibsonburg and
gained a common school education. At the age of
twenty he first became connected with the oil business
as a contractor and producer. For five years he was
engaged in the manufacturing and retailing of shoes at
St. Louis. His experience as an oil man extends to the
California fields, where he spent one year, then returned
to Ohio and was a contractor at Gibsonburg two years,
spent two years at Chanute, Kansas, and in 1905 located
at Dewey. For the past ten years he has been recognized
as one of the leading oil producers in Northern Okla-
homa. As a contractor he put down the first well in
the Weber pool, and altogether has sunk about 600 wells
in this district, partly as an independent operator and
partly on contract. For the past seven years he has
been a member of the firm of Shertzer Bros., and their
interests extend to about sixty wells in the Bartlesville
District.

John Shertzer is a republican, while his brother and
business associate is a democrat. He is a member of
the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks at Free-
mont, Ohio. In 1907 Mr. John Shertzer married Pearl
Damon of Dundee, Michigan. They have one child,
Lillian Joyce.

C. P. Shertzer, the younger member of the firm of
Shertzer Bros., was born in Bedford County, Pennsyl-
vania, September 4, 1872, and as a boy learned the lime
business with his father. His first practical experience
in the oil industry came at the age of seventeen, and
for about two years he dressed tools with his father. He
did his first contracting at Lima, Ohio, and for about
four years was in the employ of other parties, but since
then has mainly been independent. For a time he was
in the Indiana oil fields, and in November, 1904, located
at Chanute, Kansas, and eighteen months later at Dewey.
Shertzer Bros, now produce about 3,000 barrels of oil a
month, and have a number of small farms around Dewey.
C. P. Shertzer served on the city council of Dewey
three years, and has been a trustee in the Methodist
Episcopal Church since locating in that town. He is also
a member of the Masonic fraternity. In 1899 he married
Miss Inez Brinkerhoff, who was born in Ohio, a daughter
of Nelson Brinkerhoff. Their three children are Boyd,
Frances and Charles.

Charles Elmer Grady. The entire career of Charles
Elmer Grady has been devoted to educational work, a

field for which he is singularly equipped and for which
he has had a most thorough and comprehensive training.
When he assumed the duties of his present office, that
of superintendent of city schools of Clinton, he brought
to their discharge an enthusiasm for his calling, ripe
experience gained in several important and laborious
positions, and energetic and progressive methods that
have had a very beneficial effect upon the school system
here. Superintendent Grady was born in Crittenden
County, Kentucky, May 2, 1879, and is a son of R. N.
and Margaret (Everle) Grady. The family, as the
name would indicate, is of Irish origin, and the first
paternal ancestor in America settled in Fauquier County,
Virginia, during the days of the Colonies.

R. N. Grady was born near Lexington, Kentucky, in
1845, and when the Civil war came on gave his support
to the Union cause, enlisting in the Fifteenth Ken-
tucky Cavalry, with which organization he served for
three years. At the close of the war he resumed his
operations as a farmer, stock raiser and merchant
in Crittenden County, and continued to be so engaged
during the remainder of his life, with the exception of ten
or twelve years passed in Clark County, Indiana. He
died in the faith of the Methodist Episcopal Church, of
which he was a steward, in 1907. Mrs. Grady, who was
born near Louisville, Kentucky, in 1847, died in Crit-
tenden County, Kentucky, in 1898. Their children were
as follows: Mary, who is the wife of W. R. Sullivan, in
the real estate and insurance business at Waco, Texas;
Mattie, the wife of Ira Robinson, a farmer residing in
Crittenden County, Kentucky; Anna, who married J.
D. Crider, a farmer of Mississippi County, Missouri;
Nellie, who married W. D. Cain, a merchant, and resides
at Charleston, Missouri; Charles Elmer; Ruth, who mar-
ried J. N. Swansey, engaged in the livery business at
Sturgis, Kentucky; A. L., a liveryman, residing at
Kansas City, Missouri; Clarence, a prosperous merchant
at Weston, Crittenden County, Kentucky, the old home
town; and Lester, a graduate of the University of Ken-
tucky, class of 1915, degree of Bachelor of Arts.

The public schools of Marion, Crittenden County, Ken-
tucky, furnished the foundation for the training which
was to fit Charles E. Grady for educational work, and
subsequently he went to the Northern Indiana Normal
School, at Valparaiso, which he left in 1906. Two years
later he was graduated from the University of Indiana,
with the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and in 1910 was
given the master’s degree by that institution. He holds
membership in the Phi Delta Kappa Greek letter college
fraternity, which he joined while attending the university.
In 1910 Mr. Grady was appointed superintendent of
schools at Iowa Park, Texas, and during 1911 and 1912
was president of the Western College, Cordell, Oklahoma.
In 1913 and 1914 he was superintendent of schools at
Granite, Oklahoma, and in the fall of 1915 came to
Clinton as superintendent of city schools, an office in
which he has charge of three sehoolhouses, with twenty-
two teachers and 1,000 scholars. In this, one of the
most difficult of the learned professions, Superintendent
Grady has won material success and position solely
through the exercise of his own industry and native
abilities. A born educator, with the happy faculty of
being able to impart his own knowledge to others, he
is also possessed of no small degree of executive ability,
so necessary in such a position as he holds. He is a
democrat, although not a politician, and with his family
belongs to the Presbyterian Church. He is well and
popularly known in fraternal circles, belonging to Clin-
ton Lodge No. 339, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons;
Clinton Lodge of Odd Fellows ; the Brotherhood of Ameri-
can Yeomen ; the Woodmen of the World, and the Colum-
bian Woodmen.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1775

In 1909, at Duekhill, Mississippi, Mr. Grady was united
in marriage with Miss Winnie Lee Eose, daughter of
the late James L. Eose, who was a merchant. Mr. and
Mrs. Grady have two children: Charles Elmer, Jr., born
January 13, 1910, and Eobert L., born August 26, 1914.

David D. Davisson. With twenty-five years of Okla-
homa residence to his credit, David D. Davisson has
well earned the privilege of retirement and comfort
and ease, and is now living somewhat quietly with an
ample competence for his declining years at Carnegie.

In the years preceding the original opening of Okla-
homa Territory Mr. Davisson was one of the men most
prominent in the political and civic affairs of the original
Canadian County. He is an Oklahoma eighty-niner, and
made the run on that eventful day, April 22, 1889. He
found his claim in the old Downs Township, which at
. that time was part of Canadian County. Until he
retired a few years ago Mr. Davisson was a practical
farmer and has derived most of his prosperity from his
work as an agriculturist.

As a democrat he was very active in the organization
of Canadian County, and in 1890 was elected county
clerk, being the first man to hold that office by popular
election. He remained in office two years, and in 1893
was elected superintendent of Canadian County, a posi-
tion he also held two years, and in that time did much
in behalf of the establishment of the schools and de-
velopment of the first schools established in that section
of the state. At a later date Mr. Davisson served as
deputy county clerk of Kingfisher County, and for a
time was principal of the Banner School at Guthrie.

In 1901 Mr. Davisson participated in another grand
opening, when the Kiowa and Comanche reservations
were given over to actual settlers, but he subsequently
located in Caddo County, where he still has extensive
holdings.

David D. Davisson was born January 21, 1851, at
Centerville, West Virginia, a son of Dr. D. D. Davisson,
who was born in the same state. Mr. Davisson completed
his early education in old St. Vincent College of Wheel-
ing, West Virginia, and for twenty years altogether
was a successful teacher, following his profession in
Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma.

In 1881, at McPherson, Kansas, he married Miss Sarah
C. Horton. She was born in Hew York City in 1855.
They have one son, Gilbert Horton, born November 26,
1885, at Pratt, Kansas. This son, who now lives on his
father ;s original Oklahoma . homestead in Kingfisher
County, married Miss Mary Johnson, and has one child,
DeLon.

Dr. Kiah Eix Eone. The Eones of Kentucky are well
known to natives of that state, and men of the name
have been history makers in the Blue Grass region
through several successive generations. The family is
of remote English ancestry, as is a good deal of the
best blood in the land, and the first American representa-
tives of the name settled in Virginia on coming from
England, one branch continuing there and another, the
one with which we are directly concerned in this review,
locating in Kentucky. The Eones are closely connected
by ties of blood with the well known family of Ean-
dolphs, whose deeds have shed a bright light over pages
ofi American history through many years.

Dr. K. E. Eone, of Vici, Oklahoma, was born in War-
ren County, Kentucky, on June 28, 1865, and he is the
son of J. B. Eone, born in Butler County, Kentucky, in
1824. The latter died in Warren County, Kentucky, in
1895. All his life he had been a successful farmer and
stockman in his native state, and he was a man of
Vol. v— 2

prominence in his chosen field of activity. He was a
member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and
was a deacon and a member of its official board through
many years. He was also a member of the Masonic
fraternity, a democrat in politics, and a man esteemed
of all who shared in his acquaintance. He married Eliza-
beth McGinnis, a Warren County girl, born there in 1833,
and she died in her native community in 1897, the mother
of two children. The first born was Kiah Eix Eone of
this review, and the second was J. B., a graduate of the
Louisville Medical College ' in Kentucky and now a
practicing physician and surgeon in Oklahoma City.

Dr. K. E. Eone attended Ogden College for two years
and was graduated from Vanderbilt University in Nash-
ville, Tennessee, in the class of 1889, at that time
receiving the degree M. D. He followed his training
there with a post-graduate course in the New York
Polyclinic in physical diagnosis and surgery, spending
the year 1890 there, and in later years he took post-
graduate work in the Chicago Polyclinic and in the
Mayo Brothers ’ Institution at Eochester, Minnesota. His
Chicago training he took in 1895 and his work under
the celebrated Mayo brothers he took in 1914. While
there he was elected president of the Mayo’s Surgical
Club, of which he is a life member.

In 1889 Doctor Eone began the practice of his pro-
fession in his hative county. He continued there, enjoy-
ing a good deal of prosperity in his work, until 1893 when
he moved to Logan County, Kentucky, in search of a
wider field. He spent seven years there and in 1900
came to Oklahoma City, in which city he conducted a
general practice up to March 1, 1911, when he located
in Vici, and here he has since conducted a large general
practice. He has, in recent years,, been making some-
thing of a specialty of surgery, but in a community like
Vici deems it best to ’conduct a general rather than a
special practice. He has enjoyed a generous measure of
success in all the years of his practice, and especially
has he prospered in recent years.

. While practicing in Oklahoma City Doctor Eone for
two years held the chair of instructor in genital, urinary
and rectal diseases, in the Oklahoma City College. He
gave up the post in order that he might have more time
for the demands of his practice. At present Doctor
Eone is local surgeon for the Wichita Falls & North-
western Eailroad. He is president of the Dewey County
Medical Society, and is also a member of the State,
American and Southwestern Medical associations. While
a practicing physician in Logan County, Kentucky, Doc-
tor Eone was county health officer, as well as city
physician of Eussellville.

In 1895 Doctor Eone was married, in Warren County,
Kentucky, to Miss Minnie Taylor, daughter of William
Taylor, a well known farming man there, now deceased.
Five children have blessed the home of Doctor and Mrs.
Eone. Lucille, the eldest, married Claude Taylor, cashier
of the German State Bank at Elk City, Oklahoma.
Caryee is an instructor in dancing at Medicine Park,
Oklahoma. Guthrie is a druggist, located in California.
The two youngest children, Martrie and Jack, are stu-
dents in the local high school, and are bright and
promising young people, popular in school circles and
with many friends throughout the town.

Eobert C. McCreery, M. D., F. A. C. S. In the diffi-
cult field of surgery, the importance of which is daily
being .brought forcibly to mind by the achievements of
its devotees in the great struggle now raging in Europe,
Dr. Eobert C. McCreery has won distinction among Okla-
homa practitioners. Since his arrival at Erick, in June,
1909, he has held an increasingly significant position in

1776

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

the life of the community, his fine abilities entitling him
to mention among the leading men of the state who are
exponents of a profession that must be rated as one
of the greatest triumphs of human intellect, energy and
resource.

Doctor McCreery belongs to a family which originated
in Scotland and was founded in New York in Colonial
days, and was born at DeSoto, Jefferson County, Mis-
souri, March 18, 1869, being a son of Charles E. and
Plotina (Hollensbeek) McCreery. His father was also
a native of that county, where he passed a long and
successful career as a farmer and raiser of livestock, and
died March 17, 1913, in the faith of the Baptist Church,
in which he was a deacon for many years and an active
worker throughout his life. During the Civil war he
fought as a Union soldier in the Sixth Regiment, Mis-
souri Volunteer Infantry, and was once wounded in
action. Mrs. McCreery, who was likewise born in Jef-
ferson County, died there in 1895, aged fifty-two years.
She was the mother of the following children: Laura,
who is the wife of W. E. Jones, of Chicago, Illinois,
superintendent of a fruit growers ’ car association ; Adelia,
who died in 1903 as the wife of G. W. Showers, of
Bryan, Texas, general foreman of railroad car service;
Dr. Robert C. ; Hester, who is the wife of A. M. Lane,
a contractor and builder of Sacramento City, California;
G. E., a manufacturer of Los Angeles, California; Nellie
G., who is the wife of J. J. O’Keefe, of Crystal City,
Missouri, a traveling representative for milling products;
and Jeannette, the wife of J. E. Hart, of St. Louis,
Missouri, holding an important position with the United
States Government.

Robert C. McCreery attended the public schools of
DeSoto, Missouri, where he was graduated in 1891 from
the high school. Bis medical studies were commenced
at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Chicago, where
he spent one year, the following year being passed at
the Kansas City University of Medicine. In 1908 he
was graduated from the medical department of the Uni-
versity of Arkansas, with the degree of Doctor of Medi-
cine, although prior to this time, from 1903 to 1907, he
had been engaged in practice at Kansas City. Until 1909
he carried on his practice at Little Rock, Arkansas,
where he was physician for the athletic association of
the district, and June 5, 1909, came to Erick, where he
has carried on a general practice, although specializing
in surgery, a field in which he has taken a command-
ing position. In 1914 he took a post-graduate course in
gynecological surgery at Tulane University, New Orleans.
In 1910 Doctor McCreery founded a hospital, a modern
institution, accommodating twenty patients, which is
located at No. 120 East Broadway, his offices being in the
Erick State Bank Building. He belongs to the Beckham
County Medical Society, the Oklahoma Medical Society
and the American Medical Association, and is a fellow
of the American College of Surgeons. A democrat in
politics, he has served as health officer at Erick, and
has taken an interest in all beneficial civic, educational
and moral movements. With his family, he attends
the Baptist Church, of which he is a member, and at
present is superintendent of the Sunday School. Doctor
McCreery is also well known in fraternal circles, belong-
ing to the Modern Woodmen of America; Lodge No.
1144, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, of Elk
City, Oklahoma; Ear West Lodge No. 1, Independent
Order of Odd Fellows, Little Rock, Arkansas, of which
he is past noble grand, and to the Encampment and
Canton of Odd Fellowship.

Doctor McCreery was married at DeSoto, Missouri, in
1899, to Miss Nannie J. Gowan, daughter of the late
Capt. Reason E. Gowan, who was a captain in the Union
army during the Civil war, and for many years a Mis-

souri farmer. Two children have been born to Doctor
and Mrs. McCreery : Glenn A., who married S. J. Har-
rell, engaged in farming at Liberal, Kansas; and Robert
W., who is attending the Erick public schools.

Porter N. McCallum. In spite of what the great
majority of individuals would consider a most discourag-
ing handicap, Porter N. McCallum, of Devol, Oklahoma,
lias attained a most desirable and satisfying success.
Only one possessed of energy, perseverance and de-
termination could have saved himself from total failure,
but Mr. McCallum has so directed his energies that he
now occupies an established place among business men
of his community, and is well known for a number of
large transactions in real estate.

Porter N. McCallum was born in the City of Dallas,
Texas, August 21, 1881, and is a son of J. N. and
Maggie (Porter) McCallum, natives of Tennessee. The
father, now a resident of Devol, was born in 1852, and
in 1880 removed from his native state to Texas, settling
first at Dallas, moving to Denton in 1894, and in 1907
coming to Devol. In his early years he learned the trade
of painter and gradually developed into a contractor
in that line, also following for a number of years the
business of railroad surveying. At the present time he
is county weigher of Cotton County. In political matters
Mr. McCallum is a staunch democrat. He and Mrs.
McCallum are members of the Presbyterian Church, in
which he is an elder. They have been the parents of
two children: Porter N., of this notice; and J. D., who
is the proprietor of a cigar store at Oklahoma City,
Oklahoma.

The public schools at Denton, Texas, furnished Porter
N. McCallum with his education, and when he left the
high school in 1899 he became a telegraph operator for
the Texas & Pacific Railroad. Later he took a position
as brakeman with the same road, and held this employ-
ment until 1901, in which year, while in the performance
of his duties, he slipped and fell beneath two cars, one
of which passed over him and severed his left leg. Thus
handicapped, when he had recovered, Mr. McCallum was
forced to face life anew, and resolutely set about to
learn the business of paper hanging, and followed that
vocation at Denton until 1907, at that time accompanying
his parents to Devol. He continued to carry on the
same line of business here until 1912, when he established
himself in business as a real estate dealer, and has so
continued ■ to the present time. Mr. McCallum has an
interest in several properties, and now owns his own resi-
dence on Wichita Avenue. He received an indemnity
from the railroad company on whose line he was in-
jured.

Like his father Mr. McCallum is a strong democrat,
and has taken something more than a passing interest
in political affairs, as he is now chairman of the Demo-
cratic County Committee of Cotton County and is ac-
counted to possess a wide influence in party circles. He
has never allowed partisanship, however, to keep him
from aiding in every way the best interests of his com-
munity. Mr. McCallum belongs to Camp No. 11,823, of
the Modern Woodmen of America, at Devol, -and is very
popular with his fellow members. He also holds member-
ship in the Devol Commercial Club, and co-operates
loyally in the movements of this public-spirited organi-
zation. *

Mr. McCallum Avas married in 1902, at Denton, Texas,
to Miss Effie Anderson, daughter of the late J. F. Ander-
son, who was a well-known financier of Denton, owning
a chain of banks which included institutions at that
place, Ardmore, Durant, and other Oklahoma and Texas
points. Mr. and Mrs. McCallum have no children. Mr.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1777

McCallum comes of sturdy old Scotch stock, his grand-
father, Neill McCallum, having been born in Scotland.
He was eight years of age when brought to the United
States by his parents, the family settling first in Virginia
and subsequently moving to Tennessee. The grandfather
was engaged principally in buying and selling mules,
rounded out a long and successful life, and died in 1886,
at Pulaski, Tennessee, aged seventy years.

Harry C. Lacy. The progressive and financial stand-
ing of a city is indicated as much by the type of busi-
ness men who conduct its affairs as by its institutions.
Harry C. Lacy, cashier of the well known Bank of Hydro,
is an astute financier and a citizen whose loyalty to
his home community is of the most sincere order. He
has been a resident of Hydro since 1901 and has been
engaged in the banking business since 1909. He also
owns a splendidly improved farm of one-half section, in
Cajddo County, Oklahoma, and the same is devoted to
diversified agriculture.

A native of Des Moines, Iowa, Harry C. Lacy was born
January 2, 1870, and he is a son of Henry D. and Lestine
(Betts) Lacy. The father was born in Vermont, in
1847, and he is of Irish stock, his father having settled
in the Green Mountain state from Ireland about 1835.
Prior to the outbreak of the Civil war H. H. Lacy
journeyed west to Des Moines, Iowa, and in 1861 he
enlisted for service in the Fourth Iowa Volunteer
Infantry. He took part in many important conflicts
marking the progress of the war and after Lee’s sur-
render was mustered out of service as an officer. He
then returned to Des Moines, where he married and
where he entered into business as a merchant. Later he
removed to Shelby County, Iowa, and turned his attention
to farming; thence he removed; to Western Kansas. In
1893 he made the run at the opening in Garfield County,
Oklahoma, and obtained a fine homestead of 160 acres.
He lives on this farm now and has increased it to 320
acres. Much of his attention is given to stock raising.
He is a republican, is affiliated with the Masonic fra-
ternity, and in religious faith is a devout member of the
Methodist Episcopal Church. Mrs. Lacy, who was born
in Pennsylvania, in 1849, is a woman of most gracious
personality and she and her husband are held in high
esteem by all who know them. They became the parents
of eight children, concerning whom the following brief
data are here inserted: W. J. is a resident of Detroit,
Michigan; Harry C. is the subject of this review; Edith
married M. J. Lambert and died in Wichita, Kansas,
at the age of twenty-six years; Louis is a farmer in
Idaho; Prank is at home with his parents; Weaver is a
railroad man in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Bex is an
auctioneer and farmer in Garfield County, Oklahoma, as is
also Bay.

Harry C. Lacy attended the public Schools of Des
Moines, Iowa, until his sixteenth year, when he went
to Anthony, Kansas, where he engaged in the livery and
bus business for the following four years. In 1893 he
came to the Cherokee Strip and secured a claim, and he
was engaged in agricultural pursuits until 1901, which
year marks his advent in Hydro, where he was engaged
in the implement business for the ensuing seven years as
a member of the firm of Pope & Lacy. Disposing of
his interest in the above concern, he purchased a farm
in Cotton County, Oklahoma, and developed the same
for one year, when he turned it over to tenants and
entered the Bank of Hydro, of which he is now cashier.
This bank was established as a state bank in October,
1903, by G. W. Snapp and W. H. Henke, and a new
brick building was erected for it on the corner of Main
Street and Broadway, in 1910. The official corps of the

bank is as follows: F. B. Miller, president; M. E. Scott,
vice president; H. C. Lacy, cashier, and A. J. Arbes,
assistant cashier. The bank has a capital stock of $10,000
and its surplus and profits amount to $5,000.

Mr. Lacy is a republican in his political allegiance
and although not an office seeker he is serving at the
present time as city treasurer. His fraternal connections
are with Hydro Lodge No. 230, Ancient Free and
Accepted Masons, of which he is past master; Valley of
Guthrie Consistory No. 1, fourteenth degree; Hydro
Chapter, Order of the Eastern Star, and the local lodges
of the Modern Woodmen of America and of the Brother-
hood of American Yeomen.

In Garfield County, Oklahoma, in December, 1900, was
solemnized the marriage of Mr. Lacy and Miss Katy
Pope, a daughter of John Pope, who is living retired
in Enid, Oklahoma. Mr. and Mrs. Lacy have one son :
Perrin, born February 10, 1904, and a pupil in the Hydro
public schools.

Judge James B. Butherford. One of Oklahoma’s
ablest lawyers, and one whose practice had extended over
old Indian Territory when the Federal courts for this
jurisdiction were maintained at Fort Smith, was the late
Judge James B. Butherford, who died at his home in
Sapulpa March 18, 1916. As a criminal lawyer he had
few peers, and because of his varied abilities and his
active participation in many of the notable cases tried
in Eastern Oklahoma from pioneer times down to the
present, his record is one of special significance in the
history of Oklahoma.

He was born at Fayetteville, Washington County,
Arkansas, November 3, 1859, a son of Bayless and Mary
(Curtis) Butherford, both of whom were natives of
Tennessee. His father was born in 1815 and was about
fifteen years old when his family moved in 1830 from
Tennessee to Arkansas Territory, which was not admitted
to statehood until about six years later. Bayless E.
Butherford became one of the prosperous agriculturists
and stock growers of Arkansas, and was for many years
prominent and influential as a citizen in Washington
County, where he resided until his death in July, 1900.
At that time he was eighty-five years of age and one
of the venerable pioneer citizens of Northwestern Ar-
kansas. His widow passed away September, 1913, aged
seventy. Of their ten sons and five daughters all reached
maturity and most of them are still living.

The fifth among the children in age, James B. Buther-
ford acquired his early education in the common schools
of Arkansas, and made such good use of his advantages
that for six years he was a popular teacher in the public
schools. At the age of twenty-nine • he married Miss
Mary Etta King, who was born in the State of Missis-
sippi, a daughter of James K. and Nancy King, who
removed to Arkansas when she was a child. Mrs.
Butherford is still living.

A few months after his marriage Judge Butherford
took up the study of law and in 1890 was admitted to
the bar of Arkansas. For ten years his practice was
largely confined to the Federal courts of Fort Smith,
though he also achieved a reputation in the cases which
he presented before the various state courts. In Sep-
tember, 1902, with the high prestige he had acquired
as a criminal lawyer, he came to Indian Territory and
established his home in Claremore, now the county seat
of Bogers County. There he continued to practice be-
fore the Federal Court of the Territory until Okla-
homa was admitted to the Union. Soon after statehood
he removed his family to Sapulpa, where he kept his
home and office until his death. Judge Butherford ap-
peared in many of the most important criminal cases

1778

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

tried in old Indian Territory and the new Oklahoma,
and his career as a lawyer is this section covered fully
a quarter of a century. At the time of his death he
was senior member of the well known law firm of Ruther-
ford & Blackmore. It is significant that three of his
former partners have served as United States district
attorneys.

Judge Rutherford particularly excelled in defense.
During his active career he defended more than one
hundred murder cases in Arkansas, Indian Territory and
Oklahoma, and capital punishment was not inflicted on
a single one of his clients, and the extreme sentence im-
posed was not more than ten years in the penitentiary.
He was always a loyal advocate of the republican party,
but found his professional duties too exacting to consent
to participation in a campaign for any official honors
himself. He was a member of the Baptist Church, be-
longed to the Oklahoma State Bar Association and the
Creek County Bar Association, and was affiliated with
the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. He was
widely known in professional, civic and business affairs
and acquired some interests in the oil districts of Okla-
homa.

Mrs. Rutherford became the mother of eight children:
Mamie B., Lona, Ruby, James A., Alden B., Marcus,
Dudley, and Mary Aileen. The daughter Mamie is the
wife of William Graham of Sapulpa, and Ruby is the
wife of Albert Hancock of the same city.

Charles H. Cofer. Since he did his pioneering work
on a homestead after the opening of the Cherokee Strip
more than twenty years ago, Charles H. Cofer has been
identified with numerous business enterprises in Western
Oklahoma, and particularly in Dewey County, and is now
best known as president of the Citizens State Bank of
Vici.

Though he came to Oklahoma from Missouri, Mr.
Cofer was born at Salem, Forsythe County, North Caro-
lina, February 17, 1869, and the Cofer family were in
the Carolinas from almost the earliest period of settle-
ment. His father, James Hamilton Cofer, was born
in North Carolina in 1830 and died near Conway, Mis-
souri, in 1882. Most of his life was spent in Forsythe
County, North Carolina, where he was reared and edu-
cated and married, and where he followed farming and
stock raising. During the war between the states he
served the Confederate cause in a factory for the making
of army wagons. In 1876 he removed to Laclede County,
Missouri, and lived on a farm near Conway the rest of
his life. James H. Cofer married Mary Brown, who was
born in Virginia in 1843 and died near Conway, Missouri,
in 1881. Their “large family of children are briefly
noted as follows: William, a rancher in Texas; James

Lewis, instructor in a high school at St. Louis; Charles
H.; Sallie, wife of W. E. Ernest, a farmer and stock
raiser near Fairview, Oklahoma; Vic, who first married
Ned Day, a farmer, who died in Niangua, Missouri, and
she married for her second husband Mr. Dougherty, a
piano dealer, also deceased, her home being now in
Houston, Texas; Mellie, who is a dressmaker living in
the State of Washington; Nettie, wife of Robert Jamis-
son, a farmer and stock raiser at Conway, Missouri;
Effie, who is married and lives on a farm near Buffalo,
Missouri; Alice, wife of H. O. Miller, a merchant in the
State of Washington.

Charles H. Cofer was about seven years of age when
the family removed to Northeastern Missouri, and he
was reared on a farm and gained his early education in
the common schools of Laclede County. In 1890 he
completed a course in the business college at Springfield,
Missouri, and for about a year was employed in a store

at Conway. 'With the opening of the Cherokee Strip in
1893 he removed to Richmond, Woodward County, secured
a claim of 160 acres three-quarters of a mile south of
Richmond, and spent several years in developing and
proving up on that tract of land which he still owns.
Since then his interests have taken a much broader scope
and he has become one of the most successful business
men of Dewey County. He also owns 120 acres 3% !
miles south of Mutual, and has an attractive residence
at Vici.

After making his home on his homestead until 1898
Mr. Cofer went to Hobart, was a merchant there a year
and a half, and then engaged in the drug and general
merchandise business at Cestos, in Dewey County, until
1910. In that year he organized the Citizens State Bank
at Cestos, became its president, but in 1911 moved the;
bank to Vici, where it has since been the Citizens State
Bank of Vici. He is the president, and the other officers
are : David J ones, vice president ; W. F. Cuberly, cashier ;
V. Cuberly, assistant cashier. The capital stock ' is
$10,000, and since its removal to Vici the bank has
occupied a home of its own at the corner of Broadway
and Main Street.

Mr. Cofer has taken much interest in fraternal]
organizations. He is past chancellor commander of
Cestos Lodge of the Knights of Pythias, and now has
membership in the lodge at Vici; belongs to the Vici
Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows; Cestos]
Camp of the Modern Woodmen of America, and is a
member of the Oklahoma Bankers ’ Association. In
politics he is a democrat, is a member of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, and at the present time is serving]
on the Vici School Board.

At Woodward, Oklahoma, in 1905, he married Miss]
Sallie E. Hayes, daughter of W. H. Hayes, who owns
half a section of land near Woodworth. Mr. and Mrs.
Cofer are the parents of five children: Thelma, Lewis'

and Lola, all of them attending the public schools at
Vici; and Charles and Imogene.

Charles A. Welch is the present county attorney of
Pushmataha County, and in point of continuous practice]
is one of the oldest lawyers in this section of Oklahoma,
having begun practice in the Choctaw Nation about fif-
teen years ago. His home is at Antlers.

Before the dissolution' of tribal government, the seat
of the District Court of the First Judicial District of
the Choctaw Nation was Red Oak. The facts of its his-
tory are fully as interesting as those connected with
Alikehi, seat of the Third Judicial District of the nation,
though the southern part of the nation boasts of more
romance and enlivening legend than does the region sur-
rounding Red Oak. Red Oak was in Gaines County and
the seat of district government for several counties!
Over the court there presided at one time Noel J. Holson
and James Culberson was his clerk.

It was during the Holson administration that Charles
A. Welch, who had been born and partly reared in the
Chickasaw country, was appointed attorney for the First;
Judicial District by Principal Chief Gilbert W. Dukes.
The appointment was made shortly after Mr. Welch had
been admitted to the bar in 1901, before United States
Judge H. H. Clayton of the Central District of Indian
Territory. During the two years of his service in this
office Mr. Welch prosecuted many cases involving misde-
meanors and minor crimes and was instrumental in a
number of Indians being punished at the whipping tree.
At Red Oak the punishment was inflicted beside a tree
rather than at the post, and the tree remains yet on the
spot bearing evidences of the fulfilling of the law’s
demands.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1779

The era of many murders in the Indian country had
I passed at that time and Mr. Welch was not called upon
f to prosecute any men charged with that crime. But the
era in which many white men were accused of murder
• had not passed, and what Mr. Welch missed in that line
; as a prosecutor he found abundant later as a private at-
I torney. Between the years 1907 and 1914 he successfully
I defended seventeen men in LeFlore and Pushmataha
H counties charged with the crime of murder. Then, in
I 1914, having been elected prosecuting attorney of Push-
I mataha County, he reverted to the tactics of his early ex-
I perience in the law and took up the business of punish-
I ing men accused of breaking the law.

Born in old Indian Territory in 1871, CJiarles A.
| Welch is a son of W. A. and Alice (Walner) Welch.
His father, a native of Alabama, settled in Indian Ter-
ritory before the Civil war, and is said to have been one
I of the two first white men to make permanent settlement
I in the territory. During the war he served as a captain in

(the Confederate army, and then returned and settled
at Bock Springs and engaged in merchandising. Still
later his business was removed to Caddo, where he lived
for a number of years. He was also engaged in business
: at Brazil and Talihina in the Choctaw Nation west of
Port Smith. W. A. Welch was a well educated man, a
lawyer as well as a merchant, and practiced in the United
States courts of old Indian Territory. Early in the ’70s
he took a conspicuous part in Chickasaw political affairs,
holding several offices before intermarried citizens were
forbidden to hold office. Alice (Walner) Welch was a
daughter of Dr. William Walner, who was a surgeon in
the Confederate army. Mrs. Welch was of part Indian
blood. Doctor Walner was one of the pioneer settlers
at a stage station on the Washita Biver in the Chickasaw
Nation known as Cherokee Town, and there for a num-
ber of years lived his son John Walner, a prominent
Chickasaw citizen of early days. Besides the county at-
torney of Pushmataha County, other children of W. A.
and Alice Welch are: J. H. Welch, a merchant at Al-

bion; Mrs. T. C. Branham, wife of a physician at Pauls
Valley; and Mrs. Walter Davis, wife of a merchant at
Sulphur.

The 'first school attended by Charles A. Welch was
at Caddo. It was taught by a Mr. Chapin. One of his
schoolmates was Thomas Hunter of Hugo. On leaving
school Mr. Welch became a clerk in his father’s store at
Brazil and later at Talihina, and by business activity he
supported himself and family for a number of years.
In the meantime he took up the study of law, and in
1901 was admitted to the bar.

At Talihina in 1890 Mr. Welch married Miss Delia
Morton. Her father was one of the earliest settlers in
the vicinity of Talihina and for many years was a
teacher in tribal schools. To their marriage have been
born five children: S-. E. Welch, a graduate of the class

of 1910 in the Law Department of the University of
Oklahoma and now his father’s law partner; Pitzhugh
Lee, Daniel M., Mabel and Buth. Mr. Welch is an active
member of the County and State Bar associations. In
Masonry he is affiliated with the Blue Lodge and Chapter
at Antlers, the Commandery at Hugo and the Temple
of the Mystic Shrine at Muskogee. He is also a member
of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the
Knights of Pythias. His church is the Presbyterian.

Bev. A. Hubert Van Bechen. The honored pastor
| of St. Anthony’s Church in the City of Okmulgee has
achieved a large and benignant work during the period
of his activities as a priest of the Catholic Church in
Oklahoma, his initial services having been in the old

Indian -Territory, as a missionary, and he is one of the
distinguished and influential members of the Catholic
clergy in the vigorous young commonwealth in which he
has found a fruitful field for his zealous and consecrated
activities in his noble calling. In the community slight
use of his family name is indulged, as he is familiarly
and affectionately known as Father Hubert. He has
identified himself most fully with the spirit of American
institutions and customs but to him consistently remains
deep and abiding love for his native land, which now
lies prostrate and devastated by the ravages of the great
European war that has brought death and desolation of
unprecedented horror.

Father Hubert was born at Cruyshantem, a village in
East Flanders, Belgium, about seven miles southwest of
the ancient City of Ghent, and the date of his nativity
was February 25, 1879. As may naturally be inferred,
he is a man of high scholarship, but aside from this it
is worthy of note that through early associations he
gained a thorough knowledge of both the Flemish and
French languages, besides which he has perfected him-
self in the English language. He is a son of Henry and
Benilde Elizabeth (deWolf) Van Bechen, the former of
whom passed to the life eternal on the 4th of August,
1911, and the latter of whom still retains her home at
Cruyshantem. Of the family of four sons and three
daughters the subject of this review is the only one who
has established a home in America.

Henry Van Bechen was born in East Flanders on the
4th of July, 1845, a scion of one of the old and patrician
families of that section of Belgium, and he received the
best of educational advantages in his youth. He at-
tended the College of St. Nicholas, in his native country,
and thereafter continued his studies for some time in the
City of Borne, Italy. He answered the call of Pope
Pius IX and served gallantly during the conflict between
church and state in Italy. Thereafter he was long an
influential figure in connection with public affairs in
East Flanders, and, as a remarkable accomplished musi-
cian, he served forty-two years as organist of the Catholic
Church at Cruyshantem, he having been a most devout
communicant of the Catholic Church, as is also his vener-
able widow. Henry Van Bechen was awarded the title of
chevalier of the Order of St. Sylvester and received the
medal of bene merenti, besides other honorable decora-
tions, a number of his medals and other evidences of
distinction being now in the possession of Father Hubert
of this review.

In the parochial schools of his native village Father
Hubert acquired his preliminary education, and he was
signally favored in having been reared in a home of
distinctive culture and ideal associations. Thereafter he
continued his studies in turn in St. Mary’s College, at
Audenaerde, and in the Catholic university, in the City of
Louvain, this having been the largest and most important
of the many great Catholic educational institutions which
so long gave Belgium precedence in the domain of higher
education. Father Hubert completed his philosophical
courses at St. Nicholas, and his theological at Louvain
and there he learned also the English language, in the
American College of Louvain, in which he was graduated,
as was he also in the great university. On the 13th of
Jply, 1902, he was ordained to the priesthood of the
Catholic Church, his reception of the sacerdotal orders
having been at the hands of Bishop Maes of Covington,
Kentucky, in Louvain. In the following September he
came to the United States, and soon after his arrival in
New York City he was appointed Indian missionary at
Antlers, Indian Territory, the present judicial center of
Pushmataha County, Oklahoma. There he continued his
earnest and effective services until the following year.

1780

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

aud in the meanwhile a goodly number of the missionary
Indians were received as communicants of the church.
For a time Father Hubert was pastor at Wilburton, the
present county seat of Latimer County, and later he was
assigned to Poteau, where he effected the erection of a
church building. On July 1, 1903, he returned to the
pastoral charge at Antlers, where likewise his energy
and consecrated zeal found tangible fruitage in the
erection of a church edifice, the while he was able also
to inspire the devotion which made possible also the erec-
tion of churches at Bentley, Atoka County; Boswell,
Choctaw County; and Hugo, Choctaw County.

In June, 1910, Father Hubert became the first resi-
dent priest of the parish of St. Anthony’s Church at
Okmulgee, where he has since continued his earnest and
devoted labors and where he has succeeded in infusing
vitality into both the spiritual and temporal activities
of the important parish. With the appreciative and able
assistance of Judge Wade, Stanfield District judge, he
has erected and properly equipped a rectory, which they
donated to the congregation of St. Anthony’s Church,
the parish having specific incorporation under the laws
of the State of Oklahoma since October 21, 1914. The
local rectory is donceded to be one of the best in the
state. The church edifice has been enlarged and other-
wise improved under the administration of Father Hu-
bert, and he is now (1916) bending his energies to
accomplishing the erection of a building for the parish
school. The parish is one of the most important and
vigorous in Oklahoma and its loved pastor not only has
the devoted esteem and co-operations of the members of
his flock but also the higli regard of the entire com-
munity, as he is essentially broad-minded, loyal and
progressive in his civic attitude and does all in his power
to further the best interests of the community in general.
Incidentally it may be noted that he has been specially
active in the support and advancement of the Oklahoma
National Guard, in which he maintains a deep interest.

Roy M. Felton. Caddo County, Oklahoma, figures as
one of the most attractive, progressive and prosperous
divisions of the state, justly claiming a high order of
citizenship and a spirit of enterprise which is certain
to conserve consecutive development and marked advance-
ment in the material upbuilding of this section. The
county has been and is signally favored in the class
of men who have contributed to its development along
financial and agricultural lines, and in the former con-
nection the subject of this review demands recognition
as he has been actively engaged in banking operations
at Hydro during the greater part of his career thus
far. Mr. Felton is cashier of the First National Bank
of Hydro, and he has served the city in several positions
of trust, namely, as city clerk and member of school
board.

Almond D. Felton, grandfather of Roy M. Felton, was
born in New York, in 1819, and he died at Ellenburg,
New York, in 1899. He conducted an iron foundry in
the Adirondack Mountains in his younger days and for
sixteen years was justice of the peace in Clinton County,'
New York. He was descended from English stock, his
ancestors having settled at Felton’s Hill, Massachusetts,
in 1627. His son, Marshall A. Felton, was born in
Clinton County, New York, in 1849. He came West in
1874 and located in Kansas, where he helped build the
canal, and for many years he did freighting from Arkan-
sas City to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He was at Hennessey,
Oklahoma, only a few hours after the murder of Patrick
Hennessey by the Indians. Later in life he became a
farmer and he died at Ellenburg, New York, in 1898,
while on a visit home. He served in the Civil war

for one year as a member of the Ninety-second New
York Volunteers. He was a member of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, in which he was an active office holder,
belonged to the Masonic fraternity, and also affiliated
with the Grand Army of the Republic. He was a repub-
lican in his political allegiance. He married Belle
Nichols, born in Illinois, in 1858, and now a resident
of Hydro. This union was prolific of the following
children: Roy M. is the subject of this sketch; Ralph A.
is a resident of Roselle, New Jersey, where he is a mem-
ber of the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions; 0.
C. is a rancher in the vicinity of Filer, Idaho; Mary
C. is the wife of L. L. Williams, a merchant at Orange,
California; and Esther, who was graduated in the Hydro
High School in 1915, is now a teacher in Idaho. For
her second husband Mrs. Felton married M. M. Klein,
a furniture dealer and undertaker at Hydro. They have
one child: Margaret, born in October, 1904, and now
a pupil in the public schools of Hydro.

Roy M. Felton was born in Arkansas City, Kansas,
January 11, 1880. He was graduated in the graded
schools of Cowley. County, Kansas, and attended the
high school at Ponca City, Oklahoma, whither his parents
had removed in 1893. He was graduated in Southwestern
College,, at Winfield, Kansas, in 1902, and then engaged
in farming in the vicinity of Hydro for the ensuing two
years. He entered the Hydro State Bank in 1904 as
assistant cashier and in 1906 was raised to the position
of cashier. The Hydro State Bank was established in
January, 1902, and was nationalized as the First National
Bank of Hydro in 1911. The first bank building was
erected in 1904 and it was destroyed by fire in 1910.
The present structure was built in the same year and is
a fine brick building on Main Street. The officers of the
bank are : George B. Pope, mentioned elsewhere in this
work, president; W. H. Collins, vice president; Roy M.
Felton, cashier; and H. Larson, assistant cashier. The
bank has a . capital stock of $25,000, a surplus of $3,500
and profits of $2,500.

Mr. Felton’s work as bank cashier has been most
satisfactory and he is well known as a booster of his
home town. He is a republican in polities and has given
efficient service as city clerk of Hydro for three terms,
and in that capacity brought about many material
improvements of great benefit to this community. He is
a trustee in the Methodist Episcopal Church and his
fraternal affiliations are as follows: Hydro Lodge No.
230, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, of which he is
junior warden; Hydro Chapter, Order of the Eastern
Star ; and he is an ex-member of the Knights of Pythias.

At Guthrie, Oklahoma, in 1904, was solemnized the
marriage of Mr. Felton to Miss Grace Rose, a daughter
of the Rev. W-. H. Rose, pastor of the First Methodist
Episcopal Church at Guthrie. Mr. and Mrs. Felton
have two children: Marshall Rose, born August 6, 1905,
and William Roy, born October 27, 1907, both of whom
are attending school at Hydro.

Robert B. Thomas. The present postmaster at Cache
is one of the early settlers in that section of Comanche
County, having come soon after the opening of this region
to settlement, and has been variously identified with
the growth and business activities of the locality.

Mr. Thomas comes from an old and prominent Southern
family. The Thomases originally emigrated out of Wales
to Virginia, where they lived when Virginia was still
a colony, and afterwards became identified with pioneer
settlement of Kentucky. Mr. Thomas had two great-
grandfathers who were in the Revolutionary war, his
great-grandfather Thomas having held the rank of colonel,
and on his mother’s side his great-grandfather, Colonel

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1781

Woolf ork, attained a similar rank in the American forces,
fighting for independence. The grandfather, William
Thomas, a native of Virginia, went to Kentucky at an
early date, and was killed while living in Ballard County,
.when his horse fell on him.

Bobert B. Thomas was born in Bardwell, Kentucky,
January 1, 1881. His father, Dr. George A. Thomas,
was born in Ballard County, Kentucky, February 3,
1844, and early in his career became identified with
the Southern armies in the war between the states. For
one year he was a member of Polk's Scouts, and for the
following three years was in the cavalry under General
Forrest. After the war he graduated Doctor of Medi-
cine from the Louisville Medical College, removed to
Bardwell in 1871, and was prominent as a physician and
also in politics and civic affairs in that locality until his
death in 1907. Doctor Thomas married Miss Hannah J.
Webb, who was born in Bardwell, Kentucky, January 2,
1856, and is now living at Cache, Oklahoma. Their chil-
dren are : Herbert, who is in the insurance business at
Tyronza, Arkansas; Wallace W., in the ice business at
Cache, Oklahoma; Ada, wife of Louis Harrison, a farmer
at Bardwell, Kentucky; Bobert B. ; Bettie, wife of S.
B. Bay, a farmer at Cache, Oklahoma; Gharles, a rail-
way employe living at Muskogee, Oklahoma; and Luther,
an electrician at Cushing, Oklahoma.

As a boy Bobert B. Thomas grew up at Bafdwell and
attended the public schools, graduating from high school
in 1900. At the age of twenty-one he Came out to South-
western Oklahoma, and found his permanent location at
Cache, where for two years he was a clerk in the Indian
trading store for E. M. Harris. In 1904 he became
connected with the mercantile enterprise of V. E. Gregg,
and also for Mr. Gregg 's successor, A. J. Lawrence,
and remained in the general store at Cache until June,
1908. The following twelve months were spent at Brown-
ing, Missouri, where he was again in the employ of Mr.
V. E. Gregg. Beturning to Cache in the fall of 1909,
lie engaged in the general mercantile business for him-
self until February 12, 1913. Next followed an ex-
perience as a traveling salesman representing the Star
Clothing Company of Kentucky. This was terminated
on September 5, 1914, at which date he received his
appointment as postmaster of Cache * under the civil
service rules. He is now giving practically all his atten-
tion to the administration of the office.

Mr. Thomas has been active in local affairs in that
part of Comanche County for a number of years. For
four years he was township clerk at Cache, and in 1914
was defeated by only a small majority as candidate for
the office of county assessor. He is a democrat, and is
well known as a party leader in Comanche County, and
for six years was democratic township committeeman.
He is a fluent public speaker, and was one of the first
men of Comanche County to support President Wilson
on the stump. His church is the Christian.

Mr. Thomas is especially well known in Odd Fellow-
ship and is now serving as president of the Southwest
Odd Fellows Association, an organization for general
benefit among the Odd Fellows lodges in Comanche, Cot-
ton, Tillman and Jackson counties. His local affiliation
is with Cache Lodge No. 269, Independent Order of Odd
Fellows, and at three different times he has attended the
grand lodge of the state and the first time was present
as a delegate when only twenty-one years of age, being
the youngest delegate in the grand lodge. He is a past
grand and past grand representative, and a member of
the Odd Fellows Encampment.

On June 21, 1914, at El Beno, Oklahoma, Mr. Thomas
married Miss Mittie Fronaberger of Lawton, Oklahoma.

John P. Millek, M. D. Many of the older common-
wealths of the Union have contributed to the personnel
of the able and representative physicians and surgeons
of Oklahoma, and though Doctor Miller claims the
historic old State of North Carolina as the place of his
nativity he was reared to manhood in Texas, where he
received his early education and whence he came to
Oklahoma Territory in September, 1892, when he settled
at Cheyenne, the present vital metropolis and judicial
center of Boger Mills County, where he has been estab-
lished in the successful practice of his profession during
the intervening period of nearly a quarter of a century,
and where he holds secure prestige and popularity as
one of the leading pioneer physicians and surgeons of
this section of the state, even as he has made his influ-
ence definitely felt through his activities as a progressive
and public-spirited citizen.

Dr. John Powell Miller was born in Madison County,
North Carolina, on the 19th of July, 1851, and is a son
of Samuel and Jane (Jack) Miller, the former of whom
was born in Buncombe County, North Carolina, in 1822,
and the latter of whom was born in Greene County,
Tennessee, in 1823, both families having been founded
in America in the colonial days. Samuel Miller removed
with his family to Texas in December, 1862, and there
he passed the remainder of his life as a farmer and
stock grower. He survived his wife from 1889 to 1907,
his death occurring on the 30th of April of the latter
year. The mother was summoned to eternal rest on
September 28, 1889, both having been consistent members
of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and the father
having been a stanch democrat in politics. He was a
scion of a sterling family that was founded in Penn-
sylvania in the colonial era of our nationary history,
and the original American progenitors came from Scot-
land. In the following paragraph is given brief record
concerning the children of Samuel and Jane (Jack)
Miller.

William Elbert is a retired merchant and resides at
Claude, Armstrong County, Texas; Bobert T. maintains
his home at Floydada, Floyd County, that state, and
has large farm and stock interests in that section ;
Samuel Madison, who likewise was a substantial farmer
in Texas, died at the age of fifty years, in Brown County,
that state; James Anderson, twin of Samuel M., died in
Johnston County, Texas, at the age of seventeen years;
Doctor Miller of this sketch was the next in order of
birth; Oetavia Jane is the wife of James H. Keith, of
Cleburne, Texas; Harriet Emily is the wife of Willis M.
Armstrong, a prosperous farmer of Brown County, Texas ;
Bev. Jacob Glance, a clergyman of the Methodist Epis-
copal Church South, resides at Stamford, Texas;
Margaret Cordelia is the wife of John H. Dortch, a
retired farmer, and they reside at Dalworth, Texas;
Mary Elizabeth, who died at Panhandle City, Texas, in
the autumn of 1891, was the wife of Monroe Jack, who
still resides in that state, a farmer by vocation; and
Catherine Ann is the wife of William C. Dysart, a farmer
of Collin County, Texas.

Doctor Miller was a lad of about ten years at the time
of the family removal to Texas, where he was reared to
manhood on the homestead farm, with the work and
management of which he continued to be associated until
he had attained to his legal majority. In the meanwhile
he profited duly by the advantages of the local schools,
and in September, 1872, he entered Mansfield College, in
which excellent Texas institution he continued his studies
three years. Thereafter he remained on the home farm
until 1879, when he engaged in the drug business at
Marystown, Johnson County, and incidentally devoted
as much time as possible to the study of medicine. His

1782

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

business venture proved successful and in September,
1880, in consonance with his ambitious purpose, he was
matriculated in the medical department of Vanderbilt
University at Nashville, Tennessee, in which great insti-
tution he was graduated as a member of the class of 1883
and from which he received his well earned degree of
Doctor of Medicine. He then returned to Johnson
County, Texas, where he served his practical novitiate in
his profession and where he continued in successful
general practice until 1889. He then removed to Claude,
Armstrong County,' but within a year he established him-
self at Panhandle City, Carson County, where he remained
until the autumn of 1892, when he came to Oklahoma
Territory, his permanent home having been established
at Cheyenne, county seat of Roger Mills County, in Sep-
tember of that year. He was the pioneer physician of
the county, and five years elapsed ere another representa-
tive of his profession engaged in practice at Cheyenne.
In the earlier years Doctor Miller encountered the most
arduous labors and. many trials in pursuing his humane
mission over a wide area of thinly settled and wild
country, but he placed no limitations upon his profes-
sional zeal and devotion, so that it is but natural that
he is held in the highest popular esteem in the community
which he has served faithfully and with marked ability
for many years. He has kept in close touch with ad-
vances made in medical and surgical science and has
given to the people of this section of the state the best
that could be offered by a physician and surgeon of
distinctive technical talent and of abiding appreciation
of the dignity and responsibility of his exacting voca-
tion. He has long controlled a large and representative
general practice, and he maintains his well appointed
office on Broadway, in the business center of the town.
The doctor is the owner of his attractive residence
property, likewise on Broadway, and in addition to other
local realty he has two valuable farms in Roger Mills
County, one comprising 320 and the other 160 acres.
During nearly the entire period of his residence at
Cheyenne, Doctor Miller has served as health officer of
the county, and though he is a stanch democrat in
politics he was first appointed to this position, in 1892,
by Governor Sea, who was elected territorial governor on
the republican ticket. He assisted in the organization
of the Roger Mills County Medical Society, was one of
the early presidents of the same and still continued one
of its appreciative and valued members, besides which
he is identified with the Oklahoma State Medical Society
and the American Medical Association. Doctor and Mrs.
Miller are zealous members of the Methodist Episcopal
Church South, in which he has served in official positions
for forty years, his service having been in the capacities
of steward, trustee, Sunday-school superintendent, etc.
He is past master of Cheyenne Lodge, Ancient Free and
Accepted Masons ; past high priest of Cheyenne Chapter,
Royal Arch Masons; and affiliated also with Cheyenne
Council, Royal and Select Masters, as well as with the
eommandery of Knight Templars at Elk City, Beckham
County. lie holds membership in the Cheyenne Camp
of the Woodmen of the World and was formerly in active
affiliation with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

At Jefferson, Texas, in 1881, was solemnized the mar-
riage of Doctor Miller to Miss Ruth Bookman, daughter
of the late Michael Bockman, a substantial farmer of
that state. Doctor and Mrs. Miller have two children —
Thomas Madden, who holds a responsible executive posi-
tion with the Collins Investment Company, at Oklahoma
City; and Volina, who is the wife of Taylor Lee Miller,
a representative dry goods merchant of Cheyenne.

J. R. Pearson. In the development and improvement
of the old Osage country, J. R. Pearson has for thirty-

five years supplied the important elements of individual
enthusiasm and enterprise. He has spent most of his
active career in this part of Oklahoma, and has had
unusual opportunities for judging the country and for
participating in its affairs, and there is probably no
citizen of Pawhuska who is considered more vitally and
substantially related with local development than Mr.
Pearson.

Born in Andrew County, Missouri, February 29, 1852,
he has had a life of varied experience beginning with
boyhood. His parents were William Madison and Delilah
(Hunter) Pearson. His father was born in Kentucky,
but was reared in Missouri, the grandparents having
settled as pioneers in the northwestern quarter of that
state. Grandfather Nathaniel Pearson died in North-
ern Kansas at the age of ninety and William M. Pearson
passed away May 30, 1912, at the age of eighty-nine,
in Maryville, Missouri, and both had spent all their
active careers as blacksmiths. Mr. Pearson ’s mother,
who was born in Missouri of a pioneer family, died when
her son was four years of age. The latter is now the
only one living out of a family of four girls and two
boys, and there were also two sons by his father’s
second marriage.

When he was thirteen years of age J. R. Pearson left
home on account of incompatibility with his step-mother,
and thenceforth largely made his own way in the world. He
lived a few years with his older sisters and then rambled
from place to place, paying his way by day or monthly
labor, largely engaged in railroad work in different sec-
tions of Missouri.

It was in 1878, while still in search of a permanent
home, that J. R. Pearson arrived in the Osage country.
Here, on July 4, 1878, he married Miss Rosa Denoya,
■vyho was born in Washington Territory August 26, 1864.
She died at her home in Pawhuska, January 26, 1913,
at the age of forty-nine. She had come to Indian
Territory with her parents in 1873, and received her edu-
cation in the government schools. Her parents were
Francis and Martha (Tessett) Denoya, her father a full-
blooded Frenchman and her mother of part French and
part Osage stock. Her mother died at Pawhuska May
23, 1913, in her eighty-fifth year, and it is said that
she was the mother, grandmother, great-grandmother,
and great-great-grandmother to more children in the
Osage tribe than any other living woman. She was
twice married, the father of Mrs. Pearson having died
about twenty-seven years ago.

In order to support his wife, Mr. Pearson for several
years after his marriage worked at wages of fifty cents
a day, but soon engaged in ranching and stock raising,
and has lived continuously in what is now Osage County
with the exception of a few years spent at Cedarvale,
Kansas, where he was giving his children the advantages
of the local schools. He and each of his children now
have allotments of land amounting to 657 acres each,
and he is one of the large property holders over Osage
County. Besides his land he is a stockholder in the
Pawhuska Oil and Gas Company, the largest corporation
operating in that industry in Osage County; is also a
stockholder in the oil and gas company of which J. W.
Stroud is president; is a stockholder in the Citizens
National Bank of Pawhuska. For a number of years
he has also carried on an individual business as a money
lender.

In 1908 Mr. Pearson erected what is considered one
of the most attractive homes in Pawhuska, known as
Pearson Heights, adjoining the city limits at the south-
west corner. The house is itself a commodious and at-
tractive one, and stands on a site that commands an
extensive and beautiful view not only of the city, but of
a large scope of surrounding country. The house is

1783

1535239

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

surrounded by 120 acres of well improved land, and that
is the center of Mr. Pearson's continued interests in the
stock business. He still keeps a large number of horses,
and has some especially fine strains represented in this
class of stock.

In politics he is a republican. In Masonry he has been
through both the York and Scottish Rite branches as
far as he could go, and was one of the first men in the
Osage country to take the thirty-two degrees of the
Scottish Rite Consistory. He is a member of the Con-
sistory at Guthrie and the Temple of the Mystic Shrine
at Oklahoma City, and belongs to the various other
branches represented at Pawhuska. To Mr. and Mrs.
Pearson were born a large family of eleven children:
Claude, who died at the age of four years; Cartona, who
died at seven years; October, who lives at Pearson Spur
in Osage County, and is married and has five children;
Della, who died at the age of six years; Madeline, wife
of Robert E. Wynn, living in Osage County, and the
mother of four children; Cordelia, wife of Prank R.
Kent of St. Joseph, Missouri, and the mother of two
children; Lillian, wife of J. P. Compehaver of Inde-
pendence, Kansas, and the mother of one child; Bertha,
wife of Grover Badey of Osage County, and the mother
of two children; Catherine V., Joseph W. and Rosa V.,
all living at home with their father.

Lucien Albert Pellet. Since 1908 Mr. Pelley has
been a resident of Altus, has been an active and suc-
cessful member of the Jackson County bar for the past
four years and even for a longer time has been a very
influential figure in the political life of Jackson County.

Born in Casey County, Kentucky, April 25, 1881, he
was reared front the age of seven principally on his
father’s farm in Bates County, Missouri, and while
there had the benefit of country schools. He also finished
the junior year in the State Normal School at War-
rensburg, and subsequently took a business course at
Sedalia, Missouri. He has had to pick and choose his
own opportunities for the most part, and with an ambi-
tion to become a lawyer, went through considerable
practice and experience before reaching that goal. Mr.
Pelley came to Altus, Oklahoma, in 1908, and during
1909 was deputy county clerk of Jackson County. He
finally accumulated a sufficient sum to put him through
law school, and in 1911 was graduated LL. B. from the
law department of Cumberland University at Lebanon,
Tennessee. Returning to Oklahoma, he was admitted to
the bar in the same year, and is now well established in
his profession, looking after a large and growing civil
• and criminal practice, and his offices are in the court-
house at Altus.

He represents an old southern family, and his fore-
fathers were prominent farmers and stock breeders in
Kentucky. It was his great-great-grandfather who emi-
grated from England and established this branch of the
Pelley family in Virginia, and out of that state his great-
grandfather moved into Casey County, Kentucky, where
he was numbered among the pioneer settlers. Mr.
Pelley 's grandfather was widely known over his section
of Kentucky as Doc Pelley, was born and reared and
spent all his life in Casey County, where he was well
known as a stock raiser, and for fifty years owned and
operated the largest mill in that section of the state.
His death occurred before the Altus attorney was born.
The latter’s father is Z. T. Pelley, who was born in
Casey County, Kentucky, in 1853 and is now in business
in Kansas City, Missouri. He moved from Casey County
to Bates County, Missouri, in 1888, and since 1912 has
lived in Kansas City. His career has been largely that
of a farmer and stock raiser, but after selling his place

in Bates County, Missouri, he spent several years as a
traveling salesman. He is an active member of the
Christian Church, and for many years has held some
official position in his home church. Z. T. Pelley mar-
ried Miss Dolly Ermine Mayes, who was born in Casey
County, Kentucky, in 1863. Lucien A. is the oldest
of their five children. Wilma, the next in age, is the
wife of James M. Dillard, who is an attorney and
formerly served as county attorney of Jackson County
and is now living at Carlsbad, New Mexico. Zula T.
is a deputy county clerk of Jackson County, Oklahoma.
Carl Estel is a rancher at Craig, Colorado, and the next
younger brother, Cecil Alton, is associated with him in
that industry.

Lucien A. Pelley is a democrat in politics, is a deacon
in the Christian Church at Altus, is a member of Altus
Lodge No. 62, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and
is past grand of Altus Lodge No. 134, Independent Order
of Odd Fellows, and is also past chief patriarch of the
local encampment of Odd Fellows. He also belongs to
Altus Lodge No. 1226 of the Benevolent and Protective
Order of Elks. Professionally he is a member of the
County and State Bar Association, and takes much in-
terest in the work of the local Commercial Club, and is a
member of the large Cumberland Alumni Association
found in the State of Oklahoma. As a democrat he is a
member of the Young Men’s Democratic Club, has regu-
larly attended the County and State Democratic conven-
tions of recent years, and is a candidate for the office of
county attorney of Jackson County.

George B. Pope. A progressive and enterprising
citizen of Hydro, Oklahoma, is George B. Pope, who
came to this city in 1901 and who has here been engaged
in the banking business since 1908. He was elected presi-
dent of the Hydro State Bank in 1909, and is now
president of the First National Bank. He has always
manifested a deep and sincere interest in public affairs
and is serving his second term as city councilman. The •
Pope family came originally from Scotland and members
of the name were pioneers in Indiana, Missouri and
Kansas.

George B. Pope was born at Emporia, Kansas, January
7, 1873, and he is a son of John Pope, whose birth
occurred in the vicinity of Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1833.
John Pope removed from the Hoosier state to Missouri
as a young man and at the outbreak of the Civil war
enlisted for service in the Union army as a private in
the Fifth Missouri Cavalry. He served for a period of
four years, during which time he participated in many
important battles marking the progress of the war, at
one time he was taken prisoner and was later exchanged.
He was a pioneer settler in Emporia, Kansas, after the
war, and although he was a contractor and builder by
trade he devoted his attention to farming for many
years. He helped build the first brick building ever
erected at Atchison, Kansas, and he was at Wichita,
Kansas, when that city was nothing but an Indian trad-
ing post. In 1880 he removed with his family to Cald-
well, Kansas, and that was before the railroad was
built. He came to Oklahoma in 1893, and took up a
homestead in Garfield County. In recent years he has
lived retired at Enid, Oklahoma, and there he and his
devoted wife are held in high esteem by their fellow
citizens. At Maryville, Missouri, Mr. Pope was united
in marriage to Miss Susan E. Bishop, who was born in
Tennessee, in 1843. It is interesting to note that the
Bishop family was driven out of Tennessee on account
of sympathy with the Union cause during the Civil war.
Mr. Bishop hired a yoke of oxen and removed the house-
hold goods to Indiana, he and the children being com-

1784

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

pelled to walk most of the way. Five children were
born to Mr. and Mrs. Pope, as follows: Capitola is the
wife of J. P. Clapp, a merchant at Hillsdale, Okla-
homa; Robert R. is a merchant at Hillsdale; George B.
is the subject of this sketch; William is a rural mail
carrier at Hillsdale; and Katy is the wife of H. C. Lacy,
cashier of the Bank of Hydro.

Under the invigorating discipline of farm life George
B. Pope grew to maturity and he attended public school
and high school at Caldwell, Kansas. He came to Okla-
homa with his parents in 1893 and proved up a claim on
the. Cherokee Strip. Subsequently he removed to Carrier,
this state, and there entered into the general mercantile
business, also having charge of the postoffice before
the railroad was built. In 1901 he came to Hydro and
here was most successfully engaged in the implement
business until 1908, when he turned his attention to bank-
ing. For one year he served as vice president of the
Hydro State Bank, now the First National Bank, and
at that time it was capitalized at only $5,000. He was
made president of that institution in 1909 and is still serv-
ing with the utmost efficiency in that capacity. He is
possessed of remarkable business acumen and much of
the bank’s success is traced to his good judgment. He
is a republican in politics and is now serving his second
term on the city council. While a resident of Garfield
County he was a member of the school board. In a fra-
ternal way Mr. Pope is affiliated with Hydro Lodge No.
230, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, of which he is
past master; Weatherford Chapter, Royal Arch Masons;
Weatherford Commandery, Knights Templar; Valley of
Guthrie Consistory No. 1, thirty-second degree; India
Temple, Ancient Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic
Shrine, at Oklahoma City; Hydro Chapter, Order of the
Eastern Star; and Hydro Lodge, Modern Woodmen of
America.

Mr. Pope has been twice married. In 1898 he married
Miss Zue Carrier, a daughter of S. E. Carrier, a farmer
prior to his demise. She died at Eureka Springs,
Arkansas, in 1900. For his second wife Mr. Pope mar-
ried, at Leavenworth, Kansas, Miss Pearl Orr, a daugh-
ter of William Orr, now deceased. Mr. and Mrs. Pope
have two children: Eugene, born October 24, 1908; and
Olive, born December 20, 1910. In religious faith the
Popes are devout members of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, and they are popular factors in the social
life of Hydro.

Sterling Price Smith. As an educator Mr. Smith has
unusual qualifications and experience. He is a man of
liberal education, was admitted a number of years ago
to the Texas bar, though he has practiced very little, is
a practical surveyor, and his varied associations with
men and affairs are a splendid foundation for his work
as superintendent of the city schools of Grandfield.

His father was a Confederate soldier and named his
son, who was born near Burleson, Franklin County, Ala-
bama, August 14, 1862, in honor of the great Confederate
leader under whom the father was at that time serving.
The Smith family came from England, and grandfather
Frank Smith was a soldier under Francis Marion in the
Revolutionary war. F. M. Smith, father of the Grand-
field school superintendent, was born in Georgia in 1828
and died at Garner, Texas, in 1896. The year following
his birth, in 1829, his parents removed to Calhoun
County, Alabama, and he grew up there and married.
He was a farmer by occupation, lived for a number of
years in Franklin County, and finally established his
home at Garner, Texas. In 1861 he entered the Con-
federate army with an Alabama regiment, was with
Price in his campaign in -Mississippi, was with Johnston

at Corinth, and after the reorganization of the Con-
federate army was under the command of Lee in Vir-
ginia, and participated in all the battles and campaigns
leading up to Appomattox. In politics he was a loyal
democrat. The maiden name of his wife was Jane
Scheneks, who was born in Alabama and now lives in
Garner, Texas. To their marriage were born twelve
children: Floyd, who died at the age of eight years in

Calhoun County, Alabama; Laura, wife of John Wil-
liams, a farmer in Franklin County, Alabama; Flora,
whose husband is J. M. Sullivan, a farmer at Garner,
Texas; Maggie, who married P. M. Inzer, a druggist at
Savoy, Texas; W. L., who is a farmer near Mineral
Wells, Texas; Sterling P. ; Kate, who died after her
marriage to Mr. Davis, a farmer now living in Franklin
County, Alabama; Fannie, wife of Thomas Hefrin, who
is in the employ of the Government at El Paso, Texas;
Frank, who died at the age of three years; and Mary
and Elizabeth, both of whom died early in childhood;
and Dena, wife of Gus Bumgarner, a farmer at Garner.

Sterling Price Smith attended the public schools of
Franklin County, Alabama, also the Burleson Academy,
and for three terms was in the high school at Honey
Grove, Texas. In 1891 he graduated Bachelor of Science
from the Central College at Sulphur Springs, Texas, sub-
sequently took two years work in the Texas Christian
University at Waco, this university being now at Fort
Worth, and was graduated A. M. in 1897. In the mean-
time he had followed teaching for a number of terms,
read law, and in 1899 was admitted to the Texas bar.
For four years Mr. Smith was county surveyor of Fannin
County, Texas. In 1907 he removed to Mill Creek, Okla-
homa, was a teacher there one year, was superintendent
of schools at Lindsay one year, principal of ward schools
in Paul’s Valley for two years and then for one year
was principal of schools at Stratford, Oklahoma. Mr.
Smith came to Grandfield to take the superintendency
of the city schools in 1913. Though Grandfield is a
comparatively new town, it has an excellent public school
system, and Mr. Smith is at the head of a corps of six
teachers and the total enrollment in the schools numbers
310. Mr. Smith has never found any work quite so
attractive as school work, and is not only ambitious for
the best attainments as a school executive but also for
continued advancement in individual scholarship. He
was engaged as a teacher for one summer term in the
Ada Normal School at Ada, Oklahoma, and has been
taking special studies through that institution and
received a diploma in 1913. He also spent one summer
term in the University of Chicago and is now working
on his tenth college credit. He belongs to several of
the school associations, is a member of the Methodist
Episcopal Church South and was formerly identified with
the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Knights
of Pythias.

On August 25, 1897, Mr. Smith was married at Savoy,
Texas, to Miss Frankie Chenoweth, whose father, Thomas
Chenoweth, is now a retired property owner at Sabinal,
Texas. To their marriage have been born four children:
Sterling D., a junior in the high school at Grandfield;
Leta Mae, a sophomore in the high school; Elizabeth, in
the sixth grade, and Jennie Lou, who is in the fourtli
grade of the public schools.

A. C. Bradshaw. It is nearly fifteen years since A.
C. Bradshaw came into the western part of Oklahoma
Territory and was first known to the people of what
is now Roger Mills County as a teacher. He has since
extended his interests to various other affairs, has per-
formed much official service and is now proprietor and
editor of the Leedey Times at Leedey.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1785'

The Bradshaw family to which he belongs came from
England to Virginia during colonial times. A. C. Brad-
shaw himself was born in Adair County, Missouri, Decem-
ber 3, 1874. His father, Joseph R. Bradshaw, was born
in Kentucky in 1845 and died in Sullivan County, Mis-
souri, in 1899. From Kentucky he removed to Adair
County, Missouri, and though only a boy at the time in
1861 enlisted in the Second Missouri Cavalry, and went
through the entire conflict, coming out with a gallant
record of military duty well performed. Returning to
Adair County, he took up the pursuits of farming and
stock raising, and from there in 1890 moved to Sullivan
County. As a man who had fought on the Union side
during the war he naturally affiliated with the republican
party. He was a member of the Missionary Baptist
Church. Joseph R. Bradshaw married Mary S. Thornton,
who was born in Georgia in 1848, and is still living, her
home being with A. C. Bradshaw at Leedey. Their
children were: William T., a carpenter and contractor

at Wichita Falls, Texas; John, a farmer in Adair County,
Missouri; A. O. ; Cassie, wife of John I. Starkey, a farmer
and stock raiser in Kingman County, Kansas; and Valley
E., wife of Albert A. Butler, a clerk in the B. & O. Cash
Store at Leedey.

The primary fact in the career of A. C. Bradshaw has
been a propelling self effort toward larger accomplish-
ment. As a boy he had to be content with such education
as the public schools of Adair County could supply him,
but later he paid for a course in the State Normal School
at Kirksville for one year in 1896. He then took up
teaching in Adair County, and in 1901 arrived in what
was then Oklahoma Territory, and was employed for a
year as teacher in the public schools at Angora in what
later became Roger Mills County. He also homesteaded
a claim of 160 acres, proved up on his land, and that is
still included among his business assets. The farm is
nine miles southwest of Leedey. In the meantime, as he
became better acquainted with the people and the people
became better acquainted with his capabilities, he was
the recipient of various honors and responsibilities of a
public nature. In 1905 he was appointed United States
commissioner, and held that office until Oklahoma became
a state in 1907. In 1906 he was appointed postmaster
of Texmo, and held that office until the postoffice was
discontinued on August 15, 1915.

His work in the newspaper field began in 1907, when
he leased the Texmo Times. He later bought the plant
and in June, 1911, removed the paper to Leedy, where
it is now known as the Leedey Times, with Mr. Bradshaw
as editor and proprietor. It is a republican paper, and
has a large circulation throughout Dewey, Custer, Roger
Mills, Ellis and other counties. Mr. Bradshaw owns the
plant and building in which the paper is published on
Broadway. He also owns one of the finest residences of
the town, situated on Phillips Street.

In politics Mr. Bradshow is himself aligned with the
republican interests; is a member of the Baptist Church;
is affiliated with Leedey Lodge No. 443, Ancient Free
and Accepted Masons; is past noble grand in Leedey
Lodge No. 369, Independent Order of Odd Fellows; is
past consul of Camp No. 15436 of the Modern Woodmen
of America at Leedey. As a newspaper man belongs to
the Oklahoma State Press Association.

In 1899, in Sullivan County, Missouri, he married Miss
Effie Belle Wilkin, daughter of Jacob Wilkin, who is
now a resident of Oklahoma, a farmer eight miles south-
west of Leedey. Mrs. Bradshaw died April 22, 1915,
leaving three children: Raymond Dale, who died at the

age of seven years in 1907 ; Eugene Lyle, a student in
the Leedey public schools; and an infant son, Harvey
Dean.

S. S. Lawrence is the Choctaw tribal attorney at Ant-
lers, an office in which he has given most creditable serv-
ice during the past two years. He is a bright young
lawyer, and most of his practice has been in the south-
eastern section of Oklahoma.

The office of probate attorney in former Indian nations
of Oklahoma has proved its particular value in the fact
that the Indians, thousands of whom for years have
been victimized by unscrupulous white men, have been
taught to counsel with the man the United States Gov-
ernment has placed among them for that purpose. The
duties of a probate attorney, an office that was created
only a few years ago, were not specifically stated in any
statute or department regulations, and when Secretary
Franklin K. Lane of the Interior Department distributed
its commissions to young lawyers of Oklahoma they were
supposed to learn for themselves what was necessary
in becoming counsel to the wards of the government
over whom they were placed. The office has supplied
the needs of that quality in the Indians which once
caused them to be denominated children of the forest,
the quality of dependence and succor. This is the begin-
ning of the successful administration the probate attor-
neys should have, for it has acquainted them with every
form and . character of need the Indian experiences.

The dependence of Choctaw Indians in Pushmataha
County, for instance, is exemplified in the character of
advice sought of Attorney Lawrence. He recalls that
one Indian who once belonged to the Clan of Snakes,
wanted to borrow $5 at a bank. The loan was made,
on the Indian’s unsecured note, and gladly, for he is
honest. A few days later this Indian came back to Mr.
Lawrence, rather than going to the bank for the infor-
mation, and inquired when the note would mature.
Many Indians ask the attorney where to buy provisions
and clothes, and while he probably could not conscien-
tiously make any recommendations of that nature, he is
in position to guard the Indian against trading with a
merchant whom he knows would make exorbitant charges
for his goods. Indians ask the attorney to rent or
lease their lands, collect their debts, write their cheeks,
pass upon their legal instruments, etc. It is not obliga-
tory upon an Indian that he consult the attorney regard-
ing mortgages, transfers, notes, etc., yet he is learning
that it is best to do so. While the labors of the attorney
are burdensome and he has to hear all manner of trivial
complaints, requests and tales, he nevertheless is learning
the secret of what economists for many years have called
the Indian problem. The attainment of this knowledge
has convinced Mr. Lawrence that the position of pro-
bate attorney should not be a political one.

. An example of the reformatory character of the at-
torney’s work is found in the case of Abel Noah, all his
life until recently a member of the Clan of Snakes who
recognize no government, accept no patents, sell oi
lease no lands, and receive no pay from the Government.
Noah recently was convinced that his attitude toward the
Government was wrong, and he consented to sell some
of his land, a valuable fertile tract in Bryan County.
The sale was executed after some technical reverses had
been remedied, and Noah came into possession of $1,600
of good American money. He spent it with spirit and
relish,, and since that time has been accepting all that
other Indians get from the Government. He has seen
the light after many years of Snake darkness.

There are about 5,000 Indians in the district assigned
Mr. Lawrence, which comprises Pushmataha and Choc-
taw counties. A part of each week he spends in Hugo.
In Antlers he offices with Principal Chief Victor M.
Locke, Jr., of the Choctaw Nation, and it is a little mat-

1786

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

ter of interest that the principal chief, whose whole
ambition is to be of service to his people, frequently
acts as interpreter for the probate attorney. It was
Chief Locke who first introduced Mr. Lawrence in the
Indian service. On March 18, 1914, Mr. Lawrence
was selected and commissioned by Chief Locke as pro-
bate attorney for a district of the Choctaw Nation. On
July first following he received his commission from the
Secretary of the Interior.

Of an old Southern family, S. S. Lawrence was born
in Surry County, North Carolina, June 25, 1884, a son
of P. W. and C. O. (Gordon) Lawrence. His father,
who now at the age of eighty-two lives at Pilot Moun-
tain, North Carolina, is a veteran of the war between
the states, and has spent most of his active life as an
agriculturist. He lives at the place where he settled
more than half a century ago, loved and tenderly revered
by the entire community. Other children besides the
Antlers attorney are: J. E. Lawrence, a traveling sales-
man in New York; and Miss Victoria Lawrence, who
lives with her parents in North Carolina.

After attending the public schools of his home county,
Mr. Lawrence completed a course in law in the Univer-
sity of North Carolina, receiving his LL. B. degree in
1908. On the first of December of that year he began
practice at Mount Airy, North Carolina. Then with two
or three years of practical experience to his credit, he
came to Oklahoma and on August 1, 1911, located in
Antlers, where he was making promising progress in
the acquirement of a profitable private practice until
appointed to his present position as probate attorney.

On August 28, 1912, at Mount Airy, North Carolina,
he married Miss Roberta Vance Price, a great-niece of
Zeb Vance, who many years ago was a United States
senator from North Carolina. Mr. Lawrence is a mem-
ber of the Presbyterian Church. Fraternally he is a
Mason and belongs to the Pushmataha Bar Association.
Mrs. Lawrence is a member of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, South.

James C. Tte. In several different communities where
he has lived, both in Kentucky and Oklahoma, James C.
Tye has helped to make history. In fact he has been an
energetic factor in affairs for more than half a century.
Prior to that he was a gallant soldier in the Civil war
and made a record which redounds to his credit and to
that of his descendants. Mr. Tye at present is one of
the officers in The First National Bank of Bristow. He
helped to found that bank and also to found the town.
That he is a successful business man goes without say-
ing and there is plenty of evidence to support the state-
ment that he has been as honorable and straightforward
in all his relations as he has been prosperous.

Of an old Kentucky family, he was born at Lot, May
25, 1844, a son of Hiram and Rachel (Siles) Tye. His
parents were also born in Kentucky, his father in 1814
and his mother in 1817. All their lives were spent on a
farm near Lot in Whitley County, where the father died
in 1855. The mother survived and was past eighty when
called away by death. Hiram Tye was a farmer and
stock raiser and bought and Shipped a great many hogs
in the years before the war. In the family were four
daughters and six sons, and one daughter and four sons
are now living. Besides James Tye his older brothers
John and Henry were also soldiers in the Civil war. John
served for three years and Henry for eighteen months.
Both James and John enlisted in 1861, John in the
Eighth Kentucky Infantry and James in the Seventh
Infantry. The brother Henry went out with the 49th
Kentucky Regiment.

In the meantime James C. Tye had grown up in his

district of Kentucky, had received the rugged discipline
of the farm, had attended the common schools after he
learned his letters — probably two months, and that when
about sixteen years old, and was in the full bloom of
early manhood. When seventeen years of age he re-
sponded to the call for volunteers to put down the south-
ern rebellion, and on August 20, 1861, was enrolled in
Company G of the Seventh Kentucky Infantry. He
served until October, 1864, a little more than three years.
He was in many of the greatest campaigns which cleared
the Mississippi Valley from the Confederate forces. He
was in the great campaign around Vicksburg, under
Grant and Sherman. For much of the time he had the
rank of sergeant, and during the Vicksburg campaign he
was detailed as a member of the Pioneer Corps and did
part of the heavy work involved in advancing the army
over the difficult ground around the mighty fortress over
the Mississippi.

After the war Mr. Tye returned to his native village
of Lot, and took up farming. He also conducted a
Kentucky distillery for about twenty years.

With a good deal of material prosperity to his credit,
Mr. Tye came out to Oklahoma in the spring of 1890,
not long after the original opening of lands. His first
location was seven miles west of Edmond. He engaged
in farming there, but soon moved to Chandler, and three
years later came into the Creek Nation in 1894. Since
then for more than twenty years his activities have iden-
tified him with what is now Creek County. • He first
leased about 700 acres of farm and ranch land and culti-
vated it to crops and went into the stock business on an
extensive scale. When the Town of Bristow was started
he came into the village bringing two carloads of lumber,
and set up as the first lumber merchant. He soon sold
the two carloads of lumber which he brought, and it
nearly went into the construction of the pioneer build-
ings of the town.

Along with other parties he engaged in banking when
the first banking facilities were given to Bristow. He
was associated with the old Farmers & Merchants Bank,
and later was one of the organizers of the First National
Bank, in which he has since been vice president. The
other officers are J. W. Teter, president, and N. T.
Gilbert, cashier. A recent statement shows that the total
resources of the First National Bank of Bristow are
more than $249,000, a splendid showing for a bank in a
town of that size. The capital stock is $25,000, with
over $7,000 of surplus and profits. The deposits aggre-
gated about $180,000, Besides his position as a banker
Mr. Tye also has some valuable farming interests in Okla-
homa. He is also associated with Mr. B. B. Jones in the
ownership and control of some oil interests in the Bristow
field.

A lifelong democrat, Mr. Tye was quite interested in
politics while a resident of Kentucky, but has done little
in that direction in Oklahoma. He held some minor
offices, though he was never a willing candidate for such
honors. He is a member of the Christian Church and
affiliates with the Grand Army of the Republic.

On March 23, 1865, he was united in marriage with
Elizabeth Brummet. Mrs. Tye was born in Whitley
County, Kentucky, not far from the birthplace of her
husband, on March 17, 1845, a daughter of George and
Jane (Lambdin) Brummet, who spent all their lives
along the Cumberland River and were substantial farm-
ing people. Five children were born to Mr. and Mrs..
Tye: S. Jane, who died at the age of eighteen months;
Hiram, who is an attorney practicing law at Williams-
burg, Kentucky; John, who died in 1910, and whose
widow and two children live at Bristow; George, who
died in infancy; and Ortha, wife of J. E. Lurton of

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1787

Bristow. Perhaps at the conclusion of this sketch Mrs.
Tye should be allowed a little bit of testimony.. She
says that she has lived with Mr. Tye for fully half a
century and that he measures up to all the standards
and qualifications of a truly good man.

Harry G. Jones. In his varied career as farmer,
postmaster and newspaper man Harry G. Jones has met
with many interesting experiences and he has mani-
fested a peculiar aptitude for different lines of endeavor.
He has been a loyal and public-spirited resident of
Hydro since 1901 and since 1906 has been sole pro-
prietor and editor of the Hydro Review, a republican
paper with an extensive circulation throughout this
section of the state.

Harry G. Jones was born in Smith County, Kansas,
October 9, 1879. He is a son of Ora and Melvina
(Rhodes) Jones, the former of whom was born in Ohio,
in 1835, and the latter in Iowa, in 1840. As a young
man Ora Jones removed from the Buckeye state to Iowa,
was married there and then went to California, where
he enlisted in the Civil war as a Union soldier. His
army experience consisted mostly in subduing the Indians,
whose uprisings were a sore trial to the Federal forces
during the period of civil strife. Mr. Jones retained
a deep and abiding interest in his comrades at arms
and indicated the same by membership in the Grand
Army of the Republic. After the close of the war he
located in Smith County, Kansas, arriving there several
years before the noted grasshopper year, and he was
engaged in farming operations arid in stock raising until
he retired, in 1903, to Smith Center, where his death
occurred in 1908. He was a republican and took an
active interest in party affairs. He served on the town
board of commissioners for a number of years at Smith
Center and was also active on the school, board. His
cherished and devoted wife, whose maiden name was Mel-
vina Rhodes, survives him and lives at Smith Center,
Kansas. They became the parents of the following
children: Jennie, married to A. N. Nye, a retired farmer,
living at Franklin, Nebraska; Prue married F. H. Hous-
ton, a farmer near Wharton, Texas; Clarence E. is
station agent for the Missouri Pacific at Anthony,
Kansas; Frank and Orin C. are both farmers in Smith
County, Kansas; Dolly is the wife of Warner Sanford, a
merchant at Blessing, Texas; Harry G. is the subject of
this sketch; Carl is a baker at Belleville, Kansas; and
May is the wife of Milo Stanley, a farmer in Smith
County, Kansas.

To the public schools of his native place Harry G.
Jones is indebted for his preliminary educational train-
ing. In 1896 he became rural mail carrier at Smith
Center and two years later he turned his attention to
farming. In 1901 he drew a homestead four miles north-
east of Hydro, Oklahoma, and lived on it until 1907.
In 1902 he became assistant postmaster at Hydro and
for eight months was acting postmaster. He disposed
of his farm in 1909 but repurchased it in 1911, and
has since conducted it as a stock farm, later buying
another eighty-acre tract adjoining the farm. He owns
250 head of hogs in addition to numerous head of cattle
and horses. July 1, 1904, he became interested in the
Hydro Review, becoming associated with Dr. W. M.
Wellman, who founded the paper in October, 1901. Mr.
Jones obtained control of this publication in 1905 and
the following year bought up the interests belonging
to Mrs. Wellman. The paper is republican in its poli-
tics and it circulates in Caddo, Blaine and Custer Counties.
The offices and plant are located on Main Street and
this paper has the distinction of being the only one in
the county whose plant has never been mortgaged. In

addition to his other numerous interests in this section
Mr. Jones owns a number of city lots. He is a republi-
can in politics and for four years he served as a mem-
ber of the county election board. He is a member of
the Methodist Episcopal Church and is affiliated with
Hydro Lodge No. 230, Ancient Free and Accepted
Masons.

At Hydro, in 1907, Mr. Jones was united in marriage
to Miss Irene Smith, a daughter of Mrs. Alberta Smith,
of Eaply, Oklahoma. Prior to her marriage Mrs. Jones
was a popular and successful teacher in the public
schopls of Hydro. Mr. and Mrs. Jones have no children.

Roscoe C. Thomas. While he first became identified
with the Panhandle district of Oklahoma as a home-
steader and farmer, Mr. Thomas has for a number of
years been best known as a newspaper publisher and
is now editor and owner of the Cimarron News at Boise
City. He is probably the leading and most influential
democrat of this section of the state, and is well known
to the leaders of the party all over Oklahoma.

A Tennesseean by birth, Roscoe C. Thomas was born
February 22, 1883, on a farm in Wilson County. The
house in which he was born was constructed of log
timbers, and in the same house his father, Eli, was born
October 30, 1839, a son of J. B. and Mary (Wilson)
Thomas, who were natives of Virginia and of Welsh
origin. Eli Thomas has been a farmer all his life, but
is now living retired at Lebanon, Tennessee. During
the war between the states he was with the Confederate
army as a private in the Second Tennessee Regiment.
On October 30, 1869, his thirtieth birthday, Eli Thomas
married Miss Eliza Sneed, who was born in Wilson
County, Tennessee, January 30, 1846, and her parents
wpre likewise natives • of Tennessee. To their marriage
were born ten children, eight sons and two daughters,
all of them living as follows: Crittenden, born July 30,

1870; Houston, born September 5, 1871; Charles, born
January 4, 1873; Ephraim, born August 5, 1875;
Arizona, born June 10, 1876; Baxter, born July 20,
1877; Hogan, born March 22, 1879; Gordon, born Jan-
uary 16, 1881; Roscoe C., who is the ninth in order of
birth; and Ophelia, born January 4, 1885.

Roscoe C. Thomas was reared in Wilson County,
attended the public schools there, and as opportunities
were not so abundant in his native state as he imagined
they would be in a newer country, he came in 1904 to
Oklahoma and spent one year on the famous 101 Ranch
in Kay County. In 1905 he located on a homestead
in Texas County, but in addition to proving up and cul-
tivating his claim he also operated a real estate office
in Guymon. Since then he has been closely identified
with the substantial activities of this section of the
state. In 1907 he was one of the organizers of the
Cimarron Town Company, and was manager of that
company until the town failed to realize the sanguine
expectations of its founders. In 1908 he removed to
Boise City, and in 1910 bought the plant of the Cimarron
News at Kenton and removed it to Boise City, where he
consolidated it with the Boise City Tribune in 1911. He
now has the leading paper in that section, and has a
printing plant that is unusually well equipped, having
among other facilities a typesetting machine and modern
rotary presses.

During 1913-14 Mr. Thomas was a member of the
Oklahoma State Board of Agriculture. He is demo-
cratic state central committeeman from Cimarron.
Fraternally he is affiliated with the Independent Order
of Odd Fellows and 'is a member of the Methodist
Episcopal Church.

On June 29, 1910, at Boise City he married Miss

1788

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Ruby Allison, who was bom June 10, 1885, at Groes-
beck, Texas, a daughter of A. B. Allison, who now lives
at Boise City, Oklahoma. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas have
one chiljl, Roscoe C., Jr., born March 28, 1914.

John G. Reid, M. D. A physician and surgeon of
broad and successful experience, Dr. John G. Reid in
1914 located in Lincoln County at Fallis, and later in
Oklahoma City, where he enjoys the esteem and the
practice which indicate the possession of both ability
and high personal character. Doctor Reid has spent
many years in Oklahoma, having first come to the terri-
tory at the opening of the Cherokee Strip in 1893,* and
after participating in the run he located a claim in that
section. He came to Oklahoma from Wellington, Kan-
sas. Doctor Reid is a graduate in medicine from the
Northwestern University of Chicago, Illinois, with the
class of 1877.

John G. Reid was born at Jacksonville, Illinois, April
8, 1847, an^l his early life was spent on a farm. His
grandfather and father were, respectively, Stephen H.,
Sr., and Stephen H., Jr. Both were natives of Kentucky
and were of Scoteh-Irish ancestry. Stephen H. Reid, Jr.,
grew up in his native state and married there Martha
Capps, who became the mother of three children. His
second wife was Miss Martha Garrett, who was born in
Cheshire, England, of English parentage. Her children
were: John G. ; Lydia C. ; Richard W., who was a

lawyer, and is now deceased; George W., of Jacksonville,
Illinois; Enoch S., now deceased; and Elijah J., a
farmer near Jacksonville, Illinois. The father of these
sons died at the age of seventy-six. Politically he was
a republican, and before the war was a great friend and
admirer of Owen Love joy, the great abolitionist. His
wife died at the age of sixty-one. She was a member of
the Methodist Church, and a woman of admirable temper
and excellent qualities of heart and mind.

Dr. John G. Reid was reared on the old farmstead
in Illinois, and owing to many circumstances, life in a
country community, the turtnoil of war times, and other
things, he had only a limited educated while growing to
manhood. He later secured his education from the
proceeds of his own endeavors, studied at home, at-
tended higher schools, and then prepared for a profes-
sional career in Chicago. After graduating from medical
college his first location was at Woodburn, Illinois,
subsequently he practiced in Chicago several years, then
located in Texas, and since 1893 has been identified with
the Territory and State of Oklahoma. For several years
he was in Enid, and in 1901 removed to Hydro, where
he conducted his general practice until removing to
Fallis, and came in 1916 to Oklahoma City.

Doctor Reid was first married March 20, 1877, in
Illinois, to Mary J. Whittier, a niece of the great Quaker
poet, John G. Whittier. She was born and educated in
New York State, and was a woman of fine culture and
education, and died at Welington, Kansas, at the age of
fifty-five. She left one daughter, Mrs. Welch. Doctor
Reid married his present wife in Kansas, Miss Evelyn
Sehamell. Mrs. Reid was born in Lincoln, Nebraska,
and was educated chiefly in Kansas. Her parents, Peter
and Margaret (Bonet) Sehamell, were, respectively, Ger-
man and Irish. Doctor and Mrs. Reid have one son,
Cranston, who was born January 25, 1912. Doctor Reid
is a member of the Modern Woodmen of . America.
Politically he is a prohibitionist; both he and his wife
are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Leroy H. Keys of Bartlesville, is a sterling representa-
tive of the old Cherokee Nation. He is a native of the
Cherokee Nation, and has spent most of his life in and
around the present site of Bartlesville, where his busi-

ness activities and his civic influence have counted for
much in local development. As a farmer, oil man, prop-
erty owner, he has been known for his successful man-
agement of every enterprise he has undertaken. He is
a genial gentleman, a wholesome and public spirited
citizen and a man whom the Bartlesville community counts
as one of its livest and most esteemed citizens.

Born in the Cherokee Nation of Indian Territory,
March 16, 1864, he was the only son of Isaac W. and
Jane (Ramsey) Keys. His mother died when he was
an infant. Both parents were natives of the Southern
States, and were part blooded Cherokees. When that
tribe was removed west of the Mississippi River during
the ’30s, Isaac Keys went along, and he and his wife
spent the rest of their lives in the new district set aside
for the homes of the Indians. The history of the family
is thus closely associated with the history of Indian
Territory from the very beginning. Isaac Keys was
a Southern sympathizer and fought with Gen. Stand
Waitie during the Civil war, and most of the family were
Confederates, either actively or in sympathy. Isaac Keys
was one of sixteen children, and some of them were in
both armies, including his brothers George and Judge
Riley Keys, who allied themselves with the Northern
forces.

Aside from his participation in the struggle between
the North and South Isaac Keys devoted most of his
life to farming and stock raising. He was honest and
honorable, stood high in the community, and his death,
in the spring of 1887, marked the passing of one of the
worthy old time citizens of what is now Eastern Okla-
homa. By his second marriage he had no children, and
by a third marriage the three daughters were: Jessie,
now deceased, married Sam Jordan and left a daughter
Ruby M., who is now living with her grandparents;
Nellie, deceased; and Myrtle, who lives at Nowata, Okla-
homa. There were also four orphan children reared in
the home of Isaac Keys. Three of them were the Cobb
boys, William, John and Mack, William having died some
years ago, while the other two are prominent in Nowata
County. The other orphan reared in the Keys house-
hold was Georgia Russell, whom Mr. Leroy Keys has
always esteemed as an own sister. She first married
James Stokes, and their children were as follows : Floyd,
deceased; Olive, who married Tom Mix and has one
child, Ruthe; Gretta, who married L. C. Rothe, and they
have one child, Russell. .After the death of James
Stokes she married Walter Brown, and they now reside
north of Bartlesville.

With such sterling family associations, it is not sur-
prising that Leroy H. Keys has always been extremely
loyal to the country which gave him birth, and his own
accomplishments have brought him the highest rank
among the influential citizens of Indian blood in Okla-
homa. Almost his entire career has been spent in the
Cherokee Nation and Oklahoma State, with the exception
of four years, 1885-88, in Santa Rosa, California. As
a boy he acquired a common school education, and his
early life was spent in working on cattle ranches. He
has been accustomed to meeting hardships and dangers
and has never flinched from the responsibilities of
existence. For many years he has been an active and
prosperous farmer, and with other members of the family
received his allotment of eighty acres, which now con-
stitutes one of the valuable tracts of land in Washing-
ton County. For two and a half years, up to April,
1915, he was proprietor of a livery establishment in
Bartlesville, but then sold out, and is now giving his
attention to his farming interests. There are several
oil wells on his property and he has not only shared
in the great material wealth of this section of the

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1789

state, but has also helped to create and utilize those
abundant resources.

In early times Mr. Keys herded cattle over the present
site of Bartlesville as an employe of P. L. Yocum. In
1876 he accompanied his father on a trip to Colorado,
from which state they returned in the spring of 1877.
That was a journey which he recalls with a great deal
of interest, since he saw some buffaloes, then being
rapidly dissipated and soon to disappear almost entirely
from the great plains, and he also saw a great many
antelope. In 1901 Mr. Keys participated in the rush
of new settlers into the Kiowa and Comanche country in
Southwestern Oklahoma. Though he sold his business as
a liveryman he is still owner of the building in which it
is conducted and he owns several other pieces of good
property in Bartlesville.

Special mention should be made of the handsome home
which he built at a cost of $6,000, and is located at 918
Cherokee Avenue, in Bartlesville. ' It is not only one of
the beautiful places of the city from the standpoint of
material structure, but it is also a real home in comfort
and family associations, and within its walls Mr. Keys
finds his chief pleasure. On May 8, 1891, he married
Miss Belle Thomas, who was born in Arkansas June 11,
1869, and came to Indian Territory when a young
lady. Her father, who was born in Jackson County,
Alabama, spent his life as a farmer, and married Miss
Lavinia West, who was a native of Crawford County,
Arkansas. In the Thomas family were four sons and
two daughters, and all of them lived either in or near
Bartlesville. Mr. and Mrs. Keys have five children:
Albert Leroy, a farmer in Washington County, married
Hattie Montgomery. The second child is Pearl. Raymond
W. was married in June, 1915, to Miss Jeanette White-
turkey, and they have an infant daughter named Maxine.
Olive M. is still at home with her parents. The other
child, Lela J., died at the age of three years.

E. P. Clark. An atmosphere of romance surrounds
the experiences of the hardy pioneers in the several
historic land openings of Oklahoma, and it would be
a volume of surpassing interest which might select and
give record to the many narratives heard from the
lips of those early settlers. Numerous little incidents
in the life of E. P. Clark, now manager of the Chicka-
sha Milling Company at Verden, make his career an
extraordinary one. When he is in the proper mood Mr.
Clark can relate experiences that furnish a delight-
ful and refreshing hour to his audience. He lacks
only two months of being an Oklahoma Eighty-niner, and
was a participant in three Oklahoma openings, those
of the Cherokee Strip, the Cheyenne and Arapaho Country
and the Kiowa and Comanche district. His travels have
been transcontinental in the seeking and establishing
of homes, but most of twenty-six years have been spent
in Oklahoma.

E. P. Clark was born in Monmouth, Illinois, August
5, 1866, a son of Horace and Jeanette (Coutlet) Clark.
On both sides the ancestry goes back before the Revo-
lutionary period in American history. One of the
maternal ancestors came to America with Lafayette and
fought under that great Frenchman during the war
for independence. Horace Clark, the father, died at
Medford, Oregon, in 1914, at the age of seventy-six.
Mr. E. P. Clark has a half brother, Carl B. Clark, who is
an instructor in engineering in a college in New York
State.

Mr. Clark’s first schooling was in Janesville, Wisconsin,
to which place his father removed when the former was
a small boy. The next year the family moved to New
York and in that state he attended a school at Sandy

Creek. The following year was spent in school at Cedar
Rapids, Iowa, and his common school education ended at
Eldora, Iowa. As a young man he did farming at
Anthony, Kansas.

These experiences sum up his career until he came to
Oklahoma. Soon after the original Oklahoma opening
in 1889, he conceived the idea of growing vegetables
for the market in the new country. Buying a supply
of garden seeds he dispatched John Freeman from
Anthony, Kansas, to Kingfisher, Oklahoma, to put out the
first garden. Later, after Mr. Clark had concluded an
assignment in a salt plant in Kansas, and with only
a few dollars for expenses, he set out on foot for Okla-
homa. Settlements were few in the new country and it
was wild and much frequented by bad men. His journey
first led him to Bluff City and later to the Crisine
Ranch, in what was then the Cherokee Strip. At that
ranch he rested for a time, and then resumed his journey
on foot, arriving in due time at Pond Creek, where
he fell in with a man driving an ox team. They were
companions for several days in the tedious journey
towards the promised land, getting poor and insufficient
food all the way. Their destination was Hennessey,
and on the day of their arrival Mr. Clark was approached
by George Bear, a druggist, who asked him to sign a
petition for the removal of the county seat from King-
fisher to Hennessey. Clark protested that he was not a
citizen of the territory, having just arrived, but his name
went on the petition.

After a few days he reached Kingfisher and found that
Freeman had arrived there with his garden seed and
was well on the way toward a lucrative income. Mr.
Clark ’s money was all gone and he set about working
at odd jobs to pay for his food. Working with him was
Amos Ewing, called “Shorty” in those days, who after-
wards became one of the leading men in republican poli-
tics in the territory and was a member of the recent
Fifth Legislature, from Logan County. Mr. Clark dug
post-holes and cellars and worked as a section hand until
he had saved fifty dollars, which he invested in a bakery
at Hennessey. He sold this later and entered the fur
trade, which he followed for several years in Oklahoma
and Kansas. It is of interest that he was employed
for a time in a store belonging to Fred Ehler, who
remains one of the picturesque pioneer citizens of
Hennessey. Later he entered the milling business under
George H. Block, who is another of the interesting char-
acters of the early days and a well known capitalist
and lumber dealer of the present day. With the excep-
tion of a short time spent in Lee’s Summit, Missouri,
Mr. Clark has continued uninterruptedly in the milling
business, as salesman and plant manager. He has
been manager of the Chickasha Milling Company’s plant
at Verden about a year. In coming back to Oklahoma
in 1914 to take the Verden station of this company, he
found luck lurking in numbers of ill reputation. He
came out of door No. 13 in the Unioh Station at Kansas
City, took train No. 23 and arrived in his office at
Chickasha on Friday the 13th.

Mr. Clark was married twenty-one years ago at Hen-
nessey, to Miss Grace L. Fowler. The half-brother of
Mrs. Clark, Harry Fowler, has lived with them as a
member of the family, but at the present time is in
Alaska. The five children are named Horace, Helen,
Henry, Hazel and Herbert. Mr. Clark is affiliated with
the Improved Order of Red Men and was formerly a
member of the United Commercial Travelers and the
Ancient Order of United Workmen. He was a member
of the first grand lodge 'of Red Men in Oklahoma and
assisted in its organization. He is a member of the

1790

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Retailers Association and the Commercial Club at Verden,
and for two terms was city clerk at Hennessey.

John Linsy Allen. One of the oldest cattlemen in
the Panhandle district of Oklahoma is John Linsy
Allen, whose home is now at Boise City, Oklahoma,
where he is assistant postmaster, his wife, Mrs. Allen,
being the chief in that office. Mr. Allen is also a
prominent democrat in his section of the state and is
widely known among all the cattlemen of that district.

He was born October 21, 1871, in a log house on a
farm in Hancock County, Illinois, a son of James T. and
Mary M. (Phillips) Allen. His father, who was a son
of Ethean Allen, a native of New York and of Scotch
ancestry, was also born in Hancock County, Illinois,
April 1, 1846, and has been a prominent stockman all
his active career. Prom Illinois he moved to Missouri
in 1872, when his son, John, was about one year old,
and for eleven years farmed and raised stock in Sullivan
County. In 1883 he went to Kansas, continued cattle
raising on the open range in Clark County for two
years, and then went still further west to Las Animas
County, Colorado. There he engaged in the cattle busi-
ness for eighteen years, and for nine years operated a
large ranch in No Man’s Land of Oklahoma. In 1914
he retired, and is now living at Lamar, Colorado. In
1868 he married Miss Phillips, a daughter of Brice and
Lavina Phillips, who were natives of Pennsylvania. Mrs.
Allen was born November 16, 1848, in Allegheny County,
Pennsylvania. To their marriage were born five sons,
all of whom are still living: Alfred B., born in 1869, is
now postmaster at Lobatos, Colorado; John L. is the
second son; Crittenden E., born in 1875, is a cattleman
in Cimarron County, Oklahoma; Thomas Eldon, born in
1878, is now county judge of Baca County, Colorado;
and Charles Alva, born in 1882 is a beet sugar manu-
facturer at Rocky Ford, Colorado.

John Linsy Allen received his early education in the
public schools of Sullivan County, Missouri, and in Las
Animas County, Colorado. When only eighteen he took
up the life of a cowboy on the open range and was
employed by various outfits and also on his own account
in Indian Territory, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and
Montana for a period of seventeen years. In recent
years his operations have been confined to the states
of Colorado and Oklahoma, and he is particularly well
known in the old No Man’s Land of Oklahoma.

In 1910 Mr. Allen was elected a member of the board
of county commissioners of Cimarron County and was
re-elected in 1912, giving four years of his time and
attention to that office. He is very influential in the
democratic organization. On February 4, 1915, at Boise
City, Oklahoma, he married Miss Adalee Allison, who
was born in Texas November 20, 1885. Mrs. Allen com-
- pleted her education in the University of Chicago and
for a number of years prior to her marriage was engaged
in teaching. In 1915 she was appointed postmaster of
Boise City. Fraternally Mr. Allen is a Knight Templar
Mason and also an Odd Fellow.

Herbert E. Smith. It is as a lawyer of broad and
varied experience that Mr. Smith is chiefly identified
with the State of Oklahoma, where he has lived since
1908. His home and offices are in Okmulgee, where he
has gained prominence and success as a general attorney,
but much of his practice is connected with land, oil and
gas interests and litigation.

A Virginian by birth, he is of an old and interesting
family of that commonwealth. Born in Petersburg, Vir-
ginia, August 22, 1871, he is a Son of E. D. T. and Mary
Elizabeth (Pace) Smith. His parents were also born in

Virginia, and both families were of colonial stock. The
great-grandfather Smith came from Scotland and located
in Dinwiddie County, Virginia. In the successive gener-
ations there have been representatives of the family in r
every important war in which this country has had a
part. Mr. Smith’s parents both died in Virginia in
1912, their deaths occurring only twenty days apart. His j
father was aged ninety and his mother eighty. The jj
father spent most of his active career as a farmer, and j
at one time served as mayor of his home city of Peters- I
burg. He was a Confederate soldier throughout the jl
Civil war under the command of General William ]
Mahone. He was captured near Norfolk, and was one j
of the men drawn by lot to be shot by the Federal J
authorities. He escaped when Lee informed Grant that
if Confederate prisoners were put to death he would |
shoot three Federals for every Confederate so put to
death. One of Mr. Smith ’s most interesting possessions 1
is the diary kept by his father for many years and detail- j
mg many of his experiences while a soldier. He escaped
from the northern prison in which he was held, and was
shot three times while swimming in Chesapeake Bay. All
of Mr. Smith ’s uncles were soldiers in the Civil war, and
at three different times the northern and southern armies
were engaged in fighting on the old Smith homestead at
Petersburg.

Herbert E. Smith was one of seven sons, and his only
brother now living is John Edward of Bradentown,
Florida. Three members of the Smith family lost their
lives during that brief but victorious conflict with Spain.

Reared on a farm, Herbert E. Smith has largely made
his own way in the world. He acquired a common school •
education and at the age of sixteen he went to Rochester,
New York, and found employment at various occupa-
tions, keeping up his studies in night school. He studied
law with Judge J. M. Mullen at Petersburg, Virginia,
and was admitted to the bar August 23, 1892, the day -
following his twenty-first birthday. He practiced law
in his native state less than three years and then went 0
to Buffalo, New York, where he was admitted to practice j
in June, 1895. In 1898 he went to the Island of Porto
Rico, where for six years he was engaged in practice as
a lawyer and was the first American attorney to open an
office on that island. In March, 1905, Mr. Smith went
to Washington, D. C., and practiced as member of a
law firm of that city until he came to Okmulgee, Okla-
homa, on May 24, 1908.

In polities Mr. Smith is a republican. He is a traveler
who has seen a great deal of the world, and has prac-
tically visited all the important countries of the globe,
his travels having been especially extensive in South
America and Alaska. He is a man of many interests,
and has the genial nature which makes him hosts of
friends. In 1901 he married Cora M. Belden, who was
born in Chautauqua County, New York, and who is
directly related to the Curtis and Van Rensselaer families
of old colonial New York stock.

Guy Barton Van Sandt, M. D. From the point of
continuous practice Doctor Van Sandt is the oldest
physician and surgeon at Wewoka. Soon after taking
his degree of medicine he located in that little city in
Eastern Oklahoma twelve years ago and has since been
shown every mark of appreciation and favor in his
capacity as a physician and also as a citizen and good
worker for community welfare.

He was born at Montrose, Illinois, November 14, 1878,
a son of Dr. H. G. and Henrietta F. (Morton) Van
Sandt. His grandfather, John Van Sandt, was a native
of Kentucky, but was an ardent abolitionist, was con-
nected with the underground railway, and figured in a

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1791

notable fugitive slave case. He was convicted before
| one court of having assisted fugitive slaves to escape
I to the North, but he carried the case to the Supreme
J Court, where he was defended by such notable attorneys
as Chase and Stone. His character is also preserved in
j literature, and he is the figure known as Van Trump in
I Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Dr.

I H. G. Van Sandt was born at Glendale, Ohio, in 1843,
and served throughout the Civil war, having enlisted
in the three months service with the 12tli Ohio Regiment,
and afterwards going to Illinois and enlisting in Com-
pany I of the 125th Illinois Infantry. The greater part
of his military service was spent as a scout, and he was
detailed with Captain Powell. After the war he took
up the practice of medicine in Missouri, remained there
I four years, then spent two years in the St. Louis Medical
I College and located permanently at Montrose, Illinois,
where he carried on an active practice until his death
in 1906. He also took a prominent part in republican
politics, was a member of the Masonic Lodgs, and
affiliated with the Grand Army of the Republic. His
: wife, Henrietta P. Morton, was born in Iowa in 1849,

| was reared in Jacksonville, Illinois, coming of a staunch
I Presbyterian family, and of old Boston and Mass-
| achusetts stock. She was married in Jacksonville in
J 1872, and she is still living, her home being at Montrose,

- Illinois. Of the eight children, the first three died in
infancy. The oldest of those living is Dr. Van Sandt,

» John Arthur died in 1912; Harrison G. lives at Mont-
| rose, Illinois; Vallie V. is the wife of Harry Jenuine at
j Greenup, Illinois; Leona lives with her mother.

Doctor Van Sandt spent his early youth in Montrose
I graduated from high school, took a course in Whipple
j; Academy at Jacksonville, Illinois, at Austin College in
Effingham, and took the greater part of his medical
I] work in Barnes Medical College of St. Louis, where he
ij was graduated M. D. in 1903.

On January 1, 1904, Doctor Van Zandt began practice
J at Wewoka, and while he was not the first physician to
I locate there, he has seen those who were here when he
I came leave or retire, and thus he is the oldest practitioner
\\ and also is a recognized leader in his profession. He is
[ a member of the county and state medical societies and
J the American Medical Association and belongs to the
Ij Railway Surgeons’ Association.

On April 9, 1903, Doctor Van Sandt married Miss
j Lucile M. Cuddy. The marriage ceremony was per-
[ formed by John D. Vincil, who also gave him his medical
I diploma. Mr. Vincil was grand secretary of the Masonic
j Grand Lodge of Missouri. Mrs. Van Sandt was born in
I Kansas, but was reared chiefly in Oklahoma, being a
■) daughter of Joseph and Emma (Suppiger) Cuddy. They
| have one son, Max. Doctor Van Sandt is a republican,
j has served as county chairman, and in Masonry is affili-
I] ated with the thirty-second degree Consistory, with the
| Mystic Shrine and is also a member of the Benevolent
I and Protective Order of Elks.

I George W. Pullen. From a primeval landscape that
| marked sections of the picturesque Cherokee Nation a
I! quarter of a century ago Hon. George W. Pullen, rep-

II resentative of Murray County in the Fifth Legisla-
| ture of Oklahoma, has evolved a picture that affords
|'| an effective presentment of progress, prosperity and
[ culture. This depicture in a material way represents
| his fine and essentially modern farmstead of 153 acres,
if two miles distant from the thriving little City of Davis.

I On the farm the purest of water flows in superabundance
j from streams and wells, the fertile soil brings forth its

| increase as one season follows another, and on the estate

I I is to be found one of the finest farm residences in Mur-

Vol. v— 3

ray County, this attractive home being situated on a rise
of ground and constituting one of the many evidences
of peace, comfort, prosperity and appreciative enterprise
in developing the splendid natural resources of that
favored section of the state, where Mr. Pullen is known
and honored as a progressive and public-spirited citizen.

George W. Pullen was born in Lawrence County, Ten-
nesee, on the 20th of February, 1862, and is a son of
Jesse and Mary (Atwell) Pullen, both likewise natives
of Tennessee, to which state the parents of Jesse Pullen
removed in an early day from Virginia. Jesse Pullen
was a prosperous farmer of Tennessee and in that state
both he and his wife passed their entire lives. He whose
name initiates this article passed the period of his boy-
hood and youth on the home farm and though his early
educational advantages were limited to a somewhat
irregular attendance in the local schools he early de-
veloped a fondness for study and reading, showed ambi-
tion in the acquirement of knowledge, and through
individual application amply stored his retentive mind
with information which well equipped him for the re-
sponsibilities and productive activities of later years.
He was but thirteen years of age at the time of his
father’s death and upon his youthful shoulders thus fell
heavy responsibilities. He remained on the homestead
farm until he was twenty- three years of age, and with
all of filial solicitude provided for his widowod mother.
At the age noted Mr. Pullen went to Alabama, in which
state he remained three years, at the expiration of which
he returned to Tennessee. Two years later, in 1892, he
numbered himself among the pioneer settlers near Davis,
Indian Territory. There he secured a tract of land in
a section that was chiefly notable for its unreclaimed
stretches of land, covered with sage brush and practically
unsettled. Houses were few and widely separated and
the population was very small. In the midst of the
virgin wilds he erected a primitive dwelling and then
essayed the task of developing a farm. That he has
brought to bear much energy, discrimination and progres-
siveness is best demonstrated in the extent and condition
of his finely improved landed domain of the present day,
and he is known as one of the leading agriculturists
and stockgrowers of Murray County, where in recent
years he has given special attention to the raising of
high-grade Jersey cattle.

Liberal in the support of all measures and enterprises
tending to advance the civic and material welfare of
his home county, and known as a man of much acumen
and judgment, Mr. Pullen naturally became influential
in public affairs and his high standing in the community
was shown by his election, in November, 1914, as repre-
sentative of Murray County in the Fifth General As-
sembly of the State Legislature. He proved a sincere,
loyal and valuable working member of the House of Rep-
resentative, in which he was assigned to the following
named committees: Charities and corrections, roads and

highways, manufacturing and commerce, and pure food
and drugs. In his home county, at Sulphur, is situated
the State School for the Deaf, and his interest in the
same was shown significantly by his obtaining from the
Fifth Legislature appropriations for the institution to
the aggregate amount of $159,000, of which the sum of
$20,500 is applied for the erection of new buildings. He
introduced a bill requiring that the records of county
officials be checked or audited every two years, but this
bill was killed in the committee room. Another bill
which he introduced and which met the same fate, made
requirement that teachers in the public schools undergo
medical examinations to determine whether or not they
were afflicted with tuberculosis. Mr. Pullen was a

1792

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

staunch supporter of measures furthering the good-roads
movement and those of importance to rural communities
and the conserving of the agricultural, industry, the
while the cause of education likewise received his earnest
support in the Legislature.

In politics Mr. Pullen is arrayed as a stalwart advo-
cate of the principles of the democratic party, and in
a fraternal way he is identified with the Woodmen of
the World, the Ancient Order of United Workmen and
the A. H. T. A., in each of which he has held important
offices. He has been specially active and influential
in the last named organization, in which he has on three
occasions represented his lodge in the state organization
of the order and once at the national convention of the
same.

In Tennessee the year 1885 recorded the marriage of
Mr. Pullen to Miss Amanda A. Kelly, who was there
born and reared. They have six children: Cecil Bayard
is a progressive young farmer of Murray County; Jesse
remains at the parental home and is still attending
school; Minnie is the wife of John Springer, a pros-
perous farmer of Murray County; Miss Pearl is a popu-
lar teacher in the public schools at Elmore, Garvin
County; and Carrie is attending the public schools.

Miss Stella C. Bayless. What a sphere of activity
and usefulness a woman may fill in this twentieth cen-
tury age finds probably one of its most interesting
illustrations in the career of Miss Bayless, one of the
present county superintendents of schools in the county.
Miss Bayless is as much a pioneer in the new educa-
tional movement as her father was a pioneer during the
developing years of early Kansas and Oklahoma. She
has great physical vitality, all the qualities of courage
and fortitude that distinguish the other sex, and has
brought a vigor and enthusiasm to her work which makes
her easily one of the foremost educators in the state.

She wa^ born in Adams County, Ohio, October 14, 1885,
but early in her infancy her parents, H. T. and Flora
(Clinger) Bayless, moved to Winfield, Kansas. Her
parents were also natives of Adams County, Ohio, where
her father was born, September 20, 1845, and her mother,
November, 1858. The family lived in that section of
Southern Ohio until they moved out to Kansas. How-
ever, her father was a Kansas pioneer, having gone to
that state in 1866. He hunted buffalo on the plains,
and proved up a claim near Winfield. After working
his farm for several years he returned to Ohio, but about
1886 he moved his family back to Kansas. On Septem-
ber 16, 1893, he participated in the race into the Chero-
kee Strip and secured a claim two miles south of Tonkawa.
He was one of the five men who organized and laid out
the Village of Tonkawa, and suggested that its name be
the same as the Indian tribe which occupied some of the
land in that locality. Mr. Bayless is now the only sur-
vivor of that quintet of town founders. After living at
Tonkawa eight years he moved to Noble County, locating
near Otoe, five years later went to Bliss, lived there for
five years, and then moved to Edmond. His life has
been a very active one and on the whole unusually suc-
cessful. He has some land interests near Phoenix, Ari-
zona, and spends much of his time there. Both he and
his wife in their younger years taught school, and there
have been several teachers in the different generations
of the family. The father is an independent republican,
a member of the Baptist Church, and is affiliated with the
Independent Order of Odd Fellows. There are four
children: Maude, wife of Will Beasley of Charleston,
Oklahoma; L. R. and W. P., who lives in Kansas; and
Miss Stella.

Miss Bayless lived at home with her parents until she

was seventeen years of age. For three years she was e
a student in the University Preparatory School at ai
Tonkawa, and she also taught school at Bliss. From I
early girlhood she has indulged her enthusiasm for out- yi
door life and for many of those activities which are j (
usually considered strictly limited to men. In the sum- !
mer vacations while she was attending school at Ton-
kawa she was on a ranch, and almost constantly on horse- j
back. There is nothing which she could not do in the |
routine of ranch duties except roping a steer. She could a
ride anything that walked on four feet, and frequently e
broke the colts and mules. While at Edmond she attended ! |(
the Central State Normal School for two terms and there- #
secured a state certificate as a teacher.

Her first school was a sod sehoolhouse near Tonkawa. J |,
She taught for seventeen months at Bliss, for one year- ((
at White Eagle and then for a year was traveling repre- j,
sentative for the Bufton Book Company and Supply
House, of Kansas City. Her territory included the i
states of Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Iowa., jj
While with that company she visited over three thousand I g
schools, and the notes which she made of her observations I ^
in the different schools have proved valuable to her ini ,,
her later work as an educator.

Coming to Creek County on June 1, 1911, she taught: ^
in this county for three terms prior to her election as g
county superintendent on November 4, 1914. Miss Bay-' j(
less gives her restricted suffrage to the support of the- (J
republican party. She is a member of the Baptist Churchli [(
at Edmond, and is affiliated with the Brotherhood off u
American Yeomen and with the Fraternal Aid and Worn-; j,
an ’s Relief Corps.

Many pages might be written of her varied and inter- B
esting experiences in Oklahoma and elsewhere. While'
she was teaching at White Eagle she met a herd ofi j,
buffaloes on a stampede and in the scrimmage her buggy- ^
was torn to pieces, and it was with difficulty that she: ^
was rescued by some cowboys. While she was traveling^ js
for the book house she was driving a team across a, #!
ford over the Red River and the horses were swept byv L
the waters and drowned. She has come to know much! ^
of Indian life and customs, and has always closely studied! M
tribal institutions. While she was living at Otoe, near: ^
the Ponca reservation, she took part in some of then j(
tribal dances, also attended the weddings and funerals: ^
of the Otoe and Ponca Indians, and has many interesting; a
relics given her by those tribes.

The element of progressiveness stands out prominently; ^
in Miss Bayless’ work as an educator. One of the ideals1
toward which she is working is the consolidation of thei |
rural schools of Creek County, so as to promote greater: f
efficiency and eliminate those schools which under the: ^
present system cannot possibly maintain the average •
standard. She has also done much to develop social 5
centers, has brought about in a number of schools a; l
system for the awarding of credit to the pupils foil ™
home work, and has been able to secure much more: ®
co-operation between school and home than was even jj
considered possible. She established the Creek County; |
School News, through whose columns many progressive: j®
ideas have been spread into the homes of the people,
and this is the first publication of its kind ever attempted J
in the state. . She has not neglected any of those moderni 5
agencies for education and enlightenment. She has J
some interesting experiences to record showing the possi-i
bilities of the “Vietrola” and the use of lantern slides J
as a part of her educational program. Since she became ?
superintendent ten men have been engaged as special
lecturers in the schools, besides the employment oi !?'
home talent whenever possible for the same purpose. Miss ,,
Bayless has organized the “moonlight” schools in tin „l
county, for the purpose of affording instruction anc

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1793

extending the facilities of the schools to people of
adult age whose education had previously been neglected.
The State of Oklahoma should be proud of this splendid
young woman, who has done so much to vitalize school
work in Creek County.

Guy W. Stack. Still at an age when most men are
just beginning to realize the possibilities of life, Guy
W. Stack is the possessor of a substantial business, an
enterprise that stands a monument to his energy,
capacity and business judgment. When he came to Ken-
ton, Oklahoma, in 1908, his capital was chiefly repre-
sented by his ambition and determination; within the
short space of seven years he has developed the largest
business of its kind in Cimarron County, and is justly
considered one of the leading influences in the move-
?' ments which of recent years have contributed so sub-
’ stantially to this thriving community’s growth.
ls Mr. Stack was born July 10, 1886, on a farm in Barber
a: County, Kansas, and is a son of Charles W. and Sarah

I Elizabeth (Bose) Stack. His father was born in Iowa,
“ August 25, 1859, a son of Samuel and Sarah Stack,

II natives of Canada, of English extraction, and was reared
. on a farm and has been an agriculturist all of his life.

When he first removed to Kansas, in 1870, Charles W.
3! Stack settled on Government land in Keno County, where
■' he lived among the pioneer farmers for eight years and
carried on farming and stock raising. In 1898 he
“ removed to Barber County, where he resided until 1894,

0 and at that time came to Oklahoma, settling in Lincoln
m' County, where he is now a prosperous farmer and stock-

man. Mr. Stack is a republican in his political views
:[ and a member of the Presbyterian Church, in the work

1 of which he takes an active interest. He was married
® in 1879, in Beno County, Kansas, to Miss Sarah Eliza-
® beth Bose, who was born December 3, 1860, near Sheri-
'li dan, Poweshiek County, Iowa, daughter of William and
^ Jane (Ogden) Bose, natives of Ohio. Prior to her

1 marriage Mrs. Stack was engaged in teaching school for
'• ten years in various parts of Iowa and Kansas, and
!“ became well and favorably known as an educator. Mr.
K and Mrs. Stack were the parents of four daughters and
Ej" two sons, namely: Jessie L., born June 15, 1882;

™ Jennie L., born April 2, 1884; Guy W. ; Bose H., born
" September 13, 1888; Belle M., born January 31, 1889;
ul» and Benjamin H., born September 15, 1892.

J Guy W. Stack was eight years of age when brought
to Oklahoma, and his education was secured in the
public schools of Chandler, where he was graduated in
f the class of 1903 from the high school. Subsequently
161 he attended the Oklahoma Central Normal School, at
“ Edmond, and then for four years was engaged in teach-
a?' ing in the schools of Lincoln County. In 1907 Mr. Stack
“settled on a homestead in Union County, New Mexico,
SJ twelve miles west of Kenton, Oklahoma, and in 1908
101 was made assistant postmaster at Kenton, and moved
10t( to this place where he accepted a position as bookkeeper
:W in a mercantile establishment. In June, 1910, having
thoroughly assimilated business methods and conditions,
he embarked in the general merchandise business on his
’H own account, and now has a trade which covers the
™ entire community, with a branch house at Texline, Texas.
'I" His store at Kenton is the largest in Cimarron County,
, with a $75,000 stock of general merchandise, lumber and
agricultural implements, his annual business approximat-
ing $200,000. This enterprise has been built up entirely
® through his own efforts, and in addition he has extensive
! I and valuable real estate holdings in Cimarron and
' 0 Lincoln counties, Oklahoma, and in Union County New
"s Mexico. Mr. Stack is one of the leading members of
, the Kenton Commercial Club. ' He has the confidence
all

and esteem of his associates in the business world, and
is a general favorite in social circles, although his
important business interests have practically occupied
his time to the exclusion of other affairs.

Mr. Stack was married September 2, 1909, at Chandler,
Oklahoma, to Miss Ida M. Bickford, who was born June
5, 1886, in McDonald County, Missouri, daughter of
Dennis C. and Mary Jane (Moore) Bickford, natives of
Maine. She is a graduate of the Chandler (Oklahoma)
High School, class of 1905, and for four years prior to
her marriage was a teacher in the public schools of
Lincoln County. Mr. and Mrs. Stack are consistent
members of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Sol D. Barnett. Among the men who made the run
for land at the opening of the Cherokee Strip, in 1893,
was a young Texan, Sol D. Barnett, who, mounted on a
race horse trained by himself, led the run for four miles
and staked out a desirable property. However, he was
induced to relinquish his property owing to his ignorance
of the methods used by unscrupulous persons, and it was
not until 1899 that he came to permanently reside in
Oklahoma. Since that time Mr. Barnett has been engaged
in a number of successful business ventures, and at the
present time is the proprietor of a large real estate and
loan business at Hollis, and tax assessor of Harmon
County, a position which he has held since 1912.

Mr. Barnett was born in Union County, Kentucky,
August 18, 1872, and is a son of Dr. J. J. and Mary V.
(Boley) Barnett, and a member of a family which came
to Virginia in colonial times from Ireland. J. J. Barnett
was born in Virginia in 1829 and as a lad removed with
his parents to Union County, Kentucky, where he was
educated for the medical profession. He was there mar-
ried to Mary V. Boley, who was born in that county, in
1838, and continued to follow the practice of his calling
there until 1880, in which year he moved to Wise County,
Texas. In 1893 he went to Eord County, in the same
state, and in 1899 located at Mangum, Oklahoma, from
whence he finally moved to Blake, Oklahoma, where he
passed the last few years of his life in retirement, and
died in 1908, Mrs. Barnett surviving him until 1911 and
passing away at Hollis. In addition to being a learned
and skillful medical practitioner, Doctor Barnett was a
minister of the Baptist Church, and followed both call-
ings together for fifty years. He was a highly esteemed
citizen in whatever community happened to be his home
and won the esteem and regard of his fellow-men by his
strict integrity and probity of character. He was a Mason
for many years and rose to the thirty-second degree.
During the Civil war he enlisted in a Kentucky infantry
regiment, in the Confederate army, and served for three
years with the rank of captain. Being -finally taken a
prisoner, he was sent to Johnson Island, and there con-
fined for a year before being exchanged. Dr. J. J. and
Mary V. Barnett were the parents of eight children, as
follows: Major, who is engaged in farming in Wise
County, Texas; J. D., who is deceased; J. J., who is
engaged in agricultural operations at Acme, Texas; S. P.,
a farmer of Wayne County, Tennessee; Clarence L., who
followed farming and stockraising and died at Mangum,
Oklahoma; H. B., who is engaged in the same pursuits
and resides near Mangum; Sol D. ; and Molly, who is
the wife of W. H. Stewart, of Amarillo, Texas.

Sol D. Barnett was eight years of age when the family
removed to Wise County, Texas, and there he enjoyed
the advantages of a high school education. In 1892 and
1893 he attended the Fort Worth Business College, and
was thus excellently equipped for a business career.
Being determined to secure land, he had carefully trained
a favorite horse for the run to be made at the opening

1794

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

of the Cherokee Strip, and in September, 1893, as before
noted, led the race for four miles and staked out a claim
of 160 acres, on Turkey Creek, two miles west a,nd 4%
miles north of Hennessey. Although he had fairly se-
cured his land and had made the run through burning
prairie grass, the youth allowed others to convince him
that his claims were not substantial, and returned to Ins
Texas home. From 1893 until 1899 he was engaged in
the cattle business in Ford County, Texas, and with
capital thus gained returned to Oklahoma and settled as
a pioneer near Mangum, where he continued his opera-
tions in cattle. Subsequently he was elected county
assessor of what was then Greer County, Oklahoma, an
office in which he acted from 1900 until 1902, when the
office was abolished. In the meantime he became inter-
ested in the real estate and loan business, which he fol-
lowed at Mangum until 1903, when he came to Hollis, his
present field of activity, and established his business
here his offices being located in the Cross National Bank
Building. His business has tgrown to large proportions
and he is justly accounted one of the leading men of his
locality in his line. , ,

Always an active democrat, Mr. Barnett has attended
the state and county conventions of his party as a dele-
gate, and during the campaign of Gov. Lee Cruce was
successful in gaining almost the solid support of Harmon
County and Southwestern Oklahoma for the Governor, as
campaign manager. In 1912 he was appointed by Gov-
ernor Cruce as tax assessor of Harmon County, and this
appointment was approved by the people as shown when
they elected him to that office in 1914. His incumbency
has been characterized by straightforward dealings, expe-
ditious handling of the affairs of the assessor s office,
and conscientious and capable performance of duty. Mr.
Barnett is a supporting member of the Methodist Episco-

^ In 1894, in Ford County, Texas, Mr. Barnett was mar-
Tied to Miss Mary C. Adams, daughter of Dr. W. H.
Adams, a pioneer of Ford County, Texas, where he is still
engaged in the practice of medicine. Five children ha,ve
been born to Mr. and Mrs. Barnett: Claude, born Octo-
ber 13, 1895, who has finished his junior year at the
Hollis High School and is now assisting his father m his
business and official duties; Homer, who is a member ot
the freshman class at the Hollis High School; and
Thurston, Louis and Murray Haskell, who are attending
the public graded schools.

Judson Cunningham. A native of the Southwest and
an effective exemplar of its vital spirit, Mr Cunningham,
the efficient and popular young county clerk ot Roger
Mills County, is a scion of the fourth generation of the
family in America, his paternal great-grandfather
Alexander Cunningham, having immigrated to the United
States from Ireland and having established his resi-
dence in the State of Tennessee, where Robert Cunning-
ham father of James Cunningham, was born. He after-
wards moved to Alabama, where he became a pros-
perous agriculturist and where he passed the remainder

°f Judson6 Cunningham was born in Hill County, Texas,
on the 20th of March, 1889, and is a son of James F.
Cunningham, who was born in Alabama, m 1851, and who
as a young man immigrated to Texas, where he became
a farmer and stock man and where was solemnized his
marriage to Mrs. Mary (Cason) Couble, widow of Paul
Couble, who had been engaged in the cattie business in
Hood County, that state. In 1892 James F. Cunning-
ham came with his family to the newly organized Okla-
homa Territory and became one of the pioneer settlers of
Roger Mills County, where he entered claim to a home-

stead of 160 acres, one and one-half miles northwest of j
Cheyenne, the present thriving county seat, where he has |[
reclaimed a productive and valuable farm and where (
he and his wife still maintain their home. He is a (
staunch advocate of the cause of the democratic party |
and both he and his wife are zealous members of the j
Baptist Church, in which he has for a number of years r
past given devoted and efficient service as a minister, j.
He is one of the well known and highly honored pioneers 1
of this section of the state, is a loyal and progressive J
citizen and is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity. Of !j
the children the eldest is Pearl, who resides at Cheyenne,
the judicial center of Roger Mills County, she being the I1
widow of Orlando R. Bellamy, who was a successful ft
school teacher at the time of his death. Dean, the second j
child, was a prosperous young farmer of Roger Mills jj
County at the time of his death. He was burned to Jj
death when his farm house was destroyed by fire, and !||
was only twenty-two years of age at the time. Grace ‘ I
died at the age of fifteen years. May is the wife of j|
Henry C. Kisar, who is engaged in the hardware busi- ||
ness in the State of Colorado. Kenneth is a farmer r'l
and stock-raiser in the State of New Mexico. Jesse jj
remains at the parental home and is associated with his jj
father in the work and management of the farm. Judson, II
of this review, was the next in order of birth. Bertha I
is the wife of Charles W. McKinney, who is engaged in <i I
the furniture business at Butler, Custer County, Okla- •II
homa; and Ray remains at the parental home.

The present county clerk of Roger Mills County was jj
a child of about three years at the time when the family j 1
home was here established, and his boyhood and early ; j
youth were compassed by the conditions and influences <
of the pioneer farm, the while he made good use of the t
advantages afforded in the local schools. In 1911 Mr. ,
Cunningham was graduated in the high school at Chey- I
enne, and in the following year he had the distinction «
of being elected county clerk, when twenty-three years 4
of age. The most effective voucher for his personal ij
popularity and his able administration is that afforded |j
in the fact that in 1914 he was re-elected for a second It
term of two years. He has shown marked fidelity and i|
circumspection in handling the multifarious affairs of j
his office, the work of which he has thoroughly system- 1
atized, and he is one of the valued executive officers of the |
county that has represented his home from early child1? ij
hood and to which he is intrinsically loyal, even as he oj
is appreciative of its many natural and acquired advan- J
tages. Mr. Cunningham is found arrayed as a stalwart (
supporter of the principles of the democratic party and 4
is one of its influential representatives in his home county, j
He is a member of the Baptist Church. In his home (I
city he is affiliated with Cheyenne Lodge No. 237, Inde- j
pendent Order of Odd Fellows, and with the local organi- il
zations of the Daughters of Rebekah, the Modern Wood-il
men of America and the Fraternal Order of Eagles, 4
and in the Independent Order of Odd Fellows he is j
further identified with Encampment No. 63 at Elk City, 1
Beckham County. His name is still enrolled on the list i|
of eligible young bachelors in Roger Mills County.

William T. Leahy. No name is better known in the J
Osage Nation district of Oklahoma than that of Leahy. '
The family was established there more than forty years j
ago, and William T. Leahy of Pawhuska has lived there |
since childhood. As a farmer, stock man, capitalist and j
banker his resources and influence are among the strongest \
factors in the business affairs of that section. Before j
statehood he was one of the leading representatives 4
of the Osage people in the handling of their interests '
both in Indian Territory and at Washington, and since j
statehood he has been an active figure in political life. J

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1795

By inheritance Mr. Leahy has an unusual combination
of racial stocks. His father was a native Irishman,
while his mother was part French and part Osage Indian.
| William T. Leahy was born at the Old Osage Mission,
| now the village of St. Paul, in Neosho County, Kansas,
[ July 9, 1869, a son of Thomas and Mary L. (Champaigne)
Leahy. His father was born in County Tipperary, Ire-
land, while his mother was born near the present site
of Kansas City, Missouri, a daughter of William and
Genevieve (Rivard) Champaigne. Her father was a
Frenchman and her mother of the Osage Indian tribe.
When Mary Champaigne was an infant she lost her father
and her mother subsequently took her out to Sacramento,
California, during the excitement following the discovery
of gold. They made the trip across the country with
four team and wagons, spent six or seven years in the
West, and then returned to the Osage Mission in South-
eastern Kansas. She lived there until her marriage, in
1868, to Thomas Leahy. After the Indians had given up
their lands in Kansas and had removed to the Osage
Nation in Indian Territory, Thomas Leahy was located
for a time at Fort Riley as a trader and as a dealer in
buffalo hides. As a boy in the late '70s during the high
tide of the buffalo hide industry, William T. Leahy has
seen as many as fifteen hundred buffalo carcasses, the
animals having been killed entirely for the sake of their
hides. He has also seen around his father ’s trading post
stacks of hides piled as high as it was possible to pile
them, and covering an area two or three hundred yards
square. In 1875 Thomas Leahy moved his home per-
manently to Osage County, Indian Territory, and spent
the rest of his life in that section. He became prom-
inent as a cattle man, and his death occurred at Los
Angeles, California, while visiting in the West, May
10, 1913, at the age of seventy. He had come to America
in 1855 in company with his brother Edward, he being
then twelve years of age. In Illinois he was bound out
to a man named Nugent, who subsequently located near
Fort Scott, Kansas, and remained in the employ. of
that man until nineteen years of age. For some time
he was engaged in driving government teams between
Fort Scott and Fort Smith, but during the war one of
the trains was captured. Thomas Leahy frequently
stopped at the old Osage Mission on these trips, and
while there became acquainted with Miss Champaigne,
and they were subsequently married. Mrs. Thomas Leahy
is still living at Pawhuska at the age of sixty-five. . They
were the parents of three children: Viva, who is the
wife of W. S. Conners, now living at San Antonio, Texas ;
Cora, widow of George Saxton, living at Los Angeles,
California; and William T., the only son and the oldest
of the family.

William T. Leahy lived with his father until twenty-
five, and gained a thorough training not only in the
merchandise business, but also as a farmer and stock
man. For several years the firm of Leahy & Son was
conducted both in the general merchandise business and
in stock raising. As a young man Mr. Leahy attended
the primary schools at Osage Mission and completed his
education in the Southeast Kansas Normal College at
Fort Scott. He was sent back to Kansas to get his edu-
cation while the family were living in Indian Territory.
At the age of twenty-five Mr. Leahy started at Pawhuska
its first bakery and confectionery store, and was pro-
prietor of that establishment for six or seven years.
He then became identified with cattle and horse raising,
and still later, banking. He is now interested in four
different banks, being vice president of the First National
Bank of Pawhuska, vice president of the First National
Bank of Foraker, president of the Bank of Bigheart, a
state bank, and a director in the Bank of Prue, also a
state bank. These institutions are all located in Osage

County. Some of the richest oil and gas fields in the
Osage Nation have been developed by the Pawhuska Oil
& Gas Company, of which Mr. Leahy is vice president, and
he holds a similar office in the Pawhuska-Cleveland Gas
& Oil Company. At a fine stock ranch and farm two
miles north of Pawhuska, he has a thousand acres com-
prising one of the model estates of Northeastern Okla-
homa. In addition he has twenty-one quarter sections
of land elsewhere in Osage County. As a stock man he
keeps about a thousand head of cattle and has some sixty
registered Hereford cows. He gives his personal super-
intendence to the management of his large farm. In Paw-
huska he is half owner in a large store building on Main
Street, built at a cost of $14,000, owns a garage build-
ing that cost $4,500, and has a number of residences
in that city. Mr. Leahy recently completed a home
on Main Street that cost $12,000 and represents all the
modern ideals of comfort and attractiveness of archi-
tectural arrangement and appearance.

A democrat throughout his active political career,
Mr. Leahy is one of the 'energetic and public spirited
leaders of his home county and in more recent years
of the state. He served for about ten years on the
Osage council, and for four year was treasurer of the
Osage Nation. He was a member of the committee that
drafted the Osage allotment bill and in the interests of
his people spent the greater part of three winters in
Washington, D. C., advocating the passage of this allot-
ment bill through Congress. The people of Oklahoma
will recall how, a few years ago, Mr. Leahy was
arrested by the Interior Department on the charge of
having attempted to intimidate the Osage council in
behalf of some measures which were before it for con-
sideration. Several other well known men were involved
in the same charge, but after a trial which went on for
six weeks in Oklahoma City before Federal Judge Cot-
trell and a jury, Mr. Leahy was not only acquitted, but
completely exonerated from every particular of the indict-
ment. During the administration of Governor Cruce Mr.
Leahy served on the State Board of Agriculture until
that body was reduced by the Legislature from ten to
five members, and though offered reappointment under
Governor Williams, he declined the honor on account
of the demands upon his time made by his large private
business affairs.

Mr. Leahy is a member of both the State and National
Bankers’ associations, is a Catholic, in which faith he
was reared, a member of the Knights of Columbus, and
of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. Having
spent most of his life among the Osage people, he. has
a fluent command of the Osage language. He is a
fine type of the successful business man, positive, ener-
getic, a hard worker in everything he undertakes, public
spirited and always ready to engage his energies and
resources in behalf of some movement that will affect the
welfare of the community and the people among whom
he lives.

On January 28, 1897, Mr. Leahy married Miss Martha
E. Rogers, a daughter of the late Thomas L. Rogers,
one of the most prominent characters in the Osage Nation,
a sketch of whose career is found on other pages of this
publication. Mr. and Mrs. Leahy have two sons : William
Timothy, Jr., and Thomas B.

Bruce Lazzell Keenan. For over twenty years Mr.
Keenan has been identified with the old Cherokee capital
of Tahlequah, and has attained prominence in profes-
sional circles as an able and thorough lawyer, has taken
a leading part in civic movements, and in numerous
ways has contributed to the material welfare of that
section of Oklahoma. Mr. Keenan came into the Cherokee
Nation from Kansas to take the position of Commissioner

1796

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

of tlie United States Court at Tahlequah, and when his
duties in that position were terminated with statehood
he resumed the active private practice of law, in which
he has been eminently successful.

Though most of his professional life has been spent
in the West Mr. Keenan is a native of West Virginia,
having been born on a farm near Morgantown, October
16, 1856. His father, John P. Keenan, was born in
Pennsylvania, a son of Hugh Keenan, a native of Ireland.
Mr. Keenan’s mother was Nancy Lazzell, also a native
of West Virginia and of English lineage.

The environment of a West Virginia farm encompassed
the youth of Mr. Keenan, and he took from that a hardy
constitution and the advantages of home and district
school training to the University of West Virginia, from
which he was graduated in 1880. Then came a period of
school teaching, by which means he earned the money
necessary to defray his expenses through law school. In
1885 he was graduated from the law department of his
home state university, and soon after completing his law
course he came West and located at Wichita, Kansas.
Mr. Keenan was engaged in the active practice of law
at Wichita until April, 1894, when his appointment to
the duties of United States Commissioner caused his
removal to Tahlequah. This important office he most
creditably filled until statehood, in 1907, and in the past
eight years has built up a large and remunerative practice
as a lawyer.

In 1890 Judge Keenan married Miss Alice M. Over-
street, who comes of the Indiana family of Overstreets,
many of whom have become prominent in business, in pro-
fessional circles and in politics. Five children have been
born to their union, Robert Bruce Keenan, a lawyer at
Sapulpa, Oklahoma; Margaret, wife of Chester O. Holly,
of Stigler, Oklahoma; Hypatia, wife of Thurman Wyly,
of Tahlequah; and Claude and John Kenneth, both at
home. In polities Judge Keenan has always upheld the
principles and policies of the republican party. He is
a Master Mason, and in his personal relations is noted
for his unostentatious bearing, has a great many friends
gained through more than twenty years of residence in
Eastern Oklahoma, and among them is marked with every
esteem.

William M. Eddy. A resident of Cimarron County
since 1897, William M. Eddy has taken an important and
helpful part in the development of this section, and par-
ticularly of the Town of Kenton. He was the first
county treasurer under statehood, from 1900 to 1907
practically had charge of the Kenton Postoffice, and in
1914 was appointed postmaster, which position he holds
at this time. Mr. Eddy has also been identified prom-
inently with business affairs, and both in commercial
and public life has substantially entrenched himself in
the confidence and esteem of the people.

William M. Eddy was born in a log house on a farm in
Guadalupe County, Texas, December 4, 1861, and is a
son of Lynch T. and Fannie R. (Giles) Eddy. Lynch T.
Eddy was born in 1832, on a plantation in Shelby
County, Kentucky, a son of William and Sallie Eddy,
natives of Kentucky, and members of old and honored
families of that state. He removed to Texas in 1858
and settled on a farm in Guadalupe County, where he
was residing at the outbreak of the war between the
states, and enlisted as a private in a Texas infantry
regiment, under the flag of the Confederacy. In 1866
he returned to Kentucky, took up the study of medicine
and became a prominent practitioner of Louisville, with
a large and representative practice. In 1888 he was
chosen a member of a medical board sent to Jackson-
ville, Florida, to stamp out a serious yellow fever epi-
demic, and became one of the martyrs to the cause, him-

self contracting the disease, from which he did not
recover. His death occurred in the same year. In 1860,
while a resident of Texas, Doctor Eddy was married to
Miss Fannie R. Giles, who was born in 1843, in Tennessee,
daughter of William T. Giles, a native of that state.
Mr. and Mrs. Eddy became the parents of four sons and
one daughter: William M.; Cordelia P., born in 1863; I
Alexander Campbell, born in 1866; Stuart T., born in
1868; and Roy, born in 1870. All the children sur- J
vive.

William M. Eddy was educated in the public schools of
Louisville, Kentucky, and at the age of twenty years
began teaching as a profession. Not long thereafter he
went to Guadalupe County, Texas, where for four years
he divided his time between teaching school and farm-
ing, and then turned his attention to mercantile pursuits
as salesman in a general store at Waring, Texas. Next,
Mr. Eddy had two years of experience in the hotel busi- |
ness, conducting a hostelry at Lockhart, Texas, but in
1897 disposed of his interests in that venture and came ,
to Oklahoma, where he resumed his activities as an edu- j
cator. After three years of teaching in the public schools
of Cimarron County, he once more became a salesman in
a store at Kenton, and from 1900 until 1907 served also
as assistant postmaster here, a capacity in which he was
practically at the head of the office. In 1907 Mr.
Eddy was elected county treasurer of Cimarron County,
being the first incumbent of that office under statehood, j
and discharged his duties in an energetic, capable and
conscientious manner. At the expiration of his term of
office he embarked in the general merchandise business at j
Kenton, successfully conducting a store until 1914, when 1
he was appointed by President Wilson to his, present posi-
tion as postmaster. He has worked faithfully and ener- J
getically to improve the mail service, and his labors have
won him the gratitude and regard of his fellow-towns- j
men. Mr. Eddy is a democrat and one of the influential '
men in the councils of his party in Cimarron County. He
can be depended upon to give his support to all move- I
ments which are launched in behalf of the public good,
and to give liberally of his time and abilities in advancing
education and good citizenship.

Mr. Eddy was married at Waring, Texas, August 8, |
1888, to Miss Fannie V. Palmer, who was born January
25, 1864, at Westpoint, Mississippi, daughter of B. T.
and Fannie (Cliett) Palmer, natives of Mississippi. For
a number of years prior to her marriage Mrs. Eddy was
a teacher in the public schools. They are the parents
of seven children, as follows: Palmer, born June 20,
1890; Marcellus R., born October 8, 1891; Richard Bax-
ter, born December 2, 1893 ; Douglass A., born September
20, 1895; Oran, born December 20, 1897; Cordelia P.,
born January 20, 1900; and Arthur C., born December
4, 1904.

Oscar A. Lambert, M. D. For a number of years Doctor
Lambert was the leading physician and had the biggest
practice of any doctor in Marietta, Ohio. He has been
known less as a physician and more as a leader of enter-
prise and of big affairs since coming to Oklahoma. In
fact, it may be said without disparagement of his other
fellow citizens, that Doctor Lambert has been more vitally
identified with the growth and upbuilding of Okmulgee
as a city than any other person. He has helped accom-
plish big things for the town, and is a big man for the
work, big in heart as well as resources. While successful
in business affairs, he is none the less liberal and gen-
erous in everything he does. In fact, as has been said,
he is the man who meets the stranger within the gates of
Okmulgee and makes him like the town before he
leaves it.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1797

His has been a many sided career. Like many sub-
j stantial men, he tried in his earlier years several lines
I with indifferent success. He found his real vocation
| when he entered medicine, and from that has passed
| into the ranks of men of affairs. He was born near
H Plantsville in Morgan County,' Ohio, October 16, 1865, a
$ son of Eeece B. and Lydia (Hanson) Lambert. His
! parents were both of Quaker stock ; they held strongly to
that religion themselves and they reared Doctor Lambert
to the simple belief of the faith. Notwithstanding the
aversion of Quakers to warfare, Doctor Lambert has a rel-
ative, General Lambert, who distinguished himself in the
battle of New Orleans under General Jackson at the
t close of the War of 1812. The parents were both born
! in Belmont County, Ohio, were married there, and after-
k wards went to Morgan County, where they still reside.
I The father is a retired farmer and lives at Chesterhill,
;■ Ohio. During his active career he was noted for his pro-
I gressiveness, and was always ready and among the first
I to use the improvements and innovations which came into
I his rural district.

Doctor Lambert himself was reared as a farmer boy,
1 and among other accomplishments he has a very practical
I knowledge of agriculture in all its phases. His early
I education came from public and private schools, he
I attended Bartlett Academy in his native state, and dur-
I ing three winters he taught school, while the summers

SI were spent in farming. Having pursued a course of law
study, he did some “pettifogging,” as he calls it, for a
J time, but never became enrolled among the members of
I the Ohio bar. For three years he was in the general
I merchandising business, until stricken with typhoid
* fever. During his long recuperation from that sickness
»! he determined to take up the study of medicine. In
B consequence three years were spent in Starling Medical
| College at Columbus, Ohio, from which he had his degree
H M. D. in 1894. He was a member of a class of thirty-
; three, and went out from college with the first honors of
| his class and with two prizes in addition.’ After two
■ years of preliminary practice at Chesterhill in his native
county he settled at Marietta, the old and historic city on
■ I the Ohio River, and for fifteen years lived there, and in
I that time he enjoyed the largest practice in the town.

| At the same time he was active in public affairs.
| j Though reared a republican he became a Bryant demo-

Icrat and has been affiliated with the democratic party
| since 1896. While in Ohio he was a candidate for the
j Legislature and at one time refused the nomination for
I congress. He was elected mayor of Marietta. Besides
I handling his large medical practice he organized three
I industrial companies at Marietta, and became interested
| in oil fields while there. He also organized the Marietta
Journal, and was active in the management of that pub-
I lication for a time.

It was journalism to which he first turned his attention
I after coming to Oklahoma. A year before statehood
1 Doctor Lambert located at Okmulgee, and in company
[j with J. J. Maroney bought the Okmulgee Democrat. He
I retained his interest in that paper until 1915.

Doctor Lambert is president of the Okmulgee Interur-
I ban Railroad, and it was due to his management that it
I became a paying proposition after a long struggle with
I adversity. His business interests also extend to the

[holding of some oil properties, and he is developing
several leases in the Oklahoma field. Doctor Lambert does
f little practice now and in fact medicine is only an inci-
dent of his busy life. He is a director of the Chamber of
I Commerce and lias been identified with that body ever
l| since it was organized. Anything that concerns Okmulgee
! I and its welfare concerns Doctor Lambert. By common

most important affairs. He is a member of the official
board of the Methodist Episcopal Church and is superin-
tendent of the largest Sunday school in Okmulgee. Fra-
ternally he is affiliated with the Knights of Pythias, the
Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Modern
Woodmen of America.

On December 2, 1889, Doctor Lambert married Carrie E.
Lewis. She was born in Ohio but was living in Pennsyl-
vania at the time of her marriage. They had two sons:
Ernest C., who is now associated with his father in busi-
ness affairs; and Harold, who died at the age of nine
years.

Joseph Bowden Tims. The community of Paden in
Okfuskee County will long remember the enterprise and
the fine character of the late Joseph Bowden Tims, who
died there at his home July 18, 1911. He was the first
man to make investments of any importance, in that
town and surrounding community, and was essentially a
business man, thoroughgoing, upright, and with a record
for integrity and fair dealing that followed him after
death.

He was born at Keechi, Louisiana, September 25,
1866, the youngest of seven children born to Amos and
Mary E. (Kinnard) Tims. Both parents were natives of
Mississippi, and his father, who was a shoemaker, died
at Timpson, Texas. The mother is still living in East
Texas. Joseph B. Tims was still an infant when his
parents moved into East Texas and located at Nacog-
doches, where he grew to manhood. His education came
from the common schools, and at the age of sixteen he
started out in life on his own account, at that time
manifesting the enterprise and self reliance which were
always his most striking characteristics.

Going out to West Texas, he had a life of eventful
experience, and finally became a lumber merchant at
Fort Worth, Texas. He followed business there until
the panic of 1908, and in 1909 he moved to the new
community of Paden in Okfuskee County, Oklahoma,
which was his home for one year only, but in that time
he impressed his ability and influence in many ways.
He made extensive investments in lands, in stock, and
was also the mainspring of mercantile activity. He had
acquired extensive holdings in the oil fields, though he
did not live to see the land developed in its mineral
deposits.

, He was a democrat, though always a business man
and not a politician. His church was the Christian
denomination.

At Weatherford, Texas, June 17, 1896, Mr. Tims mar-
ried Miss Nancy J. Taylor, who was born near Fayette-
ville, Arkansas, April 25, 1869. When six months of
age she moved to Texas with her parents, Ezekiel E.
Taylor and wife, to whom reference is made on other
pages, and she grew up in Parker County and lived in
that section of the Lone Star State until 1909, when
she came with her husband to Paden, Oklahoma. Mrs.
Tims, since the death of Mr. Tims, has shown remarkable
business judgment and ability in the management of the
estate and is thoroughly capable of safeguarding her
own interests and in managing and increasing the value
of the property left her. She takes an active part in
the Order of the Eastern Star and is a member of the
Cumberland Presbyterian Church.

Mrs. Tims became the mother of four children: Rita

May, who died at Weatherford, Texas, at the age of eight
years; Oscar William, Vergil Elbert and Eugene Paui.

Willard Newton Lewis. Along with general suc-
cess has come at least one interesting distinction in
the career of Mr. Lewis as an Oklahoma lawyer. In
February, 1901, he was appointed city attorney of

1798

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Davis, his present home town. He still holds the office,
and has been continuously its incumbent for fifteen
years. This makes him in point of continuous service
the oldest city attorney in the state. He has filled
this office so creditably and with so much valuable
service to his home town that no other man has been
considered for the place so long as Mr. Lewis will
consent to remain.

While a member of the legal profession more than
twenty years, Mr. Lewis has always been active in
the affairs of the Methodist Episcopal Church South
and comes of a family that has furnished a number
of ministers to that denomination. His people origi-
nally came from Wales and settled in Maryland in colo-
nial times, representatives subsequently moving to North
Carolina, thence to Alabama, and finally to Mississippi.
His grandfather, Eev. Wiley Lewis, was born in North
Carolina in 1820 and died in Choctaw County, Missis-
sippi, in 1885. He was a minister of the Methodist
Episcopal Church South.

James A. Lewis, father of the Oklahoma attorney,
who was born in Alabama in 1835, has for sixty years
been an active member of the Methodist Church and for
fifty years has filled official positions, such as steward,
trustee and superintendent of the Sunday school. He
was reared in Chickasaw County, Mississippi, and for
many years operated a fine farm of 600 acres eleven
miles south of Houston, the county seat of Chickasaw
County. He still owns that property but is now living
retired in Houston. During the war between the states
he was a Confederate soldier for three and a half years.
He was in the great Georgia campaign under Gen. Joseph
E. Johnston in the sturdy opposition to the advance of
Sherman ’s army. He has for the past half century
been a member of the Masonic fraternity. As a demo-
crat he represented his party four times in the State
Legislature, was for six years' a supervisor of Chickasaw
County and spent many years on the County Pension
Board. Be married Bettie Foster who was born in
Alabama in 1837 and died at Houston, Mississippi,
in 1913. Their children were: T. W. Lewis, who is

now pastor of St. John’s Methodist Episcopal Church
at Memphis, Tennessee; Nannie, who died in July, 1915,
at Jackson, Mississippi, was the wife of F. A. Whitson,
a Methodist minister who died at New Albany, Mis-
sissippi, in 1899 ; Willard Newton, who is the third in
order of age; E. S. Lewis, pastor of the Methodist
Episcopal Church at Oxford, Mississippi;- John Silas
who was born in 1875, was a general mechanic by trade
and died at Houston, Mississippi, in 1908; William
Finis, a twin brother of John S., who died in 1882; and
Dixie, who is a bookkeeper at Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Willard Newton Lewis was born near Atlanta in
■Chickasaw County, Mississippi, October 11, 1865, and
acquired his early education in the common schools of
that county. In 1886 he graduated A. B. from the
Mississippi State Normal School at Buena Vista, and
in 1894 took his degree in law from the University of
Mississippi. Beginning practice at Magnolia, Arkan-
sas, he remained there three years, and this was fol-
lowed by three years of work in the educational field.
In 1897 he taught at Atlanta, Arkansas, one year and
taught at Bagwell, Texas, in 1898 and 1899.

Mr. Lewis has lived in Davis, Oklahoma, and been
engaged in general civil and criminal practice as a
lawyer there since May, 1900. He has served on the
school board nine years and exercises considerable
influence in the democratic party of Murray County.
He is a steward and trustee in the local Methodist Epis-
copal Church South, has been local lay leader and dis-

trict lay leader and for the past year and a half has
been a lay preacher. He also takes much interest in fra-
ternal matters. He is affiliated with Ivanhoe Lodge No.
116, Knights of Pythias, at Davis, of which he is past
chancellor commander, and since 1906 has been a trus-
tee of the Grand Lodge and was formerly grand vice
chancellor of the state; is a member of Tyre Lodge No.
42, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, at Davis; and
of Cedar Camp No. 42, Woodmen of the World. Pro-
fessionally he is a member of the County and State Bar
associations and of the Commercial Law League of
America.

On December 25, 1893, at Kilmichael, Mississippi, he
married Miss Lillie Williams, whose father, B. A. Wil-
liams is a farmer at Kilmichael. Mrs. Lewis died in
the sanitarium at Ardmore, Oklahoma, April 7, 1905.
On December 27, 1909, at Oklahoma City he married
Miss Hattie Buth Collins. Her father was the late
Dr. G. H. Collins, a physician and surgeon, and her
mother, Mrs. Maud Collins, is still living at Oklahoma
City. Mr. Lewis has no children by either marriage.

Montferd W. Pugh. One of the men who have
assisted in making history in that district of Oklahoma
formerly known as No Man’s Land is Montferd W.
Pugh, now serving in his fourth consecutive term as
county judge of Cimarron County, and recognized as a
lawyer of very high attainment and with a practice hardly
second to any of his professional brethren in that sec-
tion of the state.

Judge Pugh was born August 28, 1878, on a farm in
Perry County, Illinois, a son of Charles E. and Margaret
Jane (Peery) Pugh. His father, who was also born in
Perry County, Illinois, in 1848, was a son of William and
Betsie Pugh, natives of Ohio, who moved to Illinois
as pioneer settlers in 1842. Grandfather Pugh died there
in 1854, followed a few years later by his wife. Charles
E. Pugh spent his active career as a farmer in Perry
County, Illinois, where he died March 4, 1890. He was
married in 1872 to Miss Peery, who was born in 1852
in Perry County, Illinois, a daughter of James and
Elizabeth (Lindsey) Peery, the former a native of Ten-
nessee and the latter of Ohio. Charles E. Pugh and wife
were the parents of four children, three sons and one
daughter: Bertie, born in 1875 and died in 1880; Dollie,
born in 187 6 and died in the same year ; Montferd W. ;
and Craig A., born in 1886, now a farmer and stock
raiser in Cimarron County, and was married in 1914 to
Edith Hanes.

Montferd W. Pugh was educated in the public schools
at Tamaroa, Illinois, graduating from high school with
the class of 1897. He then took a normal course in the
Southern Illinois Normal University at Carbondale, and
for four years did some successful work as a teacher in
Perry County and at the same time studied law. The
years 1901-03 he spent in Valparaiso University at Val-
paraiso, Indiana, and was graduated in the law depart-
ment with the class of 1903 and the degree LL. B. Fol-
lowing his admission to the Illinois bar he practiced
three years in Pinckneyville in that state and for two
years of that time was city attorney.

It was in 1906 that Mr. Pugh came to Oklahoma and
his first location was at Texhoma, on the line between
Oklahoma and Texas. He filed on a claim of land in
Cimarron County and conducted a practice as a lawyer
for one year at Texhoma. In February, 1908, he removed
to Kenton, which was then the temporary county seat
of Cimarron County. In September, 1908, he followed
the county seat on its removal to the permanent location
at Boise City.

His qualifications and ability as a lawyer were not

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1799

long in securing recognition in this part of Oklahoma,
and in 1907 he was nominated on the democratic ticket
and elected county judge of the newly organized Cimarron
County. He was thus the first elected official in that
capacity to preside over the county court of Cimarron
County. He has since been regularly re-elected and
now in his fourth consecutive term. Judge Pugh is a
Knight Templar, and is also affiliated with the Inde-
pendent Order of Odd Fellows.

On October 4, 1904, at St. Louis, Missouri, Judge
Pugh married Miss Lora G. Jack. They were married
during the year of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition,
and the marriage ceremony was performed in the Illinois
State Building on the fair grounds at St. Louis. Mrs.
Pugh was born November 22, 1881, at Beaucoup, Illinois,
a daughter of- Samuel C. and Emma (Seibert) Jack, the
former a native of Tennessee and the latter of Illinois.
Mr. and Mrs. Pugh are members of the Methodist Epis-
copal Church South. To their marriage have been born
three children: DeMotte J., born June 25, 1905, and died
August 23, 1905; Paul G., born November 15, 1909;
and Jack, born October 15, 1915.

James A. Young, M. D. A physician of many years
experience, Doctor Young came to Oklahoma from Iowa,
and since 1909 has been in practice at Britton, where
he is senior member of the firm of Young. & Stewart,
physicians and surgeons. Doctor Young is regarded as
one of the most expert medical men in Oklahoma County
as an obstetrician and in the treatment of diseases of
children.

James A. Young was born in Hancock County, Illi-
nois, July 23, 1861, a son of Bev. W. M. and Lydia
(Souther) Young. His father was a Baptist minister,
and for many years was one of the best known and best
loved men in the ministry of that church in the State of
Iowa. He died in 1881.

Doctor Young spent his boyhood in Montrose, Iowa,
where he attended public schools and there took up
the study of medicine in the office of Dr. T. C. Hayes.
Subsequently his studies were continued under Dr. John
Bencher at Reiner, Missouri, and with that preliminary
training he entered the College of Physicians and Sur-
geons at Keokuk, Iowa, where he was graduated M. D.
in 1894. While in medical college he was a special
student of obstetrics and diseases of children under Dr.
F. B. Dorsey, an eminent authority on those subjects
and a member of the faculty of the College of Physicians
and Surgeons. For twenty years now Doctor Young,
though a general practitioner, has found himself more and
more in demand as a specialist in cases involving these
subjects. He began practice at Acosta, Clark County,
Missouri, but three years later removed to Bonaparte,
Iowa, and from that state came to Britton, Oklahoma,
in 1909, to join Doctor Stewart in practice.

In 1881 Doctor Young married Miss S. L. Stewart, a
sister of his partner in the firm of Young & Stewart,
their four children are: Mrs. Lydia Jane Norwood,
whose husband is an employe of the Standard Oil Com-
pany at Britton; Mrs. Mary E. Scott, wife of another
Standard Oil man at Owosso, Oklahoma ; ; Mrs. Gertrude
Staley, wife of a hardware merchant at Oklahoma City;
and James A. Young, agent for the Santa Fe Railroad
Company at Plainview, Texas.

Doctor Young is a member of the Baptist Church and
affiliates with the Camp of the Modern Woodmen of
America. In Iowa he was a member of various medical
and surgical organizations and since coming to Oklahoma
has taken an important part in the development of his
community. While his experience and practice has been
of the broadest character, he has always been a student,

and some years ago spent some time in post-graduate
study in the Chicago Clinical Post-graduate School. He
is regarded as one of the best informed and most suc-
cessful practitioners in his part of the state.

B. F. Stewart, M. D. In Oklahoma more than in
older states it is not difficult to trace the influence of
one or more men in the building of a community. The
history of almost every locality in the state is a record
of what only a few men have planned and carried out.
The statement of this fact serves to emphasize the im-
portance of Doctor Stewart in addition to his regular
service as a member of a profession, and at the same
time it is not meant to detract from the good that
other men of the community have done. One of the great
improvements brought to Oklahoma by statehood was the
Corporation Commission, which was given authority to
regulate the action of public service corporations. Doc-
tor Stewart was one of the leaders of a body of men of
Britton who shortly after- statehood, through appeal to
the commission, procured for the town a modern depot,
thus ridding it of a make-shift frontier-town affair. As
the little prairie town on a hill immediately north of
Oklahoma City began to take on metropolitan ways dur-
ing the bright period of material prosperity for the
entire country, the necessity of better roads and streets
was apparent, and Doctor Stewart was among those who
fostered a movement looking to highway improvement.
His influence has been an important factor since the
birth of the Town of Britton in the establishment of
modern schools and providing them with modern equip-
ment; in selecting progressive men for town and school
board offices; in the erection and maintenance of
churches, and in the elevation of health, morals and public
welfare.

Dr. B. F. Stewart was born in Iowa in 1869, a son of
James and Jane (Payne) Stewart. His father, a native
of Scotland, was a mechanic and an early settler of Iowa,
and the mother’s people, the Paynes, were also early
comers to the same state, of English extraction. Doctor
Stewart has three brothers and one sister: Mrs. J. A.
Young, wife of a physician at Britton who is a partner
of Doctor Stewart; William Stewart, a miner in Mon-
tana; John L. Stewart, an Iowa farmer; James A. Stew-
art, farmer, of Missouri, and A. T. Stewart, who lives in
British Columbia.

Doctor Stewart was educated in the public schools of
Iowa and in 1900 graduated M. D. from the Keokuk
Medical College at Keokuk, Iowa. In the summer follow-
ing his graduation he began the practice of medicine in
his native state, but later in the same year moved to
Oklahoma locating at Britton. He interrupted his pri-
vate practice in 1907 to take a post-graduate course in
the Chicago Post-Graduate School.

On August 18, 1901, Doctor Stewart married Miss Flo-
rence McCollum at Walton, Kansas. Mrs. Stewart had
been a teacher for several years in the public schools of
Iowa. They have an adopted child, Helen Bell, aged
two years. Doctor Stewart is a member of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, is affiliated with the Independent Order
of Odd Fellows, and as already indicated has been a mem-
ber of various organizations that sought the betterment
of conditions in his home town. He is a successful physi-
cian, and has built up a large clientele in the Town of
Britton and the community round about. He is a mem-
ber of the firm of Young & Stewart, and a sketch of his
partner in practice is given in preceding sketch.

Charles T. C. Schrader. The Town of Bristow in
Creek County has come into particular prominence as the
center of one of the greatest oil districts in the country.

1800

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

It is comparatively a new town and in ten years ’ time its
progress has been phenomenal. One of the early men of
medicine to locate in the community was Dr. Charles T. C.
Schrader, whose home has been there almost ten years.
Doctor Schrader has proved himself not only a very
capable physician, but has made himself a factor in com-
munity affairs to a large extent and is one of the very
substantial men of that young city.

He is an Indiana man, having been born on a farm
near Evansville in that state April 6, 1879. His parents
are Charles O. and Margaret (Klippert) Schrader. Both
parents were born near the City of Berlin, Germany, the
mother on February 29, 1835, and the father in Decem-
ber, 1835. She was brought by her parents to the United
States when eight years of age, and grew to young
womanhood in New Orleans. The father was fourteen
years old when he came to this country, and grew to
manhood at Evansville, Indiana. For fully forty years
they have lived on one farm in Indiana, and it was on that
place that Doctor Schrader was born. The parents are
devout Methodists, and in polities the father is a repub-
lican. He showed his loyalty to his adopted country by
enlisting during the Civil war and serving three years,
ten months, being honorably discharged at the close
of hostilities. Bn has for many years been identified
with the Grand Army of the Bepublic. In the family
were twelve children, six sons and six daughters, eleven
of whom are still living, with Doctor Schrader next to the
youngest.

His early life was spent on the old Indiana farm and
he lived with his parents until he was seventeen. His
early educational advantages were sufficient to qualify
him as a teacher and he spent two years in that vocation.
He first chose a business career and after a course in
bookkeeping at the Bryant & Stratton Business College
he spent a year in clerical work, and then took a more
definite step by entering the Hospital College of Medicine
at Louisville, Kentucky. He remained a student there
until awarded his degree M. D. in 1905.

During the first year out of college Doctor Schrader
practiced at Evansville, Indiana. In May, 1907, he arrived
in Bristow, and here his office and home have been during
the succeeding years, and with the growth and develop-
ment of the town and tributary country his practice has
assumed proportions that tax his energies. For seven
years of his residence he has served as county physician
and is still holding that position. More recently he has
become identified with the oil industry and has some val-
uable holdings in the Bristow district.

For two years he was a member of the Town Council.
In politics he is a republican and in Masonry has attained
the thirty-second degree of Scottish Eite. In 1907 Doctor
Schrader married Miss Dollie Bogle, a native of Kansas.
Their three children are named Marjorie, George and
Theodore Eoosevelt.

Frank C. Eussel. A man of inviolable integrity, of
buoyant and optimistic nature and of fine intellectuality,
the late Frank C. Eussel became one of the pioneer set-
tlers in Garfield County, Oklahoma, at the time when the
historic Cherokee Strip was thrown open for settlement
in 1893. Here he passed the remainder of his life, a
citizen of much prominence and influence in community
affairs, and his character and achievement were such
that there is all of consistency in offering in this history
of the state of his adoption a tribute to his memory.

Mr. Eussel was born on a farm in Stewart County-,
Tennessee, August 13, 1860, and died of paralysis on the
19th of July, 1914, so that his death occurred shortly
before the fifty-fourth anniversary of his birth. He was
buried in the cemetery at Canton, Kansas. He was a

son of John and Mary E. (Sypert) Eussel, the former
of whom was born in Pennsylvania and the latter in
Tennessee. John Eussel was proud of being the descend-
ed of a Mayflower passenger. In Tennessee he became
a successful planter and representative citizen of Stewart
County, where he continued his residence until the early
’70s, when he sold his property in that state and
removed with his family first to Illinois thence to Kan-
sas, where he became one of the pioneer settlers of
McPherson County. He there reclaimed and developed
a valuable farm near Canton and lived up to the full
tension of the pioneer era in the history of the Sun-
flower State, and was uniformly esteemed as a citizen
of sterling worth and of marked industry and progres-
siveness. Both he and his wife continued their residence
in McPherson County until their death, and their children,
five sons and one daughter, are living. Hs was a stanch
Presbyterian worthy of liis Puritan fathers, and in
politics a republican. His wife was a woman known for
her practical Christianity and executive ability, her love
and loyalty.

Frank C. Eussel acquired his rudimentary education in
the schools of his native state and was eleven years of
age when he accompanied his parents to the pioneer
wilds of Kansas, where he was reared to maturity in
McPherson County, and where he continued his studies
in the pioneer schools until he had completed the cur-
riculum of the high school at Salina, the county seat of
Saline County. For several years thereafter he was a
successful and popular teacher in the schools of Central
Kansas, where also he continued to be concerned with
agricultural pursuits.

In 1893 Mr. Eussel was one of those who came to
Oklahoma Territory and participated in the opening
of the Cherokee Strip or Outlet, which was thrown open
to settlement in that year. He entered claim to a tract
of land in Garfield County, at a point 3% miles south-
west of the present thriving Town of Hunter, and there
he vigorously instituted the homesteading of a farm,
the while he became one of the prominent and influential
men in the new community, to the civic and material
development and progress of which he contributed in
generous measure. While improving his farm he also
found requisition for his services as a teacher in the
pioneer schools of the county. As a man of mature
judgment and much public spirit he was naturally called
upon to serve in various local offices of trust.

In 1909 Mr. Eussel purchased the plant and business
of the Hunter Enterprise, a weekly paper published at
Hunter. He vitalized this newspaper and made it an
effective vehicle through which to exploit and foster tho
interests of the town and county as well as to further
the cause of the democratic party and to direct popular
sentiment and action. After continuing as editor and
publisher of the Enterprise for two years, impaired
health compelled him to abandon this field of enterprise
and he sold the property to D. H. Perry.

Mr. Eussel was one of the leaders in the councils and
campaign activities of the democratic party in Garfield
County and served with characteristic ability. He was
an earnest and devoted member of the Christian Church,
and he was a deacon of the church of this denomination
at Hunter at the time of his death. Mr. Eussel com-
manded high place in the confidence and good will of all
who knew him and in his death the community mourned
the loss of one of its most honored and valued citizens.

On the 13th of May, 1897, in Superior, Nebraska, was
solemnized the marriage of Mr. Eussel to Miss Anna C.
Sypert, who still maintains her home at Hunter, no
children having been born to their union. Mrs. Eussel
was born at Hopkinsville, Kentucky, on the 13th of
September, 1870, and is a daughter of Col. Leonidas A.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1801

and Martha D. (Henry) Sypert. After duly availing
herself of the advantages of the public schools of her
native place she there continued her studies at South
Kentucky College. After leaving this institution she
was for two years a popular teacher in the schools of
that section of the old Blue Grass State. In 1891 she
removed to McPherson, Kansas, where for six years she
continued her successful work as a teacher in the public
schools, in the meantime taking a normal course at
McPherson College. In 1897 she came to Oklahoma Ter-
ritory with her husband where she continued her service
as a teacher for a period of five years. When her hus-
band assumed control of the Hunter Enterprise Mrs.
Russel became his able coadjuter in the editorial work
of the paper, and in this connection her exceptional
literary talent, her broad intellectual ken and her definite
public spirit gained to her a wide reputation as one of
the able representatives of the journalistic profession in
Oklahoma. She became an active and valued member
of the State Editorial Association, of which she served
as a vice president in 1911. She still continues to a cer-
tain extent her literary activities and is a popular leader
in the representative social activities of her home com-
munity, as well as in the work of the Christian Church.

Col. Leonidas A. Sypert, father of Mrs. Russel, was
born in Lebanon, Tennessee, on the 15th of December,
1832, and died at Hopkinsville, Kentucky, on the 2T3d
of March, 1892. He acquired a finished education and
was a graduate of Lebanon, Tennessee, Law School, soon
after becoming a member of the Hopkinsville bar. He
represented Kentucky as a gallant soldier and officer
of the Confederate service in the Civil war, became an
eminent member of the Kentucky bar, and in addition
to continuing many years in the active work of his
profession he was also prominent and influential in
political affairs in his section of the Blue Grass State.
In Kentucky was solemnized his marriage to Miss Martha,
D. Henry, who was born at Hopkinsville, that state, on
the 23d of February, 1850, and who was a daughter of
Col. William Henry of that place and Martha D. (Cocke)
Henry of Mississippi, both members of old and cultured
families. Their lineage traces back to stanch Scotch
and English origin, both the Henry and Cocke families
having been founded in America in the early colonial era
of our national history.

William M. Speck is one of the men who helped to
place the new town of Dewey on the map as a com-
mercial and industrial center. His home has been there
for the past fifteen years, and the town has no citizen
of broader interests, of greater public spirit, or one
whose energies have gone more effectively into move-
ments which make for real progress.

His career began with his birth at Bedford, Pennsyl-
vania, September 3, 1850. Pennsylvania was also the
native state of his parents, Henry and Mary (England)
Speck. His father, who was a shoemaker by trade, died
in Ohio, March 28; 1893, and the mother passed away
at the same place in 1898.

. One in a family of ten children, William M. Speck
since early boyhood has depended largely upon his own
resources and has found his own opportunities in the
world. At the age of twenty-one he left Pennsylvania,
where he had gained his early education and had learned
the trade of shoemaker, and for some years was engaged
in the shoemaker ’s trade and shoe merchandising in Ohio.
Subsequently for about two years he conducted a grocery
store and also sold musical merchandise. Finally giving
up his business interests in Ohio, Mr. Speck identified
himself with the newer country of Kansas, locating in
Sumner County in that state about 1883. In 1884 he
moved to Garfield County, Kansas, and secured a pre-

emption homestead claim. At Ravanna, Kansas, he built
a hotel and was its proprietor for file years. In 1889
he was elected to the legislature on the republican ticket,
and in 1891 was returned for a second term. He helped
to organize Garfield County. About 1893 he removed to
Topeka, conducted a hotel in that city for a year, and
selling out continued his hotel enterprise for four years
at Independence, Missouri.

Coming to Dewey, Oklahoma, in 1900, Mr. Speck estab-
lished the Dewey Hotel and also the Right-Way Hotel at
Bartlesville. He proved an energetic booster for both
these growing young cities, and also interested himself
in the larger political life of the territory, serving as a
delegate- from Washington County at the national capital
in the interests of statehood. For several years Mr.
Speck has devoted his time primarily to farming and
fruit growing, and has some handsome and valuable
property in and about Dewey. In 1914 he was republican
candidate for the state senate from Washington and
Tulsa counties, and though on the minority party ticket
his defeat was accomplished by only forty-eight votes.
Mr. Speck is at the present time president of the Wash-
ington County Fair Association. He was also one of
the promoters of the interurban line between Bartles-
ville and Dewey, which is one of the pioneer electric
transportation lines in the state.

On December 25, Christmas Day, of 1874, Mr. Speck
married Miss Christina Levers, a daughter of David and
Mary (Kaylor) Levers. Mrs. Speck was one of a family
of twelve children. To their marriage have been born
three sons. Howard is still single and living at home
in Dewey. Lloyd married Miss Grace Hunt of Ossa-
watomie, Kansas, and their two children are named
Glenn and Thomas. Roscoe, who lives in Kansas, mar-
ried Miss Sadie Clay, and they have a child named Emma.
Mr. Speck is affiliated with the Loyal Order of Moose and
the Homesteaders, and both he and his wife are members
of the Methodist Episcopal Church. While a resident of
Ohio, Mr. Speck spent several years in Stark County, and
during 1881-2 was chairman of the republican central
committee of that Ohio county, the county seat of which
is Canton, the old home of President McKinley and wife.
Mr. Speck was a personal friend of President McKinley,
and during the latter’s first campaign for the presidency
in 1896 he wrote a personal letter to Mr. Speck, who was
at that time living in Kansas.

Mr. Speck is interested in good farming in Washington
County and is doing all he can to boost this movement.

Olin W. Meacham. Those individuals who have given
their energy, skill, ambitious vigor and enthusiasm in the
building up of a community are benefactors of humanity,
and their names cannot be held in too high esteem. In
every undertaking there must be a logical beginning, and
a man who lays the foundation for what afterwards
may become a flourishing city must have the courage of
his convictions and unlimited confidence in the future of
the location which he selects as the scene of Ms endeavors.
One of the best small cities in Eastern Oklahoma is
Henryetta in Okmulgee County. The mayor of that little
city is Olin W. Meacham. Mr. Meacham was for thirteen
years postmaster of the town. He came here attracted
by the beauty of the site and the presence of coal deposits
nearby, and fifteen years ago was one of the “fathers
of Henryetta” and from the day he helped lay out the
townsite his keen mind and boundless enthusiasm have
kept him looking beyond the narrow horizon of the day
and reading the signs of a splendid tomorrow.

By profession he is an old newspaper man and printer,
and was identified with early Kansas journalism as well
as with some of the first newspapers in the original Okla-

1802

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

homa Territory. It is an interesting fact that he is one
of the survivors of the famous group of ‘ ‘ Oklahoma
boomers ’ ’ headed by Captain Payne during the ’80s.
Thus there are many interesting features of Mr.
Meacham ’s career. His most permanent work has with-
out doubt been the building up of Henryetta. He exer-
cised not only enthusiasm but good judgment in promot-
ing this town in the early days. He sold a large number
of lots for less than they were worth in order to get
people located in the town. The first private residence
there was put up by him in 1900, a box house of the
simplest character, 20x20 feet. He also constructed the
brick flue attached to any house or building, and also
had the first plastered house. In the past fifteen years
he has built three homes for himself, and now has one of
the most attractive residences of the town. He was given
the choice of a large stretch of land along the railroad
when it was constructed for townsite purposes, and after
much investigation chose what is now Henryetta.

An Illinois man, Olin W. Meacham was born near
Rushville in Schuyler County March 16, 1858, a son of
Ahira Gault and Mary E. (Jewell) Meacham. His father
was born at Rochester, New York, in 1836, while the
mother was born at Augusta, Maine. They were mar-
ried at Mount Meacham, Illinois, a postoffice that was
named in honor of Mr. Meacham ’s grandfather, who
had located there about 1855. Mr. Meacham ’s mother
died in Schuyler County in 1866 when he was about eight
years of age. In 1872 the father took his family out to
Kansas, and a number of years later came to Oklahoma
in 1890, soon after the opening, and died at Guthrie
about 1906. He was a carpenter and contractor nearly
all his active career, though he did considerable farm-
ing while living in Kansas. During the Civil war period
he enlisted in the hundred day service at the first call,
and afterwards re-enlisted and remained until the close
of the war. He was with a Missouri Regiment of engin-
eers, and did some hard work in digging the canal
which cut off Island No. 10 in the Mississippi River, one
of the most notable exploits of Grant’s army in open-
ing up the river to the Federal invasion of the South.
He afterwards took part in many pitched battles, and
served as a non-commissioned officer. While living at
Leon in Butler County, Kansas, he was in the real estate
and loan business and put up the first opera house there.
He was a strong prohibitionist and one of the men
who lent their influence to the establishment of prohibi-
tion in Kansas. In general politics he was a republican,
was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, the
Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Methodist
Episcopal Church. In 1869 the father married for his
second wife Amelia Wright of Peru, Illinois. By this
marriage there were three sons and one daughter, Olin
W. Meacham is the only survivor of the first marriage,
two children having died in infancy.

In 1874, when eighteen years of age, Olin W. Meacham
left home and went to Marion, Kansas. In the meantime
he had acquired a common school education. At Marion
he was associated with E. W. Hoch, who a few years ago
filled the distinguished position of Governor of Kansas.
Mr. Hoch at that time had a printing office at Marion,
and the two young men "bached” in the little building
which served as an office and home. Mr. Meacham be-
sides doing his share of the work around the printing
office also performed the cooking, and on Sundays made
the little office an impromptu barber shop. There was
no regular barber in the town and he shaved most of
the men who needed or wanted such service. He was
associated with Mr. Hoch for a year and a half and
employed his razor to good effect when Hoch celebrated
his marriage.

He afterwards went to Augusta, Kansas, and worked
on the Southern Kansas Gazette eight years. From there
he went to Leon, and in 1881 married Olive L. Chambers,
who was born in Missouri and was reared chiefly in
Kansas. After his marriage Mr. Meacham returned to
Augusta, conducted a paper for some time, later bought
the Leon Quill and after selling that property moved to
Greensburg in Kiowa County, where he managed the
Kiowa County Times 2% years. Then he was again in
Augusta, where he managed the Augusta News, this later
becoming the Industrial Advocate, and the plant was
afterwards sold and moved to El Dorado, Kansas.

Mr. Meacham came to Oklahoma City in 1890, and
was made foreman of the Daily Evening Gazette, being
connected, with that pioneer newspaper three years.
From there he went to Norman to take charge as
editor and manager of the Norman Transcript in 1893.
He was with that journal three years. In 1896 he went
to Shawnee, and with J. E. Queen established the Shawnee
Quill. After 2% years this paper was sold, and Mr.
Meacham was then foreman on the Yinita Leader until
1900.

In that year he gave up journalism and associated
with G. F. Clarke and- Lake Moore chose and laid out
the townsite of Henryetta. This town had its practical
beginnings in March, 1900, and in September Mr.
Meacham was appointed postmaster, succeeding Ed Ray,
who had filled the office for about two months. For
thirteen years he had full charge of the local postal
service, from September, 1900, until July, 1913. When
he took charge of the office the mail was kept in. a cracker
box, but when he left it thirteen years later the office
was one feature of a thriving little city, and the fixtures
alone were worth $2,500. He left it as a third class
office, and in the meantime had given a service which
was beyond criticism and which made him many strong
personal friends in spite of politics. In fact, though
he was a republican and living in a democratic com-
munity, a large number of his political opponents peti-
tioned for him to keep the postoffice. From September,
1913, to February, 1914, he was in the banking business
at Dewar, Oklahoma, and has also been identified with
insurance. For one year after leaving the postoffice he
was local editor of the Free Lance, but fin 1915 was
elected mayor, and is now giving most of his attention
to that office. Henryetta ’s normal political complexion
is about 400 democrats to 200 republicans, but he was
elected on the republican ticket as mayor by a majority
of 103.

Mr. Meacham served as secretary-treasurer of the
Henryetta Townsite Company, and was also identified
with the Kusa Townsite Company. A number of years
ago (1895) he assisted Professor Amos in organizing the
State Historical Society. He is a thirty-second degree
Mason and Knight of Pythias, also a member of the
Modern Woodmen of America, and is an elder in the
Christian Church.

Mr. Meacham has two daughters: Bertha I., who is
the wife of James Hawes of Henryetta and their children
are named Olive Vermelle and James. Mary Vermelle,
Mr. Meacham ’s younger daughter, has been connected
with the Henryetta High School for the past eight years,
and for four years was its principal.

Delany G. Rogers, of Buffalo, Oklahoma, has been
an early settler in both the States of Kansas and Okla-
homa. In fact, he has lived nearly all his life close to
the frontier and in intimate touch with the people and
the activities of a new country. Mr. Rogers only recently
retired from the office of postmaster at Buffalo, a position
he had held for a number of years. His chief vocation

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1803

in life has been farming and stock raising, and it is the
testimony of his friends and neighbors that whatever he
does he does well.

His birth occurred in a log house on a farm in Jeffer-
son County, Indiana, on April 6, 1862. His birth occurred
while his father was away fighting the battles of the
Union in the Civil war. His parents were Gamaliel and
Lydia (Lewis) Rogers. His father was born Novem-
ber 17, 1840, in Jefferson County, Indiana, and was still a
very young man when the war broke out. He served
three years as a private in Company C of the Sixth In-
diana Infantry, but with the exception of that service has
spent all his active life as a farmer. From Indiana he
moved out to Kansas in 1886, locating on government
land in Clark County. That was his home for six years,
after which he spent two years in Mead County, then
returned to Clark County for eight years, and finally
moved to Texas County, Missouri, where he still has his
home. He has now reached the age of three quarters of
a century, and has lived so usefully he can enjoy the com-
forts of retired existence. In 1858 Gamaliel Rogers mar-
ried Lydia Lewis who was also born in Jefferson County,
Indiana, August 17, 1840. To their marriage were born
ten children, four sons and six daughters, namely: Flo-
rence, born December 5, 1860, was married in 1880 to
Merritt M. Cosby and they now reside at Protection,
Kansas ; Delany G., who was the second in order of birth ;
Willis born in 1864 and died in 1885; Jessie, born in
1868, was married in 1888 to Charles Pauley, and they
now live at Oklahoma City; John Belle, born in 1870, is
now an osteopathic physician at Hastings, Oklahoma, and
in 1905 she became the wife of Charles Morrison; Celia,
born in 1872, married in 1910 Mr. L. Dees, and they
now live at Rosston, Oklahoma; Samuel Nicholas, born in
1874, is a farmer in Harper County, Oklahoma; Tena,
born in 1876, was married in 1908 to Charles Sworkey and
they now live at Norman, Oklahoma; Pearl, born in
1878 was married in 1905 to William and they live in
Beaver County, Oklahoma.

It was on a farm in Jefferson County, Indiana, that
Delany G. Rogers spent his early youth. He had the
advantages of the local public schools. The discipline
of farm work gave him a rugged constitution, and an
experience which he has utilized in his own active career.
In 1884 he moved out to Clark County, Kansas, and
secured a tract of Government land in a district which
at that time had very few agricultural and permanent
settlers. Mr. Rogers lived in Kansas until 1899, an,d in
the meantime had improved an excellent farm there. In
the latter year he moved to old Woodward County, Okla-
homa, and again acquired a homestead, situated two miles
from the Town of Buffalo. While Mr. Rogers’ activities
have kept him in town for a number of years, he still
owns considerable land and has most of it under improve-
ment.

On February 23, 1907, he was appointed postmaster
of Buffalo, and continued the incumbent of the office
through two terms until February 23, 1915. He is an
active republican, is affiliated with the Independent
Order of Odd Fellows and is a member of the Meth-
odist Episcopal Church.

On October 16, 1884, at Taylorsville, Indiana, Mr.
Rogers married Miss Isabelle Phillips, daughter of
Madison and Mary (Wallace) Phillips. Mrs. Rogers was
born June 11, 1860, in Jefferson County, Indiana, and
her parents were natives of the same state. It will be
recalled that Mr.. Rogers left Indiana and went out into
the new country of Kansas in 1884. He made that trip
as his wedding journey, being accompanied by his young
bride, and they journeyed across the country by wagon
and team, like some of their pioneer ancestors who had

come from a point still further east to the region of the
Ohio Valley. Mr. and Mrs. Rogers are the parents of
seven children, four sons and three daughters, namely:
Ora Lawrence, born August 14, 1885, now the wife of
Irwin Baker of Ashland, Kansas ; Madison Gamaliel, born
May 25, 1888, and still living at Buffalo; Estella Iris,
born March 10, 1890, was married in 1908 to Pirl
Baker, and they now live at Protection, Kansas; Alta
Rachel, born February 19, 1892; William McKinley,
born May 10, 1894; John, born February 14, 1896; and
Edward Taft, born August 20, 1907, died July 20, 1908.

William C. Pendergraft, M. D. The most enlight-
ened tenets of medical and surgical science have found
expression in the career of Dr. William C. Pendergraft,
a general practitioner of Hollis, Harmon County, since
1902, a leading and progressive factor in business and
financial circles, and a potent influence in advancing the
civic interests of Hollis and the welfare of its people.
He was born in Polk County, Missouri, September 22,
1864, and is a son of Joseph A. and Irene (Self) Pender-
graft, and a member of a family which, originating in
Germany, emigrated to England, came thence to America
in colonial days, and from its original settlement in New
York went during the pioneer days to Tennessee.

Joseph A. Pendergraft was born in 1838, in Cape
Girardeau County, Missouri, and as a young man went
to Polk County, in the same state, where he was married
and where he subsequently engaged in farming and stock-
raising. Later he went to Arkansas and continued his
agricultural operations until removing to Western Texas,
where he lived on a ranch until 1899, and in that year
came to Hollis, Oklahoma, and lived a retired life until
his death in 1913. While a resident of Missouri, during
the war between the states, Mr. Pendergraft enlisted in
the Confederate army and served four years under Price
and Shelby, and toward the close of the struggle was
taken prisoner and confined in a Federal prison until
peace was proclaimed. He was a stalwart democrat in
his political views, and a lifelong member of the Chris-
tian Church, in which he served as elder for many years.
He was married in Polk County, Missouri, to Miss Irene
Self, who was born in Tennessee, in 1835, and died in
Polk County, Missouri, in 1878, and they became the
parents of six children, as follows: L. J., who is the
widow of J. N. Hofman, a farmer, and resides in New
Mexico; L. E., deceased, who was the wife of W. H.
Hofman, also deceased, who was a mechanic in the
employ of the Frisco Railroad Company for a period of
forty years; S. E., who is the wife of R. C. Hodges, a
farmer and stockman of Hollis, Oklahoma; J. M., who is
an agriculturist of Harmon County; James C., who died
in infancy; Mary E., who is the wife of M. C. Dodd and
resides on the old homestead in Polk County, Missouri;
and Dr. William C., of this review.

William C. Pendergraft received a graded and high
school education in his native county, and after some
preparation entered the Missouri Medical College, at
St. Louis, Missouri, which he attended two years. He
next entered the St. Louis College of Physicians and
Surgeons, from which he was graduated in 1892, with the
degree of Doctor of Medicine, and since that time, in
1915, has taken a post-graduate course at the Chicago
Post-Graduate Medical School. Doctor Pendergraft en-
tered upon the practice of his calling at Pleasant Hope,
Missouri, where he continued to maintain his office until
1898, in that year going to a larger field at Springfield,
in the same state, that being his place of residence until
1901. Coming next to Hollis, Oklahoma, he soon at-
tracted to himself a large and representative practice,
and has continued to make this thriving community his

1804

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

field of labor, his offices now being located in the Hollis
Drug Company’s building on Broadway, corner of Main
Street. His practice is broad and general in its lines,
and professionally he may be said to belong to the eman-
cipated class whose mind is open to light and who
sanction the beliefs of the past only insofar as they are
in harmony with the greater progress and enlightenment
of the present. In his private practice he has had charge
of the welfare of the most representative families of
Hollis, and has officiated at the birth of two sets of
triplets and one set of quadruplets, the latter born to
Mrs. F. M. Keys, of Hollis, June 4, 1915. In this case
all four are girls, and it is the only case on record where
all four have been of one sex and where all have lived.
Aside from his private practice, Doctor Pendergraft is
local surgeon for the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad
and medical examiner for more than a dozen of the old
line life insurance companies. He holds membership in
the Harmon County Medical Society, the Oklahoma Med-
ical Society and the American Medical Association, and
has been health officer of Hollis since the attainment of
statehood. Doctor Pendergraft is one of those men who
may be said to have chosen well their vocation. Pos-
sessed of a kind, sympathetic nature, a keen sense of dis-
crimination, and a natural taste for the various branches
of his honored profession, he has achieved a signal suc-
cess. In politics he is a democrat, and was a member of
the First Oklahoma Legislature. With his family he
belongs to the Baptist Church. Doctor Pendergraft ’s
fraternal connections are numerous. He belongs to Hol-
lis Lodge No. 219, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, in
which he has filled all chairs save that of master; Hollis
Camp, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, in which he
is past grand; Hollis Camp, Woodmen of the World and
the Woodmen Circle, of which he is medical examiner;
the Modern Woodmen of America, of which he is med-
ical examiner; and the Fraternal Union. He belongs
also to the Commercial Club. The Doctor has also taken
an active part in business affairs and is vice president
of the State National Bank of Hollis and of the Hollis
Drug Company, Incorporated.

In 1886, at Pleasant Hope, Missouri, Doctor Pender-
graft was married to Miss Lena Mayfield, daughter of
the late H. B. Mayfield, a farmer, and to this union there
have been born three children : one who died in infancy ;
Roy L., a senior in the medical department of the Ten-
nessee University; and Glen, who belongs to the fresh-
man class at the Hollis High School.

Judge Henry M. Furman, who died at his home in
Oklahoma City in April, 1916, was one of the able
lawyers and jurists who helped to mold and formulate
the early jurisprudence of the state. From statehood
until he had to retire on account of ill health he was
one of the judges of the Oklahoma Criminal Court of
Appeals.

His valuable services to the Oklahoma judiciary had
their best appreciation and description in the words of
Judge Thomas H. Doyle, presiding judge of the Criminal
Court of Appeals, who was associated with Judge Fur-
man as a member of that court from its organization.
Judge Doyle has said:

“Judge Henry M. Furman, full of years and full, of
honor, has passed from life’s labors to his eternal rest.
He was an extraordinary man and a lawyer and jurist
of rare endowments. His professional learning and abil-
ity was not the fruit of any advantages in legal educa-
tion, but was founded on his large experience and
inexhaustible diligence. In intellectual power he was a
giant, and a logician of the highest order, and he was a
consummate master of the rhetorical art.

“No judge ever more clearly realized the wide scope, II
exalted dignity and consequent responsibility of the judi-
cial office, and no judge could be more scrupulous in
inflexible fairness and impartiality. The force of his P
noble character and powerful mind is demonstrated by f
the results of his judicial labors. The value of his j
services and the high character of his contributions to
the development of our criminal jurisprudence will grow '
in appreciation as years go by.

“Many of his opinions are now published as leading
cases, and they have given the progressive criminal
jurisprudence of Oklahoma an international reputation.

I do not think it would be an extravagant statement
to say that among the names of the great judges who I
adorn the annals of American jurisprudence will be found I
the name of Henry M. Furman.

“Personally Judge Furman was a kindly, genial, warm
hearted man, whose devotion to high ideals, capacity for
friendship, high minded patriotism and loyalty to duty
and honor could be fully appreciated only by those who
knew him intimately. The benevolence of his heart was I
in full accord with his master mind. I can safely say I
without disparagement to others that no man in public I
life in Oklahoma was held in higher esteem by the people I
of the state than Judge Henry M. Furman.’’ I

Judge Furman was a resident of Oklahoma twenty I
years. He was born in the Village of Society Hill, South
Carolina, June 20, 1850, a son of Dr. Richard Furman, I
a Baptist minister, whose father was the founder of I
Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina. He
acquired his primary education in Greenville and Sumter, I
South Carolina, spent several years working on a farm,
and in 1871 ca,me west, spending a year or so in the I
office of Judge J. L. Whitaker at New Orleans, and in
1872 going to Texas, where he taught school. In 1874 I
he was admitted to the bar at Brenham. After a brief I
practice at Comanche, Texas, he located in Bell County, I
and in 1876 was elected county attorney. This office he I
resigned the following year and entered upon the prac-
tice of his profession at Fort Worth. There he met Miss I
Frances Virginia Hutcheson, who, in May, 1879, became I
his wife, and who with their children, Henry Marshall I
Furman, Jr., and Miss Florence Furman, survive him.
Their married life iyas an uninterrupted period of mutual
love and comfort. In 1890 he moved to Denver, Colo- I

rado, and there engaged in the practice of law. In 1893 I

he moved back to Fort Worth. In 1895 he moved to
Ardmore, and in 1904 he moved from there to Ada, I
Indian Territory.

He was the founder of the Masonic Home now located I
at Darlington, Oklahoma. At the democratic primary I
preceding the first state election he received the second I

highest number of votes for the office of United States

senator, but in deference to a resolution passed at a
previous meeting of the State Democratic Committee I
that the senators should be elected one from each of
the former territories, he waived his right to the nomina-
tion. First appointed in 1908, he was twice elected as a I
judge of the Criminal Court of Appeals of Oklahoma, I

which position he held at the time of his death, being I

presiding judge the first four years of his service.

William H. Campbell, M. D. For the greater part
of twenty years Doctor Campbell has practiced his pro-
fession in old Indian Territory and Oklahoma. He is
now in the enjoyment of a substantial business at Hick-
ory and has a high standing among Oklahoma medical
men.

He was born in Randolph county, Arkansas, November
22, 1872. His great-grandfather was a Scotch-Irishman
who came to this country and settled in Tennessee as a
pioneer. Doctor Campbell’s grandfather was Judge

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1805

Campbell, a native of Tennessee, a farmer by occupation,
and a Confederate soldier who lost his life during the
struggle between the states. He was shot by an enemy
who was hiding in the bushes and was at home when
his death occurred. John Stone Campbell, father of
Doctor Campbell, was born in Illinois, and died from
drowning in Eleven Point Eiver near Pocahontas, Ran-
dolph County, Arkansas, September 16, 1915, aged sixty-
eight years, six months, twenty-five days. He spent
practically all his life in Randolph County, Arkansas,
as a farmer and stockman, and during the last two
years of the Civil war served in the Confederate ranks
and in one battle received a bullet through the thigh.
For a number of years he was regarded as a power in
local democratic politics and was active both in his
town and county affairs. His church was the Christian.
John S. Campbell married Mrs. Alcy (Hufstedler)
McClain. She was born in Tennessee in 1836 and died
in R'andolph county, Arkansas, on the old homestead
in January, 1901. The children of this marriage were:
J. W. Campbell, who is a teacher by profession living
at Shreveport, Louisiana; Dr. William H. ; T. W. Camp-
bell, an attorney at Pocahontas, Arkansas; and J. N.
Campbell, a railroad man at Shreveport.

Doctor Campbell acquired a high school education
in Randolph County and grew up on his father’s farm
there until seventeen. He then came with his parents
to Erath County, Texas, in 1889, but in 1891 the family
returned to Randolph County, Arkansas. While in
Erath County Doctor Campbell did some independent
farming for himself until 1893, and then re-entered the
public schools and remained for a year.

He began his medical studies in the Fort Worth Medi-
cal College, now the Fort Worth University, and applied
himself industriously to the courses for one year. As
an undergraduate he began the practice of medicine
in Indian Territory, being located four years at Co-
manche, at Rush Springs a year and at Healdton for
one year. The years 1903 and 1904 he spent in the
J. Marion Sims Medical School of St. Louis, where he
was graduated M. D. in 1904. Returning to Indian
Territory, he practiced at Lone Grove until the begin-
ning of 1907. He then went to New Mexico and prac-
ticed in the vicinity of Roosevelt until January, 1910, at
which date he came to Oklahoma and located at Ponto-
toc. There he carried on a drug business in connection
with his private practice for three years. After another
year at Mill Creek, in February, 1915, he located at
Hickory, where he already has a satisfying practice.
His offices are in the H. C. Bowen drug store.

While at Lone Grove he served as health officer, and is
a member of the Murray County and the Oklahoma
State Medical societies and the American Medical Asso-
ciation. At Mill Creek he was a member of the city
council. He is a democrat, a member of the Christian
Church and affiliated with the Independent Order of
Odd Fellows.

While living in Erath County, Texas, in 1892, Doctor
Campbell married Mrs. Cordelia (Kennedy) Craig,
widow of Frank Craig and daughter of Sabert Kennedy,
a Texas farmer, who accidentally shot himself while his
daughter Cordelia was an infant. Doctor Campbell and
wife have five children: Hallie May, wife of Charles
Mosman, who is an oil tank builder and lives at Wilson,
Oklahoma; Darrel, wife of W. B. Norman, a farmer
near Pontotoc, and they have two children, Delilah and
Camilla; Oran, Farris and Jirl D., all of whom are in the
public schools at Hickory. Mrs. Campbell had three
children by her first husband, Barto, Bertha and Bert
Craig. Barto Craig married Miss Anna Holemberg, of

Fort Worth, Texas, and they have one child, Jack Craig,
Jr.

Jesse William Bell. Since he was seventeen years
of age Jesse William Bell has found a sphere of use-
fulness and honorable activity as a citizen in Oklahoma.
He prospered as a farmer, and has also been in mer-
cantile activities and is publisher of one of the leading
papers of the county, and at the present time is serving
as postmaster of LaKemp.

He was born in a log house on a farm in Franklin
County, Missouri, April 8, 1881, a son of William La-
fayette and Amy Lee (Farrar) Bell, both of whom were
natives of the same county. His grandparents were Rus-
sell and Elizabeth (Caldwell) Bell. Russell Bell was a
Confederate soldier during the Civil war, and was captain
of a company in the army commanded by General Sterling
Price. William Lafayette Bell was born August 20,
1854, and died in Cleveland County, Oklahoma, Septem-
ber 29, 1902. His life was spent as a farmer, and in
1898 he came to Oklahoma and his closing years were
spent in this state. On June 12, 1873, he married Amy
Lee Farrar, who was born in Franklin County, Missouri,
July 31, 1854, and is now living at LaKemp. Her
parents were Jesse P. and Mary (Bullock) Farrar. He
was born in Missouri and she in Ohio. William L. Bell
and wife were the parents of eleven children, five sons
and six daughters, nine of whom are still living: Edward
Russell, who was born April 23, 1874, and is now a
farmer in Beaver County, was married in 1896 to Susie
E. Hethcock; Birtie E., born February 6, 1876, married
in 1908 Samuel McGrath and they now live at Seattle,
Washington; Mollie Virginia, born July 12, 1878, in
Texas, was married in 1895 to Marion F. Hethcock and
they live on a farm in Beaver County; the fourth in age
is Jesse William; Thomas Franklin was born September
21, 1884, and lives at May, Washington; Minnie Pearl,
born May 18, 1886, and was married in 1912 to Bruce
Eslick, and they live in Montana; Drusie was born in
1888 and died in 1891; Arthur Lafayette, born March 5,
1891, died January 9, 1916; Ollie Clinton, born Novem-
ber 3, 1893, is now a farmer in Baca County, Colorado;
Sylvia Mabel, born September 24, 1897, was married in
1915 to Howard Gordon, who is a farmer in Baca County,
Colorado; Girtie Lee was born February 3, 1901, and is
now with her mother.

Jesse W. Bell is the type of citizen who makes the
best of his opportunities wherever he finds them. His
early life was spent on his father’s farm in Franklin
County, Missouri, and he had a public school education.
In 1898 he came to Oklahoma with his parents, and in
1907 he located a tract of government land in Beaver
County two miles east of the present Town of LaKemp.
He still owns that land and has increased it by consid-
erable other valuable holdings in the country district of
the county. In 1912 leaving the farm Mr. Bell engaged
in the drug business at the new Town of LaKemp, and
in the same year he bought the LaKemp Mirror, of which
lie was editor and publisher until February, 1915, when
he removed the plant to Beaver, the county seat, and
changed the name of the paper to the Democrat. It is
now published under the incorporated title of the Enter-
prise Publishing Company, of which Mr. Bell is secre-
tary and treasurer. Mr. Bell was appointed postmaster
of LaKemp August 23, 1914, and is giving a very effi-
cient administration of that office. Fraternally he is
affiliated with the Masons and with the Modern Woodmen
of America, and politically his actions have always been
in line with the democratic party. On February 14, 1904,
at Teeumseh, Oklahoma, he married Miss Dora May Little,
who was born on a farm in Hickory County, North Caro-

1806

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

lina, August 23, 1887, a daughter of F. P. and Elizabeth
(Little) Little, both of whom were natives of North Caro-
lina. The Little family came to Oklahoma in 1901, when
Mrs. Bell was about fourteen years of age and located in
Pottawatomie County. Mr. and Mrs. Bell have four
children: Jesse Charles, born September 13, 1908; Edith
Lee, born June 30, 1911; Irl. Clinton, born August 3,
1913; and Thelma Elizabeth, born October 27, 1915.

Joel Spring. When Joel Spring died at Hugo Febru-
ary 21, 1908, it was said that no other contemporary had
done so much to enrich his community in those elements
w’hich make for civic wholesomeness and material pros-
perity. Such a citizen was an honor to Oklahoma history,
and such an account of his character and activities as
can be given in this article is but a meager memorial to
one whose life left much that was practical in its accom-
plishment and inspiring in its character.

Nearly twenty -five years before his death Joel Spring,
having recently married, engaged in merchandising at
Roebuck Lake in what is now Southeastern Oklahoma.
From Roebuck Lake he removed to Clear Springs Court
Ground, about two miles west of the present Hugo and
then the seat of Kiamichi County. After the building of
the Frisco Railway through that section of the country
he removed his business and his household to Goodland,
where for years he conducted one of the largest mercan-
tile establishments in the Indian Territory.

Then in 1902 the new Town of Hugo was established.
Mr. Spring, quickly seeing the great promise for the new
town, located there as one of its first merchants, and
from the first took the position of the most prominent
business man and citizen. He at . once acquired an
interest on the townsite on the east sjide, erected a large
attractive and beautifully furnished residence on an emi-
nence in that part of the city, built a number of the most
substantial business houses of the place, and in every
practical way showed his unbounded faith in Hugo and
its people. And this feeling was heartily reciprocated,
for citizens and countrymen trusted in his judgment, in-
tegrity and generosity with unbounded faith, placing in
his keeping their property and their future with no secur-
ity other than that of his long-tried character. He be-
came the friend, adviser, banker and father of the entire
community, but with all his later affluence and unique
standing he cast an affectionate eye over the struggling
days of his early life. On the walls of his residence in
Hugo was a reproduction from a small photograph of
the tiny log cabin in which he commenced married life
on the banks of Roebuck Lake, showing the proud nine-
teen year old husband standing in the yard and his fif-
teen year old bride in the doorway.

Of his part as a town builder, the editorial expression
of the entire community at Hugo found in the columns
of a local paper, should be quoted: “As a town builder
and developing force he was without a peer in Southern
Oklahoma. He was a person of wealth and resource
and owned much property in this city. During the past
five years he erected seven large brick buildings all of
the very best and constructed with a view to permanency,
majestically beautiful and an ornament to a city of many
thousand people. As are all great men, he was at times
subjected to unjust criticism, but when a task was com-
pleted no fault could be found with it. He was char-
itable and liberal, giving freely to the construction and
maintenance of the churches and other moral institutions.
At one time, several years ago, thq^-Methodist Church was
advertised for sale to liquidate its indebtedness, and it
was Joel Spring who came to the rescue. He made a
large donation and placed the then struggling band upon
their feet, and that with only an expression of regret

that they had not made him fully conversant with con-
ditions before resorting to such extremities. By spend-
ing his money so freely to develop the town he encouraged
others to do so; and he was in deed and in truth ‘the
father of Hugo. ’ However great it may become in the
future will be due to his efforts in its struggling pioneer
days. One day, when Hugo shall have become a large
city, we wish to stand on one of our principal streets
with uncovered heads before an imperishable statue
dedicated to the memory of this tireless man who was
such a great factor when the town was in its infancy. ’ ’

From the columns of this paper it is possible to learn
some of the particulars regarding the business char-
acter and activities of the late Joel Spring. From an
examination of the records and from such comments as
are still freely passed on his life and influence, the
conspicuous attribute of Mr. Spring was undoubtedly
character, that part of the human soul which dominates
all else and which must stand imperishable while the
earthly tabernacle falls. As the artice just referred to
says: “In his ease it was a steady, honest character that
formed the foundation of his success. In the early days
he was the only man in this country who owned a safe.
In those days many of the settlers were prosperous and
had a large amount of ready cash at their command.
They were afraid of the banks in the state run by men
of whom they knew but little, but they were acquainted
with Joel Spring, and knew that every dollar would be
conscientiously accounted for; and for years he was not
only a merchant but a banker for a large section of
country. Men came from Nashoba County, seventy miles
away, for the sole purpose of entrusting their savings
with him for safe keeping. Many times a large herd of
cattle would be sold and the owner knowing but little
of the business world would accept nothing but a cheek
payable to Joel Spring. He was the chief adviser of his
people on business matters. He had at all times many
thousand dollars deposited with him and while he kept
a safe reserve in cash, robbers were not unknown and a
large amount was kept invested in good security. He
was a banker subject to no regulation or inspection, yet
no man lost a cent or had cause for uneasiness. Thus his
success was to a large extent built upon confidence which
the world entertains for only the highest order of manly
character.

“In character Joel Spring was of the most manly
and lofty type. He enjoyed the full confidence and
respect of his fellow men, and we have yet to hear of
the man who claimed that Joel Spring ever beat him out
of a cent, or that in any instance did he violate that
sacred honor which exists between man and man. He
was systematic in his work and successful in every
undertaking, and had he entered other fields of labor
than that of business he would probably have reached the
goal of his ambition with the same measure of success. ’ ’

Born within three miles of where Hugo now stands on
February 2, 1863, Joel Spring came of unusual lineage.
His grandfather, Christian Spring, was born in Switzer-
land, of German parentage, was educated in Germany
and served a time in the army of that nation. Subse-
quently he was a commissioned officer in the Army of
Napoleon, and" after Waterloo emigrated to America,
landing at New Orleans, drifting into Mississippi, where
he married Susan Bohannan, who was of mingled French
and Indian extraction.

Samuel Spring, father of Joel, married Elizabeth Le-
Flore. She was a representative of that family which
for generations furnished the Choctaws with their hered-
itary chief. One of them was Greenwood LeFlore, author
of the celebrated Dancing Rabbit Treaty of 1830. Of
Greenwood LeFlore President Jackson said : ‘ ‘ There is no

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1807

greater statesman among any people.” Samuel Spring
was a Confederate soldier, and died in service in the same
year that his son Joel was born. The mother of this
future merchant, banker and town builder also died when
he was a child.

He grew up principally in the home of his uncle, prom-
inently known in this section of Indian Territory as
“Uncle Billie Spring.” Uncle Billie sent his nephew at
the age of twelve to old Spencer Academy. He soon grew
tired of books and the confining discipline of school, ran
away to Texas, and finally entered the household of M. E.
Savage in the vicinity of Whitewright. He remained
there two years, and then crossed the Bed Biver and went
back to his uncle’s home. He gained his first practical
experience in merchandising as clerk for Victor M. Locke,
Sr., in the latter’s store near the present Town of Antlers.
For a time Joel Spring was associated with Uncle Billie
Spring in the proprietorship of a small store on Boebuck
Lake, and then moved the store to old Bockwall Lake, a
short distance south of the present site of Hugo. About
that time, on September 28, 1883, Joel Spring married
Miss Winnie Gooding, daughter of H. L. Gooding of old
Goodland, and granddaughter of Gov. Basil LeFlore, also
a prominent member of the LeFlore family just men-
tioned. Miss Gooding brought to her husband as her
marriage portion a small herd of cattle. These were
soon sold and the proceeds used to purchase Uncle Billie ’s
interest in the store. This was the commencement of
Joel Spring’s progressive career as a merchant and busi-
ness man.

At his death Joel Spring was survived by his widow
and seven children. The children are: Joel, born January
24, 1888; Lawrence E., born December 15, 1889; Jesse H.,
born August 4, 1891 ; Winnie, born November 20, 1894,
and now Mrs. H. S. Griffiths of Hugo; Dewey L., born
May 14, 1898; Bobert M., born October 27, 1899; and
Cicero O., born December 23, 1903.

Samuel Lee Arnold. The wearisomeness which fre-
quently ensues from the continuous following of one line
of endeavor has never been a feature of the career of
Samuel Lee Arnold. Gifted with business ability of a
diversified character, the present postmaster of Devol,
Oklahoma, has at various times followed farming, mer-
chandising and dealing in real estate, and in each connec-
tion has made his operations a success. As postmaster,
a position which he has held since October 11, 1914, he
has discharged his duties capably, and faithfully, and
there are few more popular officials in Cotton County.

Mr. Arnold is a native son of the Southwest, born at
Omen, Smith County, Texas, July 18, 1879, his parents
being George M. and Susan (Darnell) Arnold. The
Arnold family originated in England, from whence the
progenitor of the family in this country emigrated prob-
ably before the days of the Bevolution, settling in Vir-
ginia. From the Old Dominion the family moved to
Tennessee, where, in 1826, was born George M. Arnold,
who was born and reared on a farm there and engaged
in agricultural pursuits. Some time after his first mar-
riage, but prior to the outbreak of the Civil war, he
migrated to Texas and bought a farm in Smith County,
on which he made numerous improvements and erected
buildings. When the trouble between the North and the
South culminated in hostilities, he entered the ranks of
the Confederacy, in which he served until the close of the
struggle. He then returned to his farm and continued
to carry on operations until his retirement, when he
moved to Omen, and there passed away in August, 1912,
aged eighty-six years. He was a member of the Baptist
Church, and was affiliated with the Masons, in which he
attained the Boyal Arch degree. Mr. Arnold’s third

Vol. V— 4

wife was Susan Darnell, a native of Texas, who died in
Smith County, that state, in 1883, and they were the
parents of five children, as follows: Beulah, who mar-
ried Louis Horton, a carpenter and builder of Tyler,
Texas; Samuel Lee, of this notice; Sallie, who resides
with her half brother, Mitch, in Smith County, Texas,
on the old homestead; Harvey, who died at the age of
twelve years; and Homer, who died in infancy.

The early education of Samuel Lee Arnold was secured
in the district schools of Smith County, Texas, and fol-
lowing some further preparation he entered the Univer-
sity of Oklahoma, in 1900, remaining until June, 1904.
He drew a farm of 160 acres, two miles west of Bridge-
port, Oklahoma, in Caddo County, while still a college
student, and this he proved up in 1901. In .the fall of
1904 he turned his attention to mercantile lines, estab-
lishing himself in a hardware business at Bridgeport, but
after two years disposed of his interests there and moved
to the “Big Pasture,” in 1907 engaging in real estate
transactions at Bandlett. That city continued to be his
home and the scene of "his business labors until 1913,
when he came to Devol and became clerk in a hardware
store, which position he held until October 11, 1914,
when he was appointed postmaster of Devol by Post-
master-General Burleson. The entirely capable and thor-
oughly courteous manner in which he has discharged his
official duties demonstrates his fitness for public service.
In politics Mr. Arnold is a democrat, and while a resident
of Bandlett served in the capacity of justice of the
peace. With his family, he attends the Baptist Church.
Mr. Arnold is interested in fraternal matters, belonging
to Devol Lodge No. 420, Ancient Free and Accepted
Masons; Weatherford Chapter _ No. 31, Boyal Arch
Masons ; Devol Ch: oter, Order of the Eastern Star ; and
the local Lodge of Woodmen of the World.

On December 27, 1907, Mr. Arnold was married at
Overton, Texas, to Miss Ida Bagwell, a daughter of B. J.
Bagwell, a retired farmer now living at Overton. To this
union there have come two children: Wayne, who was
born April 19, 1908; and Odell, born December 9, 1911.

John B. Guter. The romantic and rugged home of
the Welsh people, and the land of the ancient Cymri,
who from their wild mountain fastnesses for centuries
defied the hordes of the foreign invaders, has produced
some of the best citizens of which this broad country
can boast. Steady, industrious, plodding, in America
they have helped to push forward into the new and
undeveloped regions, laying substantially the foundation
for a better citizenship. John B. Guyer, attorney, of
Oklahoma City, while not himself a native of Wales,
is a representative of an honored family whose members
have been pioneers of Kentucky and Missouri. He was
born in the latter state, in 1864, and is a son of Henry
S. and Mary A. (Claunch) Guyer.

The Guyer family, while originating in Wales, has
for many years been located in America. The grand-
father of John B. Guyer, Williamson Guyer, was a
pioneer settlor of Kentucky, and as eariy as 1830
migrated to Missouri, at a time when the nearest neigh-
bor of the family was twelve miles away. The grand-
father was an agriculturist, and through years of steady
industry became the proprietor of a satisfying fortune.
Henry S. Guyer was born in Kentucky, and was still a
child when taken by his parents to Missouri. There
he grew up amid agricultural surroundings, adopted
farming as his life work and throughout his active career
was engaged in the pursuits of the soil. He was also
well known as a public-spirited citizen, and at one time
served as a special representative of the Missouri
Legislature.

1808

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

John R. Guyer was educated in the public schools and
at Clarksburg College, Clarksburg, Moniteau County,
Missouri, and as a youth took up the study of telegraphy,
which he mastered. After leaving college he engaged in
teaching school for five years, and, following his mar-
riage in 1888, took up telegraphy as a business, being
engaged as an operator for the various telegraph com-
panies and the Associated Press. During this period
Mr. Guyer somehow found time from his duties to devote
to the study of law, and so assiduously did he apply him-
self thereto that in 1894 he was admitted to practice
before the baT of Texas, in which state he was at that
time located. Por two years thereafter he practiced his
profession with some success in Armstrong County, Texas,
then moving to Clayton, New Mexico, where he remained
until 1910. While a resident of that state Mr. Guyer
became actively interested in politics, and in 1899-1900
was a member of the Thirty-third Legislative Assembly
of New Mexico and was speaker pro tern of the House
of Representatives. Mr. Guyer came to Oklahoma City
in 1910, and here has continued to be engaged in a
general practice, in which he has met with deserved
success. Ever studious, industrious, conscientious and
alive to the best interests of all of his clients, thorough
in the preparation and complete in the presentation of
his eases, fair-minded and honorable in his methods of
trial, he is accounted in his professional life in this city
as a most capable and successful practitioner, a safe
counselor, and a lawyer thoroughly equipped in every
department of his calling. Mr. Guyer is a valued mem-
ber of the various organizations of his profession, and
is popular with his fellow members in the lodge and
encampment of the Odd Fellows. His religious belief
is that of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Mr.
Guyer maintains offices at No. 518-524 Lee Building.

In 1888 Mr. Guyer was married to a college classmate,
Miss Elizabeth Steele, daughter of Judge D. K. Steele,
of Clarksburg, Missouri, who was a lieutenant in the
Union army during the Civil war and subsequently rep-
resented his county three different times in the State
Legislature. He was also prominently identified with
the Grange movement in its inception in that county.
Mr. and Mrs. Guyer have three children: Wendell B.,

an electrical engineer; Harry L., and Juanita. The
family home is at No. 1608 East Tenth Street. Mrs.
Guyer ’s family descended from the Kirkpatricks of Ire-
land. All were a music loving people, and in the present
Guyer family this is well expressed, both Mr. and Mrs.
Guyer, as well as their children, being accomplished
vocalists and talented instrumentalists.

William E. McGuire. If “a good name is rather to
be chosen than great riches,” and if a purposeful life,
conforming to high ideals, impresses one’s personality
upon the society in which he lives to its lasting better-
ment, then one of Oklahoma’s most useful citizens is Wil-
liam E. McGuire of Pawhuska. Mr. McGuire is post-
master at Pawhuska, and his seventeen years of con-
tinuous service in that office makes him the oldest
postmaster in the state from point of continuity. How-
ever, his most important service has been as a teacher.
He is not unjustly referred to as “the children’s
friend,” since his greatest enthusiasm and interest have
always been in behalf of the younger and growing gen-
eration. He taught school for a great many years, was
superintendent of schools, has served on school boards and
helped to found educational facilities in different parts
of Oklahoma, and has also been an almost constant
worker in church and Sunday school. Mr. McGuire is
one of the old timers in Oklahoma, having first become
identified with this section as a teacher in the govern-
ment Indian schools many years ago and later moving
into the Cherokee Strip when it was opened.

A native of Missouri, he was born at Macon, Novem-
ber 28, 1858. He is a brother of former Congressman
B. S. McGuire, who for twelve years represented the
First Oklahoma District in Congress and is now practicing
law at Tulsa. Their parents were Joel and Rachel (Harri-
man) McGuire. His father was born in St. Clair County,
Illinois, in 1832, and his mother in Washington County,
Illinois, in 1834. They grew up and were married in
their native state, and in 1857 removed to Missouri. Dur-
ing the war Joel McGuire enlisted in a Missouri regiment
of the Union army, and served the last three years of
the conflict. In 1881 he removed from Missouri to
Chautauqua County, Kansas, and died there in 1894.
The mother died at the home of her son William in
Ponca City, Oklahoma, June 3, 1896. Joel McGuire
was a successful farmer and stock raiser, and for a
number of years bought, fed and shipped stock, mainly
to the St. Louis market. He was active in Grand Army
circles, was a member of the Baptist Church, and politi-
cally was in the main a republican, though at one time
he affiliated with the greenback party and was also
active in the Granger movement in Kansas. In the family
were ten children, three daughters and seven sons, two
of the sons being now deceased.

William E. McGuire lived with his father until the
latter removed to Kansas. While at home he at-
tended common schools and also was a student for two
years in the State Normal at Kirksville, Missouri.
Steadily for fifteen years he gave practically all his
time to his work as a teacher. His first two terms were
in Missouri, and he also taught in Kansas. In 1884
he was appointed a teacher in the Government Indian
school at Pawhuska, and lived in this city when hardly
any permanent buildings marked the site, and when wild
deer frequently ran across the prairie now intersected by
numerous streets and built up with business blocks and
homes. After one year Mr. McGuire resigned owing to
the incoming Cleveland administration, since at that time
the schools were not under the civil service rules. Return-
ing to Kansas he continued teaching there until 1893,
and then participated in the opening of the Cherokee
Strip, locating at Ponca City. During his first two
years there he served as city clerk, but was chiefly active
in organizing the local school districts. He was chair-
man of the board, and by his prompt and energetic
work had the first permanent school house built and
dedicated On the sixtieth day after the opening. Several
years later Mr. McGuire resumed his work as a teacher
and was superintendent of the schools at Ponca City,
and also conducted teachers’ normal during the summer
seasons. In 1898 he was appointed postmaster at Paw-
huska, and has held that office continuously since April
1st of that year, his present term expiring February 1,
1916. During all this seventeen years of service, which
is unique in the records of the postoffice department as
affecting Oklahoma, he has conducted the office with a
regularity and efficiency like clockwork, has never been
the object of any formal complaint from the authorities
and has in fact made his administration one of model
thoroughness. He has helped introduce all the many
improvements in the postal service inaugurated since
he became postmaster, including rural delivery, parcel
post, and other changes. When he took charge at Paw-
huska he found a fourth class office, and it is now an
office of the second class, employing nine clerks, with
up to date equipment, and with everything in perfect
running order.

Ever since he attained his majority Mr. McGuire has
been a republican in polities, though his chief concern has
been service rather than political honors. He is active
in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and since moving to
Pawhuska has been continuously superintendent of the

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1809

local Sunday school, and is also chairman of the board
of trustees of the church. In masonry he is affiliated
with the Lodge and with the Royal Arch Chapter, and also
belongs to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and
the Knights of Pythias. Mr. McGuire claims all children
as his friends, and there are hundreds of young men
and young women all over the Southwest who remember
with gratefulness his kindly influence while he was their
teacher. He assisted in organizing the schools of Paw-
huska and was president two years and a member five
years of the local board of education, and held that
office until the constitution legislated him off the board
on account of his relation as a federal official.

While he was superintendent of a school in Chautauqua,
Kansas, Mr. McGuire married one of his teachers. July
23, 1888, he married Miss Jennie Slater. She was born
at Quincy, Illinois, December 6, 1868. Four children
comprise their happy home circle at Pawhuska. Naomi
is a student in the music and fine arts department of
the State University at Norman. Joseph, the second
child, is now in high school. The two youngest are twin
brothers, Robert and Rolland, both in high school. These
twin boys are so much alike that their teachers have
much difficulty in distinguishing them. Along with his
many others talents as a useful worker Mr. McGuire com-
bines a taste and training in music, and has identified
himself with local choirs for twenty-five years.

John D. Appleby. The subject of this sketch was
born near Alberton, in Henderson County, Tennessee, on
March 6, 1878, being the oldest of eight children, only
three of whom are now living. His father, A. R. Appleby,
was married to Dona Roberts in 1876, and to this family
were born: John D. ; William F. ; Addie; James A.;
Elizabeth; Luther; Mary Beth and Emmons.

John D. Appleby attended the summer schools of his
county and when sixteen years old stood the teachers’
examination and was granted a certificate to teach school
but because of his age did not begin the active teach-
ing of schools until he was seventeen years old. He con-
tinued to teach school and go to school until he was
twenty-one, at; which time he graduated from the Southern
Normal University, located at Huntingdon, Tennessee,
taking .the LL. B., B. S., and B. A. degrees the same
year.

After having been admitted to the practice of law,
he went to Henderson, Tennessee, where he opened
an office and there practiced his chosen profession during
the year 1900. Being politically inclined he took a very
important part in the McKinley campaign of that year
making many speeches throughout that and adjoining
counties.

In January, 1901, Mr. Appleby left Henderson, Ten-
nessee, and came to Oklahoma, locating at El Reno, where
he resided until the opening of the Kiowa and Comanche
countries, when he came to Hobart on August 5, 1901,
and where he has since resided. During the time that Mr.
Appleby has been in Hobart he has at all times taken a
leading part in everything that went for the betterment
and upbuilding of his community.

For the time being at least Mr. Appleby has not fol-
lowed up his chosen profession, but has interested himself
in other vocations. He was deputy county clerk for a
number of years, and in 1912 was appointed postmaster
at Hobart by President Taft, his appointment being a
personal one. He served in that capacity until December
7, 1914, at which time he tendered his resignation to take
up private business.

On March 4, 1904, Mr. Appleby was married to Miss
Madge L. Osterhout, to which union one baby now graces
their home, John D. Jr., three years old. Mrs. Appleby
is one of those versatile, helpful personages who takes

keen delight and pleasure in all the activities of her
husband.

Always more or less politically inclined, Mr. Appleby
has at all times been found doing what he could for the
advancement of the republican party, in an honorable
way. He was the campaign manager for Hon. James A.
Harris of Wagoner, Oklahoma, for National committee-
man, and was successful in having his man elected
National committeeman for Oklahoma in what was one of
the most stubborn political fights that has ever been
waged in the state. On April 22 of this year he was
unanimously elected secretary of the State Central Com-
mitteee.

James D. Osborn, Jr., M. D. One of the native-born
sons of the Southwest who has contributed his ablest
efforts to the progress of his community and labored
faithfully in its behalf is James D. Osborn, Jr., M. D.,
who has been engaged in practice at Frederick, Okla-
homa, since 1906. He has been remarkably successful
in his profession, his skill having won for him a fore-
most place among the physicians of Tillman County.

Doctor Osborn was born at Cleburne, Texas, Decem-
ber 22, 1878, and is a son of Dr. J. S. Osborn, Sr., and
a member of a family which migrated to America from
England prior to the Revolutionary war and settled in
Virginia. Dr. J. D. Osborn, Sr., was born at Greens-
boro, Hale County, Alabama, in 1846, and was reared in
his native community, where he began the study of
medicine. Graduated from the University of Virginia
with the degree of Doctor of Medicine, he was engaged
in practice for several years in Alabama, but for the
past forty years has followed his profession at Cleburne,
Texas, and is one of the well known and highly esteemed
physicians and surgeons of that part of the Lone Star
State. The high regard in which he is held professionally
is shown by the fact that he has served in the capacity
of president of the Texas State Medical Society, and his
standing among his professional brethren in the various
other organizations of his calling, while as a citizen he
has taken a constant interest in civic affairs and has
served as mayor of Cleburne for many years. He has
likewise been a member of the Texas State Examining
Board, is one of the leading and influential democrats
of his locality, and is prominent ifi the Knights of
Pythias and other social and fraternal orders. During
the Civil war, Doctor Osborn served as captain of a
company under the redoubtable Forrest, of the Con-
federacy, and was wounded in the shoulder in one of
the numerous battles in which he participated. He
married Miss Julia Pittman, who was born in Palmyra,
Missouri, in 1851, and died at Cleburne, Texas, in 1904,
and they became the parents of four children, namely:
Dr. E. B., a graduate of the University of Texas, who
is engaged in the practice of medicine with his father
at Cleburne, Texas; Hattie Lu, who died unmarried in
1895 at the age of twenty-two years ; Irene, who married
Frank Blair, a wholesale grocer of Wichita Falls, Texas;
and Dr. James D., of this notice.

James D. Osborn, Jr., attended the public schools of
Cleburne, Texas, and was there graduated from the
high school with the class of 1896. He next became a
student at the military school at Forney, Texas, where
he remained one year, this being followed by two years
of attendance at the University of Texas. Doctor
Osborn then passed a like period at the University of
Louisiana, where he was graduated in 1901 with the
degree of Doctor of Medicine, and this has since been
supplemented by post-graduate work at the Chicago Eye,
Ear, Nose and Throat College, where he prepared him-
self for specializing in diseases of these organs. He
began practice at Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1901

1810

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

and remained in that city until 1906, when he came to
his present field practice, the City of Frederick, where
he maintains offices in the McFadden Building, at
214% Grand Avenue. He carries on a general medical
and surgical practice and has been successful in building
up an excellent business, and at this time is surgeon
for the Frisco and Missouri, Kansas & Texas railroads
at Frederick. Doctor Osborn continues as a careful
student, keeping fully abreast of his profession in every
way, and is a valued member of the Tillman County
Medical Society, the Oklahoma Medical Society and
the American Medical Association. A democrat in poli-
tics, he served Tillman County as its first coroner, but
has not been a seeker after public preferment, the
exacting demands of his calling having taken his entire
time and attention. His religious connection is with the
Episcopal Church, and fraternally he belongs to the
Praetorians and to Frederick Lodge No. 1217, Benevo-
lent and Protective Order of Elks, of which he is past
exalted ruler.

In October, 1902, Doctor Osborn was married at
Cleburne, Texas, to Miss May Brown, daughter of
John C. Brown, a retired citizen of Texas. One child
has been born to this union: Pauline, who is attend-
ing the public school.

William Mason Cott, M. D. In point of continuous
residence and practice Doctor Cott is now one of the old-
est physicians and surgeons of Okmulgee County, where
he has had his home since 1900. Professionally he stands
among the leading physicians in the state, and has ac-
complished a great deal of service in Okmulgee during
the past fifteen years, and has been rewarded propor-
tionately in a business way.

Doctor Cott came to Oklahoma with considerable experi-
ence in his profession acquired during his residence in
Missouri. He was born in Saline County, Missouri,
December 1, 1869, a son of Jackson Washington and
Mary Jane (Wilhite) Cott. His father was born at
Knightstown, Indiana, January 10, 1829, and the mother
was born in Saline County, Missouri, October 7, 1834.
The Wilhites were among the pioneer settlers in Saline
County. The parents were married in that county in
1856 and they continued to make their residence on one
farm there until 'about ten years ago, when they moved
to Okmulgee, where they are now spending their declin-
ing years. The father- is at this writing eighty-seven
years of age. He was a soldier in a Missouri regiment
during the Civil war. There were seven sons and three
daughters in the family, with Doctor Cott as the sixth in
order of age.

His early life was spent on a farm, and his education
came from the rural schools supplemented by two years
in William Jewell College at Liberty, Missouri. He
earned a large part of the money necessary for his own
education, and in 1896 graduated M. D. from the St.
Louis College of Physicians and Surgeons. Then fol-
lowed four years of practice in his home state, two years
in Cooper County and two years in the Sweet Springs
Sanitarium.

He arrived at Okmulgee April 29, 1900, and has since
looked after a large general practice and since statehood
has been county superintendent of health and county
physician. For fourteen years his offices have been in
the Bell Building, ever since it was constructed. At this
writing he is completing a handsome new country home a
mile and a half northeast of the city. In politics he is a
democrat, and he was the first secretary of the chamber
of commerce at Okmulgee. Fraternally he is a Mason
and Shriner, a member of the Elks, and charter member
of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. His church is
the Baptist.

On October 9, 1897, Doctor Cott married Mary Louise
Wing, who was born in Cooper County, Missouri, daugh-
ter of D. Warner Wing. Doctor Cott and wife have three
children: Dorsey Wing, Marian Elizabeth and William
Warner.

James S. Ross. During his professional career at
Oklahoma City, in the last five years, Mr. Ross has
enjoyed a large and growing practice mainly in the field
of corporation law, and his associations and connections
are those enjoyed by the leaders of the bar. Mr. Ross
is a Tennesseean, a descendent of the Scotch elan of
Ross, and his father was a successful Tennessee lawyer.

James S. Ross was born at Fort Donelson, Stewart
County, Tennessee, in 1878, a son of Ambrose B. and
Missouri (Gray) Ross. His father died in 1882 and his
mother in 1908. The former was for thirty years con-
nected with various county offices in Stewart County in
addition to his practice as a lawyer, and was well known
in local affairs.

Educated in the public schools of his native county,
Mr. Ross read law in a private office, and was admitted
to the Tennessee bar in 1899. Aft* practicing a short
time in Tennessee he moved to Paducah, Kentucky, and
during the ten years of his residence in that city enjoyed
a prosperous business. In 1909 he located in Oklahoma
City, where much of his practice is in handling the legal
affairs for various corporations, both of Oklahoma and
other states. He is a member of the County and State
and American Bar associations.

Active in the democratic party, Mr. Ross was one of
the candidates in 1912 for the democratic nomination
to Congress from his district, but the peculiar conditions
that prevailed during the primary campaign put him
among the losers.

A member of the Masonic fraternity, he has taken
fourteen degrees in the Scottish Rite, and his church home
is with the First Christian Church of Oklahoma City.
In 1901 Mr. Ross married Miss Emma Halloway, daughter
of C. M. Halloway of Tennessee. .Their three children
are Virginia, James A. and Myra. Mr. Ross resides at
544 West Thirty-second Street, and his offices are in the
American National Bank Building.

Judge Preslie B. Cole. While the present genera-
tion of lawyers in Oklahoma will have no difficulty in
identifying Judge Cole on account of his long established
position as a member of the MeAlester bar, there is no
question that he deserves the grateful remembrance of
a later generation, particularly on account of splendid
record while on the District Bench, from which he
retired early in 1915 after eight years of capable service
as judge. Judge Cole represented the best quality of the
judiciary and in his official capacity set some high stand-
ards of service for his successors to follow. For fully a
quarter of a century he has given all the energy of his
nature to a profession which represents to him the dig-
nity and service associated with the law.

He was nearly thirty years of age when admitted to
the bar and his earlier career has been one of struggle
and hard work to support himself and gain the object
of his steadfast ambition. He was born at Turin,
Georgia, December 6, 1862, a son of Monroe W. and
Nancy (Russell) Cole. His father was born at Danville,
Virginia, of German lineage, while the mother was a
native of South Carolina and of Seotch-Irish ancestry.
Judge Cole’s parents were married in Georgia, where
they afterwards lived until their death. His father was
an architect and building contractor, and during the
war between the states he made a fine record as lieuten-
ant of his company.

Reared in Georgia, Preslie B. Cole accepted such

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1811

advantages as were presented by the local schools where
he spent his boyhood, but most of his liberal and broad
education and knowledge of men and affairs have come
as a result of his varied experience since leaving school
and becoming dependent upon his own resources. When
nineteen he left home and undertook to make his own
way in the world. From Georgia he removed to Arkan-
sas, and at this stage of his early career was not too
proud to accept any honorable means of earning a living.
He finally became clerk in a small store at Hackett City,
and later developed as a traveling salesman. His head-
quarters at first were at Fort Smith and later at St.
Louis. With this experience back of him he realized
that his real talent pointed in another direction and he
quietly but determinedly took up the study of law while
in Arkansas.

Judge Cole was admitted to the Arkansas bar in 1891,
but in the same year moved to Indian Territory and
established his home and began practice at MeAlester.
That city has been his residence ever since, and in a few
years his abilities had gained him recognition as one o,f
the leading attorneys of the old territory. His experi-
ence and other qualifications made him the logical candi-
date when Indian Territory became merged with
Oklahoma Territory as the new state, for the .office of
district judge, and he was nominated and elected judge
of the Fourth Judicial District. In that office he served
eight years, his term ending in January, 1915.

While Judge Cole sat on the District Bench more than
1,000 criminal cases came before him, 100 or more of
them being murder trials. It is a supreme tribute to
his judicial temperament, his fairness and impartiality,
and his sound knowledge of precedence and equity, that
in only two instances were his decisions in criminal cases
reversed by a higher court. At the same time a great
number of civil eases were tried before him, and in that
class of eases there resulted not more than half a dozen
reversals altogether.

Judge Cole has long been an active democrat, and
was a delegate to the National Democratic Convention
at Baltimore in 1912, where he served as a member of
the committee on credentials. He was an ardent sup-
porter of the candidacy of Champ Clark for president,
and served as a member of Clark’s advisory committee.

Robert H. Loofbourrow. Judge Loofbourrow re-
tired from the distinguished office of associate justice of
the Supreme Court of Oklahoma on the 1st of January,
1915, after having declined nomination for a second
term, and his incumbency of this position fully estab-
lished his prestige as one of the leading lawyers and
jurists of the state within whose borders he has main-
tained his home since 1890. The judge is a scion of a
staunch old Scottish family that is of patrician lineage
and that was founded in America prior to the War of
the Revolution, the name having been prominently and
worthily identified with the civic and industrial develop-
ment of various of the sovereign commonwealths of the
Union. The genealogy is traced back to Lord Loofbour-
row, whose descendants immigrated to America in the
colonial days and established a home in North Caro-
lina, where they became citizens of marked prominence
and influence. Representatives of a later generation
became identified with the pioneer history of Kentucky,
and from the old Bluegrass State went forth members
of a still later generation to become sterling citizens
of Ohio. Judge Wade Loofbourrow was long one of the
most honored lawyers and jurists at Washington Court
House, Fayette County, Ohio, and by his will he devised
to that attractive little city, the judicial center of the
county, his extensive and well selected law library, which
is still maintained as a public law library at that place,

the bequest having been the valuable nucleus around
which has been gathered one of the best technical
libraries of its kind to be claimed by any of the non-
metropolitan counties of the Buckeye State. Judge
Wade Loofbourrow served on the bench of the Circuit
Court and was a lawyer of specially high attainments,
so that his great-grandson may consistently be said to
have as a natural heritage a predilection for the pro-
fession in which he has achieved marked success and
distinction.

Judge Robert H. Loofbourrow was born on a farm
in Marion County, Illinois, on the 29th of January, 1873,
and is a son of Orlando J. and Sarah T. (Wilson) Loof-
bourrow. The judge was a boy at the time of the family
removal to Missouri, and a short time thereafter removal
was made to Kansas, where his father became a success-
ful agriculturist and stockgrower and where he remained
until 1890, when the family came to Oklahoma Territory
and settled in Beaver County. Orlando J. Loofbourrow
was born at Washington Court House, Ohio, but was
reared and educated in Illinois, and it was his to gain
a full quota of pioneer experience in the West. After
coming to Oklahoma he became one of the representative
exponents of the agricultural and live-stock industries
in the territory.

To the public schools of Kansas Judge Loofbourrow
is indebted for his early educational discipline, and in
preparation for his chosen profession he entered the Iowa
College of Law, in the City of Des Moines, from which
institution he withdrew prior to graduation. Thereafter
he continued the study of law under effective private pre-
ceptorship, at Beaver, Oklahoma, where, in 1896, he was
admitted to the territorial bar, upon examination before
the District Court of Beaver County. He initiated the
practice of his profession at Beaver, where he has since
continued to maintain his home and where he soon gained
place as one of the leading members of the bar of Beaver
County, besides proving one of the most loyal and pro-
gressive citizens of that section of the present State of
Oklahoma. From 1897 to 1899 he served as county attor-
ney, and for the ensuing two years his services continued
to be enlisted in the position of assistant county attorney.
In 1904 he again became county attorney, and of this
office he continued the valued incumbent until the admis-
sion of Oklahoma to statehood, in 1907. Higher honors
then became his, for under the new state regime he was
elected to the bench of the Nineteenth Judicial District.
He gave a most able and effective administration and his
possession of exceptional judicial acumen gained to him
further and distinguished recognition, since, on the 1st
of September, 1913, he was appointed associate justice
of the Supreme Court of the state, to accept which pre-
ferment he retired from the District Court bench. As
associate justice of the Supreme Court his earnest and
admirable services are now an integral part of the history
of that tribunal, from which he retired in January, 1915,
owing to his desire to resume the private practice of his
profession at Beaver, the judicial center of the county
of the same name.

Judge Loofbourrow is a member of the directorate of
the Bank of Beaver and is the owner of valuable real
estate in his home city and county. In the Masonic
fraternity he has attained the eighteenth degree of the
Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, besides which he is
affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows,
the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and the
Knights of Pythias, in which last mentioned he is past
chancellor of Beaver Lodge, No. 7.

On the 16th of May, 1897, was solemnized the marriage
of Judge Loofbourrow to Miss Bertha L. Groves, daugh-
ter of Ansel Groves, of Beaver, and they have three sons,
Harold, Bernard and Hale.

1812

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Charles A. Holden. Among the men who are win-
ning success at the bar of Western Oklahoma, one who
is rapidly coming to the forefront is Charles A. Holden,
city attorney of Clinton, and one of the energetic and
influential young democrats of Custer County. Mr.
Holden was born at Walhalla, Oconee County, South
Carolina, September 23, 1887, and is a son of A. P. and
Anna P. (Conley) Holden.

The Holden family originated in England, from
whence one John Holden came to America about the
year 1700 and settled near Williamsburg, Virginia, where
he was a planter, a vocation followed by many of the
family. Among his descendants were three who fought
as soldiers in the Revolutionary war, John Holden, Wil-
liam Holden and Capt. John Holden. The last named
was a captain of militia in the patriot army, and, like
the others, a planter. The son of Capt. John Holden,
also named John, was the great-grandfather of Charles
A. Holden, and in 1805 located in the Pendleton Dis-
trict, South Carolina. He passed his life in planting
and died in 1856, leaving a family of twelve children.
Five of his sons were in one company in the Second
Regiment, South Carolina Volunteer Infantry, during
the Civil war, and another son was a captain in another
regiment under Wade Hampton. The oldest of the
twelve children of John Holden was the grandfather of
Charles A. Holden. He was born in Pendleton District,
South Carolina, in 1813, and followed the family voca-
tion of planting. When he attained his majority he
left home and secured a plantation of his own in the
vicinity of Pine Mountain, Georgia, and there his death
occurred May 31, 1893.

A. P. Holden was born at Pine Mountain, Georgia, in
1860, and about the time of his marriage moved across
the state line to Walhalla, South Carolina. There he
was engaged as a lumberman until November, 1907,
when he came to Cordell, Oklahoma, where his death
occurred February 1, 1908. He was a stanch and
unswerving democrat and a member of the Masonic fra-
ternity. Mrs. Holden, who survives and resides at
Cordell, is a native of Macon County, Georgia. There
were three children in the family, as follows: Charles

A., of this notice; W. S., who is a merchant and resides
at Cordell; and Bessie, who died February 17, 1908, at
Cordell, aged sixteen years.

Charles A. Holden received his early education in
the public schools of Walhalla, South Carolina, being
graduated from the high school there in the class of
1906. The next two years were spent at the University
of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill, and three years were
then passed at the University of Missouri, at Columbia,
where he was graduated in 1911 with the degree of
Bachelor of Arts. He was admitted to the bar in that
same year and in September began practice at Cordell,
Oklahoma, from whence he came to Clinton in July, 1913.
This city has continued to be his field of practice, his
offices being located in the Welch Building, on Frisco
Avenue. He has built up an excellent general practice,
being equally at home in all branches of his profession,
and is the representative of some large interests. A
stanch democrat, he has taken an active part in county
and state convention work, having attended every county
convention since coming to Oklahoma and being a cam-
paign speaker of note, whose services are always in
demand. In 1914 he was the successful candidate of
his party for the office of city attorney, a position in
which he is rendering his adopted city valuable service.
Mr. Holden is a member of the Phi Alpha Delta Greek
letter college fraternity, and is generally popular in
social circles of the city.

On April 15, 1914, at Pawnee, Oklahoma, Mr. Holden

married Miss Jennie B. Berry, daughter of George M.
Berry, who was a member of the Oklahoma Constitu-
tional Convention and is now a well known banker of
Pawnee.

James R. Calloway, M. D. The pioneer medical prac-
titioner of Paul’s Valley is Doctor Calloway, who located
in that small village in October, 1889. That, it will be
remembered, was only a few months after the original
opening of Oklahoma Territory, and at the beginning of
the epoch of modern development and civilization in the
present state. For more than twenty-five years Doctor
Calloway has carried his skill and counsel to hundreds of
homes and families in that city and surrounding country.
In the early days he underwent all the hardships and
privations of a pioneer doctor, traveling for miles to
visit his patients, being quite regardless of his own health
and comfort in the performance of his professional
duties. In later years his practice has become more and
more an office practice, and confined to a smaller radius
of country. He is a specialist in diseases of children and
in that department of the profession is regarded as sec-
ond to none in this part of the state.

His lifetime has covered a great variety of scenes and
experiences. He was born in Denton County of Northern
Texas August 22, 1854, and his father, T. H. Calloway,
was also a physician and surgeon. Dr. T. H. Calloway
was born in Missouri in 1825. It is interesting to note
that the famous Daniel Boone had a brother-in-law
named Calloway, after whom Calloway County, Missouri,
was named. The Calloways were Seotch-Irish people and
located in Virginia during colonial times. T. H. Callo-
way’s parents were pioneers in Northern Texas, where
he was reared and married. In 1859, when Dr. James R.
was five years of age, he moved out to California, and
lived in various places of that state and in Oregon. In
1863 he went as one of the first pioneers to Boise City,
Idaho, and was in that state for several years during the
interesting period following the discovery of the mines in
that country. At one time he was a member of the Idaho
Legislature, and always took a prominent part in civic
and political affairs. In 1872 Dr. T. H. Calloway moved
to the eastern part of Indian Territory, but not long
afterwards returned to Texas and located near Decatur
in Wise County. In 1884 he was again attracted to the
Northwest and settled at Caldwell, near Boise City,
Canyon County, Idaho, and lived there until his death in
1904. When a very young man he had served with Gen-
eral Price as a soldier in the war with Mexico and was
a participant in some of the campaigns in New Mexico.
Besides his regular profession as a physician he was a
minister of the Christian Church. In politics he was a
democrat and a member of the Masonic fraternity. Dr.
T. H. Calloway married Mary Allen, who was born in
Missouri in 1835 and died at Caldwell, Idaho, in 1894.
Their children were: Dr. James R. ; William T., a farmer
at Namba, Idaho; Ida, wife of Frank Brown, who is a
miner and lives in Boise City, Idaho; Melinda C., wife of
J. A. Dement, a stock raiser at Caldwell, Idaho; and
Mary Allen, who is unmarried and a graduate physician
now practicing at Boise.

Dr. James R. Calloway spent his early youth and man-
hood in Texas, California and Oregon, was about nine
years of age when the family removed to Idaho, and in
1872 came with them to Indian Territory and soon after-
wards to Decatur, Wise County, Texas. His early ex-
periences were as a farmer and he also did some mining in
Colorado. From boyhood he was a student and some of
his family called him a book worm. Having access to his
father’s medical library, he became well grounded in the
medical science so far as text-books were concerned

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1813

before reaching his majority. His father was opposed
to the idea of his practicing medicine, and it was not
until he came to Paul's Valley in the fall of 1889 that he
set up as a regular member of the profession. For a
number of years he was an undergraduate practitioner,
but finally entered the medical department of the Texas
Christian University at Fort Worth, where he was grad-
uated M. D. in 1897. He is properly regarded now as
one of the leading physicians in this section of Southern
Oklahoma. He was frequently called into consultation by
fellow physicians, and his wide experience has given him
a thorough post-graduate knowledge of medicine.

Like his father he was a regularly ordained minister
of the Christian Church, and between the ages of twenty
and fifty preached quite regularly and still fills an occa-
sional pulpit. His office's are in the Bruce Building of
Paul’s Valley. In territorial days he belonged to the old
Chickasaw Medical Society and was the first president
of the Washita Valley Medical Society, which afterwards
became the Garvin County Medical Society, to which he
still belongs. He is a member of the Oklahoma State
Society and a member of the American Medical Society.
In polities he is an independent democrat and is affiliated
with Paul’s Valley Lodge No. 196, Independent Order of
Odd Fellows, in which he has frequently filled the office
of chaplain.

In Texas in 1876 Doctor Calloway married Miss
Frances Elizabeth Clemens. Her father was the late
Andrew Clemens. To their marriage have been born
five children: John R., who is a physician and surgeon,
having taken his degree in 1907 in the St. Louis College
of Physicians and Surgeons, and is now practicing in
Mescalero, New Mexico; Ethel M. is the wife of W. W.
Howerton, a farmer at Foster, Oklahoma; Lillian M. is
the wife of Francis L. Armstrong, a fire insurance man
at Spokane, Washington; Etta Frances, who is still
single, was graduated from the Boise City High School,
was a teacher for a number of years and is now a sten-
ographer and living at home with her father; Vivienne,
also unmarried, is a sophomore in the School of Journal-
ism at the Oklahoma State University at Norman.

Joseph Lamar Griffitts. During the twenty years
since his admission to the bar in Tennessee, fifteen of
which have been spent in Oklahoma, Joseph L. Griffitts
has employed his talent and abilities in such a way as
to place him among the front rank of Oklahoma lawyers,
and he has the chief practice in his home Town of
Buffalo, Harper County.

His birth occurred at Friendsville, Tennessee, July 23,
1864, and he represents old and prominent family stock
of that state. His parents were John W. and Mary
Elizabeth (Donaldson) Griffitts. His grandfather, Man-
uel Griffiths, was a native of Virginia, and married a
Georgia girl. John W. Griffitts, who was born in Ken-
tucky, June 13, 1831, and died December 18, 1909, spent
his active lifetime as a farmer in Tennessee. He was
also prominent in local affairs, and for twenty years was
a member of the County Court of Loudon County, Ten-
nessee, having filled that office up to the time of his
death. He served as an elder in the Presbyterian Church
forty years. He was married in 1856 to Mary Elizabeth
Donaldson, who was born February 3, 1839, in Tennessee,
and died January 16, 1897. She became the mother of
eight children, five sons and three daughters: James

Henry, who was born July 16, 1857; Nancy Elizabeth,
born September 15, 1859, was married in 1886 to Samuel
S. Hutsell, and is now a resident at Sweetwater, Ten-
nessee; Thomas Nelson, born September 26, 1861, is a
farmer at Lenoir City, Tennessee; Joseph L. was the
fourth in age; Stephen Alexander was born January 22,

1866, and died August 18, 1913; Jacob Lafayette, born
May 20, 1868, is a minister of the Methodist Episcopal
Church South at Cedar Keys, Florida; Lucinda Jane,
born July 11, 1875, died November 28, 1903; Nora
Blanche was born March 20, 1877, and is still single.

Joseph Lamar Griffitts completed his early education
in Maryville College at Maryville, Tennessee. His early
life was taken up with varied labors and employments,
until he realized his ambition to study law. He read
liis text books at Loudon, Tennessee, until 1895, and was
then admitted to practice in all the courts of the state.
From Tennessee he came to Oklahoma in 1900, and
began practice at Tonkawa. While there he served as
police judge until 1905 and was elected city attorney
in 1907. However, in the same year, he resigned that
office and moved to Buffalo, and after statehood was
elected the first county judge of Harper County. That
office he filled with distinction and credit for three years
and two months. Since then he has applied all his time
and energies to his large private practice at Buffalo.
He is a democrat, and is affiliated with the Masonic
Order.

At Alva, Oklahoma, February 5, 1909, Judge Griffitts
married Miss Grace Pennington. She was born February
11, 1880, in Wabaunsee County, Kansas, a daughter of

J. W. and Catherine Pennington, who were natives of

Illinois. Mrs. Griffitts prior to her marriage was for
four years a teacher in the public schools of Dewey
County, Oklahoma. To their union have been born three
daughters and one son: Guendolen Grace, Josephine L.,

Cassius Lamar and Muriel Elaine.

Howard Weber. Probably everyone in Oklahoma and
anyone who has any general information on the oil in-
dustry of the United States is familiar with the Weber
pool in Washington County in the Bartlesville district.
The discoverer of this pool and the man who supplied
the enterprise and capital for its development has been
an honored resident of Bartlesville for the past ten
years.

Dr. Howard Weber is a physician, is enrolled in the
medical fraternity of Oklahoma, but has never practiced
since locating within this state. Since coming here
he has been one of the really big men in Oklahoma affairs.
A fortune has been amassed through his operations in
mining and as an oil producer, and there are few
Oklahomans who control a greater volume of resources
both in this state and elsewhere. Doctor Weber is also
a prominent man in the democratic party of Oklahoma,
and is now serving as a member of the State Central
Committee.

Considering his great achievements as an oil man it
seems fitting that he should have been born in the state
of Pennsylvania. Doctor Weber was born in Dempseytown
in the Keystone state, October 20, 1862, a son of George

K. and Elizabeth (Homan) Weber. Both parents were
born in Center County, Pennsylvania, and spent all their
lives in their native state. When quite young they moved
to Venango County in the western part of Pennsylvania,
and George K. Weber died there in February, 1905, at
the age of seventy-four. He was a tailor by trade, but
later went into general merchandising. A stanch demo-
crat, he was much interested in politics, and being a man
of simple habits and plain living acquired a substantial
competency. The widowed mother, who died February
23, 1916, at the age of eighty, represented people who
were among the pioneers of Western Pennsylvania. She
was the ninth in a large family of children, and nearly
all of them are still living, the youngest more than seventy
years old. Doctor Weber was one of ten children, six
of whom are still alive.

He went into the world with the equipment of a

1814

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

liberal education. He had attended Allegheny College
at Meadville and in 1887 was graduated in medicine
from Long Island Hospital Medicine College. For nearly
ten years he applied himself diligently to his chosen work
with home at East Hickory, Pennsylvania. With the
resources then at his command he started his really great
work in developing the natural wealth of the West. In
1896 he went to Colorado, became interested in mining,
and in 1897 took part in the great rush to the Alaska,
gold fields, where he remained about a year, being as-
sociated with H. H. Breene of Bartlesville in that field.
In July, 1898, he returned to the states, and resinned
the practice of medicine at Dempseytown and at Oil City,
Pennsylvania.

His interests in the oil industry led him to move to
Kansas in 1903, and he also became an investor in the
Oklahoma fields. From Independence, Kansas, he moved
to Bartlesville in 1905, and has since given all his time
to his extensive interests as an oil and gas operator and
to his large mining holdings.

As already stated Doctor Weber discovered the famous
Weber pool east of Dewey, developed it, and made a
large share of his fortune from that locality. He also
discovered the shallow sand pool northeast of Dewey,
and developed that and several other properties in Wash-
ington County. With George B. Harmon, under the name
of the Harmon Oil Company, he developed the Huff-
steter & Burr leases half a mile south of Kiefer, finally
selling his interests in that property for $87,000. He
then bought 700 acres east of Delaware, was engaged
in development work for a year and sold out to the
Prairie Oil and Gas Company for half a million dollars.
Doctor Weber still has some extensive holdings and leases
in this vicinity.

For a year or more there was a lull in his operations
as an oil operator and in that interim he invested heavily
in copper mines north of Bisbee, Arizona. In August,
1914, he purchased from former Gov. Charles N.
Haskell a half interest in the noted Barney Thlocco
lease, and developed it to its output of about eleven
thousand barrels per day, and it is still producing over
two thousand barrels a day from thirty wells. He also
owns 360 acres in the territory covered by the Weber
pool, and operates under lease about as much more.

As a democrat, Doctor Weber has taken much interest
in politics in every community where he has lived. For
the past four years he has been a member of the state
central committee, and served as a delegate at large
to the Baltimore convention, which named Woodrow
Wilson for President. On April 11th, 1916, he was
elected a delegate at large to the Democratic National
Convention, which convenes at St. Louis, June 14th, 1916,
to renominate Woodrow Wilson for the next President by
a unanimous vote. He was a member of the finance
committee which supplied the funds for the Cruee cam-
paign in Oklahoma, and since taking his place on the
state committee the organization has never made any
demand upon Washington County which has not been met.
While living in Pennsylvania he was chairman of the
Forest County Democratic Committee. He has also been
appointed a member of the Southern Development Con-
gress.

Doctor Weber is a member of the Benevolent and
Protective Order of Elks, and in 1915 took his first
degrees in Masonry, and has now gone by rapid suc-
cession as far as he can get in the various degrees and
orders of that ancient fraternity.

With all his material success Doctor Weber finds his
greatest pride in his family and home. In 1885 he mar-
ried Miss Etta- J. Carter, a native of Pennsylvania.
They have five children: Dr. H. C., who lives in Bartles-

ville; Mark U. ; Morris Kritzer, who graduated from the
Culver Military Academy in Indiana in June, 1916;
Savilla, wife of W. C. Kaymond; and Sherwell G., who
is now a student in the Culver Military Academy. All
of the children have their home in Bartlesville and are
young people of great promise, and the older ones are
already filling useful places in the world.

William W. Wilson. In Choctaw County, a place of N
distinctive prominence and influence is held by William 1
Ward Wilson, who, as a merchant, banker and stock-
man, has played an important and worthy part in eon- |
neetion with the civic and industrial development of I
this section of the state and especially of his home town I
of Fort Towson. I

Wherever the United States Government established a
frontier military post in the early part of the eighteenth
century there abounds history and a certain atmos- I
phere of romance at the present day. Fort Towson, |

where once were stationed two members of the United II

States Army who were destined to achieve great dis- I

tinetion, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Gen. George B. Me- [

Clellan, possesses more of historic charm and interest II

than many other military posts that, like it, have lived II

and thrived and finally been abandoned. The martial I

phase of its history can never fail of interest and this II

interest is enhanced by its later record as a place of im- [I

portance in the Choctaw Indian Nation. The story of II

Fort Towson is for another chapter of history, but be-
cause its crumbled ruins still mark the place where it |

was built nearly one hundred years ago, almost within I

a stone’s throw of the modern and vigorous town which
perpetuates its name, a reversion to its ancient history I
puts a breath of charm into the community that ‘ ‘ Billy
Wilson” founded. On the site of the present Village I

of Fort Towson Mr. Wilson once herded and fed his I

cattle, and long before that he killed deer and turkey on I

the site where substantial brick business buildings now I

stand. The Town of Fort Towson, not far distant from
the site of the old fort, is situated on a tract of land that
Wilson and his brother possessed or controlled before I
the allotment period. This tract was once a part of
their cattle range, and they were among the pioneers
of the cattle industry in this section of the former Choc- I
taw Nation. When it was made known that Billy Wilson
is not yet sixty years old and that he grew to manhood I
long after the post at Fort Towson had been abandoned,
and when it is made known that within a fe.w hundred
yards from the post he has seen deer in herds of forty I
and fifty and wild turkey by the hundreds, some idea is
conveyed of the frontier wildness of the landscape at the
time when the government here established a military
post, nearly a century ago.

The Town of Fort Towson is new and vital. It was
established in 1903, at the time when a line of railroad
was in process of construction through this section. Prior
to its founding Doaksville had been the general trading
post of this region, the latter place having been one of
the earliest settlements of the Choctaw Nation. The first
store in the new town was erected and stocked by the
Doaksville Trading Company, which had developed a sub-
stantial business at Doaksville, from which older town
soon came other merchants to cast in their lot with the
ambitious and newer community, the result being that
within a comparatively short time Doaksville became little
more than a memory. The Wilson brothers eventually
purchased the stock and business of the Doaksville Trad-
ing Company and about the same time they organized
one of the first banking institutions in the new town.
Several changes and reorganization have taken place
since, and on December 31, 1915, the First National Bank,

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1815

of which W. W. Wilson, E. H. Wilson and E. D. Wilbor
had controlling interests, and the First State Bank, con-
trolled by Ed Leonard and Sam McKinney and T. E.
Hopson consolidated and retained the name of the First
State Bank. This is a strong institution, with Ed Leon-
ard, president; W. W. Wilson, vice president, and Sam
McKinney, cashier. One of the largest and best equipped
mercantile establishments of the former Choctaw Nation
is the finely equipped general-merchandise store of Wil-
liam W. Wilson and it occupies a substantial brick build-
ing of modern design and facilities, so that both the
establishment and the business are a distinct contribu-
tion to the civic and business prestige of Fort Towson.

That Mr. Wilson should continue to maintain his home
in this community and here rise through his own efforts
to a position of commanding influence and large success,
is the more interesting in view of the fact that he was
born at a point but a few miles distant from the fine
little town that is now the stage of his important business
activities. In a pioneer log house near the old educa-
tional institution known as Wheelock Academy, and one-
half mile distant from the stone Presbyterian Church
that was erected in 1846, by Eev. Alfred Wright, Mr.
Wilson was born in the year 1857, and the old log house
which was his birthplace is still standing, in a fair state
of preservation and as one of the landmarks of this part
of the state. In the neighborhood he acquired his first
definite educational instruction in the primitive school-
house in which Miss Jane Austin was the teacher, she
later becoming the wife of the principal chief of the
Choctaw Nation, Chief Jackson MeCurtain. Mr. Wilson
continued to attend the neighborhood schools until he
had attained to the age of fourteen years, and his parents
then sent him to Spencer Academy, which was then estab-
lished about ten miles northeast of Fort Towson and
which was the first higher educational institution estab-
lished by the Christian missionaries who here labored
faithfully among the Choctaw Indians. The interesting
and important history of this old institution has never
been properly written and is worthy of the careful
study of those who would attempt to prepare adequate
record concerning the history of Oklahoma and its early
advances along educational lines, long before Indian Ter-
ritory had lost its original identity. The Civil war
caused a cessation in the work of Spencer Academy, but
in 1871 it was reopened for the reception of students,
under the superintendence of Eev. J. H. Colton, and Mr.
Wilson entered the school at the time that it thus re-
sumed operations. Prior to the war it had been a scho-
lastic meeea for many years. Some of the old buildings
at Spencer are still standing and are situated on land
owned by the heirs of the late Eobert Frazier, an Indian
citizen of sterling character and excellent repute. After
spending four years at the academy Mr. Wilson sought to
obtain from the Choctaw Nation an appointment as a
student in some eastern school, but his application was
rejected, owing to the fact that the nation’s quota of
students to be given such advantages had already been
filled. In his earnest ambition for a higher education he ■
sought the assistance of his uncle, George James, who
was one of the leading citizen of the Chickasaw Nation,
but through this medium he likewise failed to realize his
desires, under which conditions he entered the employ of
his uncle, George James, in the cattle business, and here
he earned his first money, his employer having paid him
$15 a month. The James ranch was near Bloomfield
Academy, in the Chickasaw Nation and the range of the
James cattle to the north covered a vast era of country
in which houses were on the average twenty miles apart.

Within a short time Mr. Wilson engaged in the live-
stock business on his own account, and for nearly forty

years this line of enterprise engrossed the major part of
his time and attention, his herds having grazed over large
areds of the southern section of the Choctaw Nation. The
open range was the common property of the cattle men
and hence few fences were needed. Mr. Wilson was one
of the pioneers in the cattle industry in this region and
to him is due' in large measure the credit for the develop-
ment of this important line of enterprise into one of the
profitable and permanent features of industrial activity
in this section of Oklahoma. Over this country rode the
buyers who came from other states and territories and
from other Indian nations, and good prices were usually
paid for the cattle. Market cattle that were not sold to
such buyers locally were shipped principally to the City
of St. Louis, Missouri, and Mr. Wilson made such ship-
ments in an independent way. He still continued to be
associated with the cattle industry on a modest scale, the
former broad scope of operations having met with gradual
curtailment with the elimination of the open range, the
allotment and sale of Indian lands and the general
settling up of the country by farmers, several of whom
may be found to the square mile on the tillable land, and
roads having been established along section lines.

Shortly after he attained to the age of twenty-one
years Mr. Wilson was elected to a seat in the Choctaw
Nation, from Towson County. Later he became a mem-
ber of the senate, and his service in legislature was under
the administration of Chief C. C. Cole and Chief B. F.
Smallwood as principal chiefs. In this connection it is
interesting to note that the officials of the Choctaw Nation
never have been compelled to live at the capital. Until
the tribal government was abolished they assembled at
the .capital each successive year, and ordinarily the mem-
bers of the legislature and other officials completed the
transaction of their business in about thirty days, after
which they returned to their homes. Mr. Wilson served
two terms as national auditor of the Choctaw Nation and
one term as national treasurer. He was frequently, im-
portuned to become a candidate for the office of princi-
pal chief, but as often declined the honor, by reason of
the exactions of his private business affairs and his lack
of desire for political office.

Under appointment by Principal Chief Gilbert Dukes,
Mr. Wilson became a member of the Choctaw commis-
sion that assisted the Dawes Commission in making the
supplemental treaty by which the vested rights and prop-
erty interests of the Choctaws were effectively conserved
and protected. The other members of the Choctaw com-
mission were Chief Dukes, C. B. Wade, Simon Lewis and
Thomas Ainsworth. The first office to which Mr. Wilson
was called in the service of the public was that of circuit
clerk of the Apokshonubbi District, under appointment
by Circuit Judge Jefferson Gardner. He and his wife
hold membership in the Christian Church.

In 1879 Mr. Wilson married Miss Eose Garland, a kins-
woman of Crockett Garland, who was once principal chief
of the Choctaw Nation. She died in 1882 and is sur-
vived by no children. The second wife of Mr. Wilson
bore the maiden name of Nannie Carney and she was of
Choctaw blood, a relative of Albert Carney, who was a
prominent citizen of Savannah, Indian Territory. The
one child of this union is a son, Oscar. In 1906 was sol-
emnized the marriage of Mr. Wilson to Miss Ollie Baird,
of Paris, Texas, and they have two children, William
Ward, Jr., and Ollie Jane.

Mr. and Mrs. Wilson have an attractive home in the
Village of Fort Towson and they delight to extend its
hospitality to their many friends.

James W. Webb, M. D. Most punctilious preliminary
discipline, natural predilection, deep humanitarian

1816

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

spirit and successful practical experience have given to
Doctor Webb distinct precedence as one of the repre-
sentative physicians and surgeons of Southern Oklahoma,
and he controls a large and important general practice
which attests his professional skill and his secure place
in popular confidence and esteem. He maintains his
residence and office in the Village of Berwyn and his
practice extends throughout the wide area of country
tributary to this thriving town of Carter County.

Dr. James William Webb was born at Winchester,
Franklin County, Tennessee, on the 26th of February,
1882, and is a son of James L. and Sallie (Lawson)
Webb, both likewise natives of Winchester, where the
former was born in 1861 and the latter in 1867. James
L. Webb was reared and educated in his native state
and there he continued his residence until 1891, when
he removed with his family to Texas and purchased a
tract of land in Eastland County, where he has since
continued successful operations as a farmer and stock-
grower, his home being in the Village of Cisco. He is
a democrat in politics, a broad-minded and public-
spirited citizen, is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity,
and is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church
South, as was also his wife, who was summoned to the
life eternal in 1903, and who is survived by eight chil-
dren: Charles is a confectioner and is engaged in busi-

ness in the City of Wichita, Kansas; Doctor Webb of
this review was the next in order of birth; John is a
prosperous farmer near Quanah, Texas; Henry, who
maintains his residence at Bartlesville, Oklahoma, is a
traveling commercial salesman; Mollie remains at the
paternal home; Madison is engaged in farming and stock-
growing near Quanah, Texas ; and Car and Diona remain
with their father and are attending the Cisco High
School.

Doctor Webb was about nine years old at the time of
the family removal to Texas, and he continued his
studies in the public schools at Cisco, that state, until
his graduation in the high school in 1899. In consonance
with his ambitious purpose and well formulated plans
he thereafter attended the medical department of the
University of Nashville, Tennessee, where he continued
his studies- during two terms. He then entered the
Memphis Hospital Medical College, in the City of
Memphis, that state, and in this excellent institution
he was graduated as a member of the class of 1903 and
with the degree of Doctor of Medicine.

Soon after his graduation Doctor Webb engaged in
the practice of his profession at Cisco, Texas, where he
continued his successful work until 1908, when he came
to the new State of Oklahoma and established his home
at Berwyn, where he has since continued his labors as
a physician and surgeon and where his extensive practice
is one of representative order. . He established also a
drug store in the village, and of this he continued the
proprietor from 1909 until July, 1915, when he sold the
stock and business to his father-in-law, Dr. John O.
Gilliam, concerning whom individual mention is made
on other pages of this publication. The doctor is actively
identified with the Carter County Medical Society and
the Oklahoma State Medical Society.

Though inflexible in his allegiance to the democratic
party, Doctor Webb has had no time or inclination for
the activities of practical polities, but his civic loyalty
prompted him to give most efficient service when he was
chosen clerk for Carter County of Rod District No. 11.
His ancient-craft Masonic affiliation is with Berwyn
Lodge No. 59, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and
in Indian Consistory No. 2, Ancient Accepted Scottish
Rite, at MeAlester, he has received the thirty-second
degree. In Oklahoma City he. is affiliated with India

Temple, Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the j
Mystic Shrine, and he holds membership in Berwyn Ijj

Camp, Woodmen of the World. The doctor is a scion of I

a family that is of English lineage, the original Ameri-
can progenitors having settled in North Carolina in the 1
Colonial era of our National history.

At Berwyn, in 1908, was solemnized the marriage of
Doctor Webb to Miss Lulu Maud Gilliam, daughter of I

Dr. John O. Gilliam, of whom specific mention is made I
elsewhere in this volume and who conducts the well I
equipped drug store at Berwyn. Doctor and Mrs. Webb
have three children, whose names and respective years
of birth are as follows: Theresa Amelia, 1910; James

William, Jr., 1912; and John, 1915.

John O. Gilliam, M. D. Well may Doctor Gilliam be
termed a pioneer of pioneers in what is i\ow the State
of Oklahoma, and it has been given him to wield much
influence in connection with civic and industrial progress
in Carter County, where he established his residence at
Berwyn nearly forty years ago and where he became one
of the first physicians and most influential citizens of
the frontier community. He still maintains his home
at Berwyn and here conducts a well appointed drug
store, the while he finds it impossible to retire definitely
from the practice of his profession, owing to the insist-
ent demand made for his ministrations on the part of
families to whom he has long been a guide, counselor
and friend. It is specially gratifying to be able to
present in this publication a review of the career of
Doctor Gilliam, whose life has been one of signal use-
fulness and deep humanitarian spirit.

Dr. John Overstreet Gilliam was born in Chariton
County, Missouri, on the 17th of August, 1849, and is a
son of James A. and Martha Ann (Martin) Gilliam,
both natives of the historic Old Dominion State and
both persons of superior intellectual attainments.
James A. Gilliam was born on the old family homestead
on the banks of the Appomattox River, in Eastern
Virginia, and the year of his nativity was 1820, his
death having occurred in Saline County, Missouri, in
1905. He was reared and educated in Virginia, where
his marriage was solemnized and where he continued to
be identified with agricultural pursuits until his removal
to Missouri. In the latter state he became a pioneer of
Chariton County, and there he long held precedence as
a progressive and successful farmer, planter and stock-
grower. He held an appreciable number of slaves and
not only raised tobacco but also became a dealer in this
product, on an extensive scale. When well advanced in
years he removed to Saline County, where he continued
to reside until his death. He was an inflexible advocate
of the principles of the democratic party, was a Royal
Arch Mason and both he and his wife, who died in
Chariton County, Missouri, were earnest members of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, South. His father, William
Gilliam, was a wealthy planter and slaveholder on the
Appomattox River in Virginia, where he was specially
prominent as a grower of tobacco, and where he con-
tinued to reside until his death, which was the result of
virtual starvation, owing to his being afflicted with the
severest type of dyspepsia. He was a descendant of
one of two brothers who came from England and settled
in Virginia in the Colonial period of our national his-
tory. Anthony Woodson, an uncle -of Doctor Gilliam of
this review, was a soldier in the War of 1812, and the
heavy cannonading incidental to the battle of Norfolk
destroyed the drums of both of his ears, so that there-
after he was totally deaf.

As a youth Doctor Gilliam, who was signally favored
in being reared in a home of distinctive culture, was

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1817

afforded the advantages of an academy at Keytesville,
the judicial center of his native county, and this dis-
cipline was supplemented by his attendance in William
Jewell College, in Kay County, Missouri, and Central
University, a Missouri institution conducted under the
auspices of the Methodist Church. In the latter college
his training was advanced to the point that made him
eligible for the reception of the degree of Bachelor of
Arts, and in the institution he also availed himself of
the advantages of the medical department. Leaving col-
lege in 1872, Doctor Gilliam thereafter gave his atten-
tion to farm work and the reading of medicine until he
had gained a thorough training in medicine and surgery
and was well equipped for the practical work of the
profession which has been dignified and honored by
his services.

On the 5th of August, 1876, Doctor Gilliam came to
Indian Territory and established his residence at Berwyn,
where he engaged in the practice of medicine and also
assumed the direction of the Indian school, in which
he was a successful and popular teacher. At that time
there were nine schools maintained for the Indians in '
the Chickasaw Nation, and the office of teacher in the
same was a position much sought, there being avid com-
petition, owing to the fact that the teacher was paid a
salary of $45 a month, which was looked upon as a large
emolument under the conditions obtaining at the time.
Doctor Gilliam proved his ability and was chosen from
a number of competitors, his service as teacher of the
Indian school having thereafter continued for a period
of three years. Thereafter he gave his attention to the
active practice of medicine for a term of twelve years,
and in the meanwhile he became the owner of 1,100
acres of land in what is now Carter County. In 1880
he instituted the improvement of this property and
established his home on the pioneer ranch, of which he
still retains 400 acres, given over to diversified agricul-
ture and the raising of excellent grades of livestock.

In July, 1915, Doctor Gilliam purchased of his son-
in-law, Dr. James W. Webb, the drug store at Berwyn,
and he now conducts the store, which was established
many years ago and is the only one in the village. When
Doctor Gilliam retired from the active practice of his
profession, nearly a quarter of a century ago, he sold
his stock of drugs and medicines to the proprietor of
the drug store of which he himself is now the owner, it
being interesting to note that certain of his original
medicines are still to be found on the shelves of the
establishment. Concerning the former owner, Doctor
Webb, individual mention is made on other pages of
this work.

In politics Doctor Gilliam has always been found
strongly aligned as a supporter of the cause Of the
democratic party, with well fortified convictions concern-
ing matters of economic and governmental policy. He
served one year as mayor of Berwyn and in the terri-
torial days he served also as a member of the school
board, an office of which he was the incumbent one year.
His religious views are in harmony with the tenets of
the Methodist Episcopal Church South, which he attends
and liberally supports. He is affiliated with Berwyn
Lodge No. 59, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and
served eight years as master of the same. In this time-
honored fraternity the doctor has received also the
thirty-second degree of the Ancient Accepted Scottish
Bite, and is affiliated with Indian Consistory No. 2, at
McAlester. He holds membership also in the Berwyn
Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

Doctor Gilliam has been thrice married. In 1872, in
Chariton County, Missouri, he wedded Miss Lizzie
Harper, and she died at Berwyn, Indian Territory, in

1879. Three children were born of this union: Bobert,

who died at the age of thirty-two years, he having been
a prosperous farmer; Mary Pauline, who died at Berwyn
June 16, 1915, — -her thirty-eighth birthday anniversary;
and Alva Edward, who was killed by lightning when he
was twenty years of age.

In 1880 Doctor Gilliam married Susan Brushingham,
an orphan of part Chickasaw Indian blood, she having
been well educated in the schools of Kansas, and her
death having occurred in 1891. Concerning the children
of this marriage the following brief data are entered:
Lizzie is the wife of Frank Tindall, of Durwood, Carter
County, in which vicinity he is engaged in farming,
having formerly been a merchant. Olivet H. is the
wife of Boy Cotner, of Pryor Creek, this state, and her
husband is a traveling salesman. Sallie died at the age
of eighteen years. John, James and Howard are triplets,
John being a prosperous ranchman in Southwestern
Texas, James being identified with the cattle business
near Marietta, Oklahoma, and Howard being his father’s
assistant in the drug store at Berwyn.

On the 9th of August, 1892, Doctor Gilliam married
Mrs. Nannie (Sigmon) Largen, a daughter of the late
Israel Sigmon, who was a farmer in the State of
Arkansas, the first husband of Mrs. Gilliam having been
Frank Largen, who was a farmer of Carter County, Okla-
homa, at the time of' his death. Doctor and Mrs. Gilliam
have four children, — Mary, Amon, Leslie and Donald.
Mary, who has been a popular and successful school
teacher, married, in July, 1915, Carson Hatifield, and
they maintain their residence at Berwyn.

Eev. John Keagan Abernathy. There are two fields
in which Bev. Mr. Abernathy, who is a young man of
about thirty-six, Ijas attained more than ordinary distinc-
tion. He is one of the hard-working, earnest and effect-
ive leaders in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South,
and in that capacity has traveled over nearly all parts of
Oklahoma and has a wide acquaintance. He has turned
his ability and talent to great usefulness in the cause of
his Master. He is now pastor of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, South, at Okmulgee. Bev. Mr. Abernathy is also
one of the best known figures in Oklahoma Masonry, and
was recently honored with the thirty-third degree of the
Scottish Bite, that honor having been conferred upon
him at the minimum age of thirty-five.

A native Texan, he was born at Hamilton in that state
October 29, 1879, a son of J. E. and Cassandra
(McCleary) Abernathy. His parents were born in Giles
County, Tennessee, and were partly reared there, but
both were educated in Ebenezer College at Springfield,
Missouri, where they graduated with the class of 1858.
In the following year they were married in Giles County,
Tennessee, and they afterwards moved to Texas, where
J. E. Abernathy was a farmer and mechanic. His death
occurred in 1885 at the age of sixty, and the mother
passed away in 1912 at seventy-two. During the war
J. E. Abernathy became a Confederate soldier under
General Price and was a commissioned officer. For many
years in Texas he was a power in church work. He
possessed a fine tenor voice, was song leader in many of
the meetings which he attended, and his presence was
always felt as a stimulating course whether in the small
meetings held within doors or the larger assemblages at
camp grounds. His wife was also a devout Christian.
In their family were five daughters and two sons, and
the two sons and two of the daughters are still living.

As a boy Bev. Mr. Abernathy grew up largely at the
home of his uncle M. T. Abernathy. He attended public
schools both in Texas and in Missouri and graduated at
Scarrett College in Neosho, Missouri, in 1900 with the

1818

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

degree Ph. B. In the same year he joined the Southwest
Missouri Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
South, and has now been active in church work for fifteen
years. Eor the first year he was at Lamar Station, and
then for two years was pastor of the Washington Street
Church in Kansas City. The next two years, 1903- ’04,
he spent as a student in Vanderbilt University at Nash-
ville, after which he returned to Missouri and was active
in pastoral work until 1908.

On coming to Oklahoma Rev. Mr. Abernathy became
pastor of the large church at Guthrie, and remained there
until 1914, when he accepted the call to the church at
Okmulgee. During the last four years at Guthrie he was
also a Masonic lecturer under the auspices of the Scot-
tish Rite bodies, spending about five months of the year
at that work in addition to his church duties. It was in
October, 1915, at Washington, D. C., that Mr. Abernathy
received the thirty-third and highest degree in Scottish
Rite Masonry. He has also done some lecture work in the
State Chautauquas.

He is a man of many interests and possesses many
splendid talents which have made him valued and es-
teemed in whatever community he has lived. He is now
an active member of the chamber of commerce at
Okmulgee. In 1907 he married Miss Helen Hinman of
Centralia, Missouri. Mrs. Abernathy takes a prominent
part in church and club work, especially in the musical
side, possessing a well trained voice for singing.

Jean P. Day. Pew of the vital and progressive cities
of Oklahoma have forged so rapidly, and substantially
to the front rank as has McAlester, the metropolis and
judicial center of Pittsburg County and the center also
of one '-of the finest coal-producing districts in the state.
The elements of stability have been in distinct evidence
in this splendid advancement and the city is vigorous
and prosperous — the stage of large and important com-
mercial and industrial activities and the home of an
enterprising and progressive element of citizenship. He
whose name initiates this paragraph has secure prestige
as one of the able and successful representatives of the
legal profession in Pittsburg County and is in control of
a substantial and important law business in the City of
McAlester, so that he is well entitled to recognition in
this publication, as one of the representative members
of the bar of this section of the state.

Mr. Day was born in Webster County, Mississippi, on
the 31st of January, 1874, and is a son of Jonathan J.
and Amanda R. (Pollan) Day, both of whom were born
and reared in Mississippi, where the respective families
were founded in an early day. In 1889 Jonathan J.
Day came with his family to what is now the State of
Oklahoma and became a pioneer settler when the original
section of the old Indian Territory was thrown open
for such settlement, though Oklahoma Territory was not
formally created until the following year. He entered
claim to a homestead in what is now Oklahoma County,
where he instituted the reclamation of a farm and where
he and his wife continued to reside until 1903, when
they removed to Pittsburg County and established their
home in the thriving little City of Hartshorne, where
Mrs. Day was summoned to the life eternal in 1914, at
the age of sixty-six years. The death of Mr. Day
occurred November 13, 1915, he having celebrated his
seventieth birthday anniversary in that year. He had
the energy and good judgment to profit fully by the
advantages afforded to him in Oklahoma and became
one of the sterling and honored pioneers of the state
to whose civic and industrial development and upbuilding
he contributed his quota, practically his entire active
career having been marked by close and effective identi-
fication with the great basic industry of agriculture.

He was aligned as an unswerving advocate of the prin-
ciples of the democratic party and during the climacteric
period of the Civil war he represented his native state
as one of its gallant soldiers who went forth in defense
of the cause of the Confederacy. Jonathan J. and
Amanda R. (Pollan) Day became the parents of only
two children, and the elder is Jean P., whose name intro-
duces this article; Allie is now the wife of Robert M.
Boardman and they maintain their home at Decatur,
Illinois.

Jean P. Day acquired his early education in his native
state and was a lad of fifteen years at the time of the
family removal to the wilds of the newly organized
Territory of Oklahoma, into which he recalls that he
rode in dignified state by the side of his father and
mounted on the back of a gray mule which claimed the
“dejected havior of the visage” that is common to
the animals of this type. Mr. Day found ample demand
upon his time and services in connection with the recla-
mation and other work of the pioneer farm in Okla-
homa County, but was not denied opportunities for the
proper supplementing of his education. He attended the
old Central Normal School of Oklahoma Territory, at
Edmond, where he fortified himself admirably for suc-
cessful work in the pedagogic profession. For several
years he was an efficient and popular teacher in the
public schools of Oklahoma, and his services in this
line included his effective work as principal of the
Emerson School in Oklahoma City.

In preparation for the vocation of his choice, Mr. Day
began the study of law under the able preceptorship of
Hon. Henry H. Howard, of Oklahoma City, and in 1899
he was admitted to the territorial bar. He initiated the
practice of his profession at Poteau, Indian Territory, a
place that is now the judicial center of LeFlore County,
Oklahoma, and there he remained ten years, within which
decade he developed a good practice and gained a place
as one of the leading members of the bar of that section.
In 1909 Mr. Day was appointed to aid in the revision of
the code of laws of the recently organized State of
Oklahoma, and the result of that revision is the well
known Harris-Day Code of Oklahoma Law, issued in
1910. During the time that he was engaged in this
important work Mr. Day maintained his residence at
Guthrie, the former territorial capital, and in 1910 he
removed to the rapidly growing City of McAlester, where
he has since continued in the successful general practice
of his profession and where he has appeared in much
important litigation and as attorney and counselor for
many representative corporations and individually influ-
ential citizens.

The democratic party has found Mr. Day as one of
its resourceful and unfailing supporters in Oklahoma
and though he has been influential in the party councils
and campaign activities under both the territorial and
state regimes he has not been ambitious for public office,
but recently he was elevated to the supreme court bench
and his friends, both democrats and republicans, joined
in a banquet celebrating this honor. Mr. Day was a
delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1908.
He has received the thirty-second degree of the Ancient
Accepted Scottish Rite of the Masonic fraternity and is
affiliated also with the Benevolent & Protective Order of
Elks. He is a prominent member of the Pittsburg
County Bar Association and holds membership also in the
Oklahoma State Bar Association.

The year 1900 recorded the marriage of Mr. Day to
Miss Aubie Oates, of Paris, Texas, and they have one
child, Doris, who was born in 1901.

Lindsey L. Long., M. D. That historic section of
Western Oklahoma that was designated as No Man’s

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1819

Land and organized into Cimarron Territory in a local
way prior to the opening of Oklahoma Territory to
settlement, has become one of the vital and prosperous
sections of the state, and one of the important counties
is Beaver, in which Doctor Long controls a large and
important practice as a physician and surgeon and has
gained precedence as one of the representative members
of his profession in Western Oklahoma. He maintains
his residence and professional headquarters at Beaver,
the county seat, and is one of the progressive and loyal
citizens of the town and county.

Dr. Lindsey Lowder Long was born on a farm in
Neosho County, Kansas, on the 22d of September, 1875,
a date that clearly demonstrates that his parents were
numbered among the pioneers of that section of the
Sunflower State. He is a son of David and Jeanette
(Lowder) Long, the former a native of North Carolina
and the latter of Indiana, in which latter state their
marriage was solemnized in 1850.

David Long was born in North Carolina on the 15th
of October, 1824, and his parents claimed the Old
Dominion State of Virginia as the place of their nativity,
the respective families having there been founded in the
colonial era of our national history. In 1828, when
he was a child of about four years, the parents of
David Long removed from North Carolina and became
pioneer settlers in the wilds of Greene County, Indiana,
where they passed the remainder of their lives and
where the father reclaimed a farm from the wilderness.
B In Greene County David was reared under the conditions
l and influences of the early pioneer days, in the mean-
I while availing himself of the advantages of the schools
of the locality and period, and in 1850, when about
twenty-five years of age, he there wedded Miss Jeanette
Lowder, who was born in Lawrence County, that state,
* on the 2d of July, 1832, a daughter of John R. and
Acsah (Hodson) Lowder, pioneers of that county, to
I which they removed from their native State of North
B Carolina. After his marriage Mr. Long continued his
activities as a farmer in Greene County, Indiana, until
1871, when he removed with his family to Kansas and
[ became one of the pioneer settlers in Neosho County.

He purchased a tract of land two miles south of old
B Osage Mission, and there reclaimed a productive farm.

He became one of the substantial and representative
I citizens of Neosho County and there continued to reside
on his fine homestead farm until his death, which oc-
curred on the 7th of March, 1896. His widow survived
him by nearly fifteen years and was a resident of Erie,
f. the judicial center of Neosho County, when she, too, was
called to the life eternal on the 25th of November, 1910.
w Concerning their children the following brief data are
entered: Rev. Matthew T., who was born October 16,

1851, is a clergyman of the Methodist Episcopal Church
and maintains his home in Oklahoma. In 1875 he wedded
Miss Etta Noble, and they have four children — Stella,
Frederick, Ethel and Ruth — the eldest daughter, Stella,
ij», being now the wife of Rufus O. Renfrew, a prominent
capitalist and influential citizen of Woodward, Oklahoma,
one individually mentioned on other pages of this work,
j Linda A., who was born November 9, 1853, is the wife
of John J. Fields, editor and publisher of the Sentinel
Leader at Sentinel, Washita County, Oklahoma. Their
L) marriage was celebrated in 1875, and they have four
children — Robert, Cornelius, David and May. Cornelius,
the next in order of birth of the children of David and
Jeanette (Lowder) Long, was born March 6, 1855, and
died on the 13th of the same month. Finley, who was
born March 30, 1857, died December 20, 1908. Henry,
who was born January 22, 1861, is a leading lawyer in
the City of Ottawa, Kansas. John R., born February
23, 1864, is a prosperous farmer of Neosho County,

Kansas. Rolla E., who was born April 27, 1869, is
superintendent of the city schools of Galena, Kansas.
May M., who was born March 28, 1871, is a successful
and popular teacher in the public schools of the City
of Sherman, Texas, and Doctor Long of this review is
the youngest of the nine children.

Passing the days of his childhood and early youth
on the homestead farm in Neosho County, Kansas,
Doctor Long acquired his preliminary education in the
district schools and thereafter attended the public schools
of Erie, the county seat, where he was graduated in the
high school as a member of the class of 1S95. In the
meanwhile he had formulated definite plans for his
future career, and in the year that marked his com-
pletion of his high school course he entered the University
Medical College at Kansas City, Missouri, in which insti-
tution he was graduated March 19, 1898, with the degree
of Doctor of Medicine.

Immediately after his graduation in the medical col-
lege Doctor Long came to Oklahoma Territory, and, on
the 20th of April of the. same year, he opened an office
at Alva, judicial center of Woods County, where he
continued in the successful practice of his profession
during the ensuing eight years. He then took an effective
post-graduate course in one of the leading medical insti-
tutions of the City of Chicago, and in May, 1906, he
established his home at Beaver, Oklahoma, where he
has since been engaged in active general practice and
where he has secure prestige as the leading representative
of his profession in Beaver County. He has served as
mayor of Beaver, besides holding other local offices of
minor order, and has shown a lively interest in all that
touches the welfare and progress of his home town and
county. While a resident of Alva he served as a member
of the city council and also of the board of education,
besides which he did effective service as county health
officer of Woods County. He holds membership in the
Oklahoma State Medical Society and the American Medi-
cal Association, has completed the circles of both York
and Scottish Rite Masonry, in the latter of which he has
received the thirty-second degree, besides being affiliated
with the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the
Mystic Shrine and the Knights of Pythias.

On the 10th of September, 1899, was solemnized the
marriage of Doctor Long to Miss Maude Beegle of Alva.
She was born in Kingman County, Kansas, on the 13th
of March, 1875, and is a daughter of Adam and Eliza-
beth Jane (Crottzer) Beegle, both natives of Pennsyl-
vania and both honored pioneers of Kansas. Mr. Beegle
was born in 1836 and his death occurred June 10, 1908.
The mother of Mrs. Long was born in 1832 and was
summoned to eternal rest on the 25th of December, 1911.
Prior to her marriage Mrs. Long had been a successful
and popular teacher, her work in the pedagogic profes-
sion having continued for three years after she had
completed a course of study in the Colorado State Normal
School at Greeley. Doctor and Mrs. Long have one
child, Lenore Madge, who was born at Alva, this state,
on the 12th of November, 1902.

William Elbert Green. Superintendent of the city
schools of Noble, Mr. Green is an Oklahoma school man
of considerable experience and holds a life teacher’s cer-
tificate in this state. At Noble he has under his super-
vision a corps of six teachers, 250 enrolled scholars, and
a modern $10,000 school house thoroughly equipped. He
took charge of these schools in the fall of 1915.

He was born at Senatobia, Mississippi, July 6, 1893.
His ancestors were Scotch-Irish who came to North Caro-
lina in the early days, and there has since been a small
admixture of Indian stock. Thomas Walter Green, his
father, was born in Senatobia, Mississippi, in 1866, and

1820

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA '

has spent his active career as a farmer and stock man.
He came to Oklahoma and located in the vicinity of
Clanmore a number of years ago, but after a time re-
turned to Mississippi, and located permanently in Chand-
ler in 1907, and still resides there. He owns 240 acres,
and does diversified farming and raises blooded stock.
He has held various township offices, being prominent in
local affairs in his locality. He is a democrat and has
been a member of the official board of the Christian
Church, and affiliates with the Modern Woodmen of
America, the Woodmen of the World and the Knights of
Pythias. Thomas W. Green married Sallie Eva Han-
cock, who was born in Independence, Mississippi, in 1871.
Their children are: William E.; Mary Elizabeth, wife of
Walter E. Ward, a farmer, stockman and grain dealer
at Westboro, Missouri; Mattie Pearl, who graduated
from the Chandler High School and was a student in
the state normal at Edmond and is now a teacher in
Chandler; Marvin Presley, a graduate of the Chandler
High School and a teacher in Okfuskee County; Lottie
Lucile, a junior in the Chandler High School; and Dollie
Eula, a sophomore in the high school.

William Elbert Green attended the public schools of
Independence, Mississippi, the state normal college at
Sherman, Mississippi, and the University of Tennessee. He
graduated from the high school at Claremore, Oklahoma,
in 1912, and in 1913 completed the course of the Edmond
State Normal School and was granted a life teacher’s
certificate. During 1914 he attended the State University
at Norman and has taken courses during the summer
time at the university for three years past. The school
year of 1914-15 he served as principal in one of the public
schools at Ardmore, and he previously served as assistant
superintendent of schools of Okfuskee County.

Mr. Green is a democrat, is a member of the Christian
Church, and is affiliated with Chandler Lodge No. 19,
Independent Order of Odd Eellows, and with the Modern
Woodmen of America. He is unmarried.

Mrs. Berta (Keys) Spooner. In business circles of
Hollis there is no name more highly esteemed than that
of Mrs. Berta (Keys) Spooner, owner of the Spooner
Hardware Company, and a woman of marked commer-
cial ability. She was born at Decatur, Alabama, a
daughter of C. M. and Mary (McDaniel) Keys, and a
member of a Seoteh-Irish family who were pioneers of
Texas. C. M. Keys was born in Alabama in 1850, and
in 1879 removed with his family to Cleburne, Johnson
County, Texas, where for a number of years he was
engaged in farming and raising stock. He now resides
at Hollis, practically retired, being the owner of a farm
of 160 acres four miles north of Hollis, which is being
operated by tenants. Mr. Keys is a member of the
Baptist Church, in which he serves as deacon.

Mr. Keys married Miss Mary McDaniel, also a native
of Alabama, and they became the parents of twelve
children, namely: Cricket, who is the wife of B. A.

Copass, of Dallas, Texas, assistant secretary of the
Baptist State Missionary Society; Berta; Ernest L., a
hardware merchant of Wynnewood, Oklahoma; F. M.,
who is manager of the Spooner Hardware Company, at
Hollis; Wood, who is connected with the hardware busi-
ness at Hollis; May, who married Rev. W. A. Knight,
pastor of the First Baptist Church at Frederick, Okla-
homa; J. E., who is associated with his brother, Ernest
L., in business; Yater, who married J. D. Pennington,
bookkeeper for the Spooner Hardware Company ; J ohn,
who is the wife of V. A. Grissom, the owner of the City
Drug Store at Hollis; Rob, the wife of Elmer Sheppard,
engaged in the real estate and insurance business at
Ballinger, Texas; Sam, who holds a clerical position at

Hollis; and Mott, a sophomore at the William Jewell
College, Liberty, Missouri.

Mrs. Spooner accompanied her parents to Cleburne,
Texas, in 1879, and there attended the public schools,
following which she went to a select school for young
ladies and received a high school education. She next
studied the millinery art at St. Louis, Missouri, and
Dallas, Texas, and was a filler in the millinery trade
before her marriage. Mrs. Spooner, since the death of
her husband, has been the owner of the Spooner Hard-
ware Company, the policy and activities of which she
directs, but also finds time to devote to social, religious
and charitable work. She is an active member of the'
Baptist Church, and at the present time is state treas-
urer of Oklahoma for the P. E. O. Sisterhood.

In September, 1900, at Waxahatchie, Texas, Berta
Keys was united in marriage with Horace Nelson
Spooner, Jr., who was born at Peoria, Texas, January 9,
1872, a member of a family which originated in England
and whose members were pioneer settlers of Mississippi.
Horace Nelson Spooner, Sr., the father of Mr. Spooner,
was born in 1843, and during the greater part of his life
was engaged in clerical work. He lived for some years
at Peoria, Texas, and in 1873 removed to Hillsboro,
Texas, where his death occurred in 1905. He was a
member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, took an
active part in religious work, and was a member of the
official board of his congregation for many years His
fraternal affiliation was with the Independent Order of
Odd Fellows. Mr. Spooner married Miss Julia A. Foote,
a native of Virginia, and she survives him and resides
at Ardmore, Oklahoma.

Horace Nelson Spooner, Jr., was sent to Bethel Col-
lege, Russellville, Kentucky, from which institution he
wa3 graduated in 1894, and in that same year entered a
hardware store at Hillsboro, Texas, in order to become
familiar with the business. There he remained several
years, mastering every detail of the trade, and in 1897
went to Whitney, Texas, where he was entrusted with
the position of buyer for the W. T. Herrick Hardware
Company, a capacity in which he gained experience that
was of the greatest value to him in later years. After
eight years with that concern, he felt qualified to embark
upon a venture of his own, and in January, 1905, came
to Hollis, Oklahoma, and established the Spooner Hard-
ware Company, on Broadway, which under his manage-
ment soon became one of the largest hardware concerns
in the State of Oklahoma. The establishment has a floor
space of 50 by 100 feet, with a basement of the same
dimensions, trade is drawn from all over Harmon and
Greer counties, Oklahoma, and Collingsworth County,
Texas, and the firm carries a most complete line of shelf
and heavy hardware, stoves, implements, etc., all of the
latest design and maufacture. Mr. Spooner at the time
of his death, which occurred May 19, 1910, was justly
accounted one of the foremost among the younger gen-
eration of business men in this part of Oklahoma. He
had made his own way, unaided, and had gained success
solely through his own initiative and resource. At the
time of his death he was president of the Hollis Com-
mercial Club, and enjoyed the friendship and confidence
of the leading and influential men of the city. His
fraternal connections included membership in Hollis
Lodge No. 219, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and
the various degrees up to the thirty-second, he being a
member of Consistory No. 1, Valley of Guthrie. He
was also a Pythian and an Odd Fellow, and in social
circles had many friends who sincerely mourned his
death. He was a democrat, but not a politician. Always
a faithful member of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
he was acting as steward and superintendent of the

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1821

Sunday school when called away. Though his presence
is gone, he leaves behind him as a monument to his
integrity and ability a firmly-established business, and
an influence for good citizenship and high ideals that
will remain for years after his name has been forgotten.

William G. Capps. Though not yet thirty-five years
of age, for more than ten years William G. Capps has
been a resident of Oklahoma, and all that time an effect-
ive working force in the successive lines to which he has
applied himself, whether in business, in politics and pub-
lic affairs, or as a banker. He is the leading financier
of Mountain Park, where he is now president of the
Planters State Bank, and his name as a banker and his
financial judgment are respected not alone in his home
state but among bankers of national reputation.

The Capps family to which he belongs originated in
Prance, but William G. Capps was born in Yell County,
Arkansas, December 25, 1881. His father is Dr. B. P.
Capps, still a prominent physician at Bluffton, Arkansas.
Doctor Capps was born in Tennessee in 1850, moved from
that state to New Orleans and there acquired his educa-
tion for medicine, began practice at Port Smith, Arkan-
sas, in 1879 moved to Yell County, in 1887 to Morrillton
in the same state, and finally located at Bluffton. He is
an active member of the County and State Medical soci-
eties and the American Medical Association, is a demo-
crat in polities, belongs to the Methodist Episcopal
Church, is a Royal Arch Mason and also a Knight of
Pythias. Doctor CappS married Miss H. L. Ward, who
was born in Port Smith, Arkansas, in 1861. Her father
was Major John C. Ward, who enlisted from Arkansas
at the beginning of the , war between the states and
became major of the First Arkansas Mounted Infantry.
He re-enlisted with his regiment in Colonel John P. Hill’s
regiment of cavalry, and on August 10, 1861, was
wounded on the south side of Bloody Hill at Wilson
Creek and died as a result of his wound. He was a
native of Virginia and a contractor by profession. Dr.
Capps and wife were the parents of five children:
William G. ; Edwin, who died at Bluffton, Arkansas, at
the age of twenty-one; Erick, who is bookkeeper in the
Planters State Bank at Mountain Park, Oklahoma; B. F.,
who died at the age of two years; and Clarence, who is
attending the Bluffton High School and lives with his
parents.

William G. Capps had a substantial education but has
been in practical business ever since he was nineteen
years of age. He attended the public schools of Morrill-
ton, Arkansas, finished the high school course there, and
in 1898 took a course in a business college at Birming-
ham, Alabama. His first regular position was as a sten-
ographer for the Doster & Northington Drug Company
at Birmingham, with which firm he remained one year.
Then after six months at Demopolis, Alabama, he re-
turned to Bluffton, Arkansas, and spent one year in the
mercantile business on his own account. Selling out, he
was for six months acting secretary of the Port Smith
Commercial Club, and in 1904, at the age of twenty-three,
identified himself actively with the Indian Territory por-
tion of the present State of Oklahoma.

For one year he was bookkeeper with the Hayes Mer-
cantile Company at Redland, and in 1905 removed to
Muskogee and became advertising agent and afterwards
business manager for Governor Haskell’s New State
Tribune. He held those positions during Haskell’s suc-
cessful campaign for governor of the new state. Gov-
ernor Haskell then appointed him the chief food and
drug inspector of Oklahoma, and he looked after the
responsibilities of that newly created state office for two
years. In the meantime he had acquired some financial

interests in banking in Indian Territory and in 1909
went into the western part of the state and organized the
Oklahoma State Bank at Frederick, serving as its cashier
two years. In 1911 Mr. Capps organized the Planters
State Bank at Mountain Park, and has been its active
president since that date. This is one of the substantial
institutions for general banking in one of the small but
flourishing towns of Southwestern Oklahoma, and has a
capital stock of $10,000 and a surplus of $2,000. The
vice president is A. N. Trader, the assistant cashier is
Edwin Herstein. The bank owns and occupies the build-
ing of the old Citizens State Bank on Main Street.

For several years Mr. Capps has furnished considerable
correspondence to the newspapers of Kiowa County on
various subjects related to banking. His articles have
attracted more than local attention, having been quoted
by some of the leading newspapers in the United States,
and the wide currency of some of his ideas on country
banking is well illustrated by the following quotation of
a brief article which was published by the Wall Street
financial journal in 1914,- and subsequently quoted exten-
sively in the financial columns of papers all over the
United States. The article, furthermore, well expresses
Mr. Capps’ belief respecting banking activities and such
prominent questions as rural credits. He said : “A.
country banker promotes the development of his com-
munity in proportion that he employs his money through
loaning it to farmers for constructive work and improved
methods — not for food or for stock feed. Present rural
banking methods have resulted in entirely too much
money being employed in a way that is not constructive
and brings no development whatever, and thereby reduces
the bank’s ability to loan money for constructive farm-
ing. In proportion that a country banker fails to pro-
vide money for farm development and constructive farm-
ing, in that proportion he injures his best farmers, his
community, and first of all injures himself.”

Mr. Capps has organized several banks in Oklahoma
and also two wholesale houses, but has sold most of his
interests in these establishments. He was for a time
vice president and a stockholder in the Farmers State
Bank at Quanah, Oklahoma. He has served as a member
of the advisory committee of the State Bankers’ Asso-
ciation of Oklahoma and was chairman of the Bureau of
Agriculture of the Oklahoma Bankers ’ Development Com-
mittee. His thorough training in country banking has
made him familiar with all branches of bank work, he
has already gained a broad acquaintance with prominent
men in the banking world, and those who know him best
predict that he is far from having reached the climax in
his career.

In polities Mr. Capps is a democrat. He represented
the State of Oklahoma at Denver at the Conference of
National and State Food and Drug Officials in 1909. He
also served as county chairman of the Democratic Central
County Committee in Tillman County and as city treas-
urer of Frederick for two years. He is now president of
the board of education at Mountain Park and is always
keenly alive to the needs of his home community. He
assisted in organizing the Lodge of Elks at Frederick,
held the position of esteemed leading knight in the lodge
there, and is now a member of Hobart Lodge No. 881,
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. He is also
affiliated with Mountain Park Lodge No. 381, Ancient
Free and Accepted Masons, and with Snyder Chapter No.
76, Royal Arch Masons.

At Mountain Park in 1912 Mr. Capps married Miss
Lillian Trader, daughter of A. N. Trader, who is a
farmer and is also vice president of the Planters State
Bank at Mountain Pass. They have one daughter,
Marjorie, born August 7, 1913.

1822

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Denzil A. Drake. A significantly varied and interest-
ing career has been that of Mr. Drake, who has been a
resident of Oklahoma since the year that marked its
organization under territorial government, and who is
now one of the most liberal and progressive citizens of
the Village of Hitchcock, Blaine County, where he is not
only engaged in the real estate business but where he
is also the senior member of the firm of* D. A. Drake &
Son, publishers and editors of the Hitchcock Clarion, a
weekly paper that has been brought up to high standard
under his administration and control and in the direct-
ing of the affairs of which he has given new evidence of
his versatility.

Mr. Drake has been distinctively one of the world’s
workers, he has gained varied experience in divers sec-
tions of the Union, he has been steadfast and sincere
in all of the relations of life, has shown initiative ability
and a mastery of expedients in varied fields of endeavor,
and in Oklahoma he has found ample scope for the
achieving of success and for 'exerting admirable influ-
ence in the furtherance of general civic and material
advancement and prosperity.

A due amount of satisfaction is given to Mr. Drake
in claiming the fine old Buckeye State as the place of
his nativity and as a commonwealth in which the family
of which he is a scion was founded in the early pioneer
era of its history. He was born in Summit County,
Ohio, on the 26th of April, 1859. His paternal great-
grandfather was one of three brothers who immigrated
to the United States from Wales, and his grandfather
became a pioneer of Ohio, besides which he manifested
his loyalty to the land of his adoption by serving as a
valiant frontier soldier in the War of 1812. Both he
and his wife were residents of Summit County, Ohio,
at the time of their death, and he had taken well his
part in the development of that section of the Buckeye
State.

Denzil A. Drake is a son of Jasper B. and Caroline
(Hardy) Drake, both natives of Summit County, Ohio,
where the former was born in 1814 and the latter in
1819, — dates that clearly indicated that the respective
families were early pioneers of that section. Jasper B.
Drake and his wife passed the closing years of their
long and worthy lives at Ness City, judicial center of
Ness County, Kansas, where he died in 1899, and where
his widow was summoned to eternal rest in 1904, at the
venerable age of eighty-five years, both having been for
many years zealous members of the Christian Church,
and the entire active career of Mr. Drake having been
one of close identification with agricultural industry.
Just prior to the outbreak of the Civil war Jasper B.
Drake removed with his family to Cedar County, Iowa,
where he became a pioneer farmer in the vicinity of the
present Town of Durant. In 1866, shortly after the
close of the war, he removed to Cass County, Missouri,
and later he became a representative farmer of Ness
County, Kansas, where he passed the remainder of his
long and useful life, the closing period of which was
spent in well earned retirement, at Ness City.

He whose name introduces this article, was a child
of about four years at the time of the family immigra-
tion to Iowa, and there he acquired his rudimentary
education in the pioneer rural schools of Cedar County,
his studies having later been continued in the little
frame school house near his father’s farm in Cass
County, Missouri. He applied himself to study at
home during his youth and through his self -application
and broad and varied experiences in later years he has
rounded out what may consistently be termed a liberal
education. He continued to be associated with his
father in farm work until he was sixteen years of age,

when he initiated his independent career. This initia-
tion was far from being one of prosaic order, for in
1875, soon after celebrating his sixteenth birthday anni-
versary, he made his way to California, where he pro-
ceeded up the Sacramento Valley and devoted his atten- j,
tion to the selling of books and periodicals, a line of |
enterprise which he followed during the first years of j|
his residence in the Golden State. During the second !]
year he ‘ ‘ held down ’ ’ a comparatively profitable posi-
tion as collector for the waterworks at Colusa, that state.

Remaining in California about two years, young Drake
then returned to Cass County, Missouri, in 1878, and in
February of the following year he there took unto him- I
self a wife, who remained his devoted helpmeet until II
her death, about thirteen years later. After his marriage |l
Mr. Drake removed to Ness County, Kansas, where he I
took up homestead and timber claims and instituted the I
reclamation and development of a farm. There he con- I
tinued to devote his attention to agricultural pursuits I
and stock raising for a period of five years, within I
which he perfected his title to his homestead. At the $
expiration of the interval noted he exchanged his farm I

and livestock for a stock of goods and engaged in the |

general merchandise business at Buffalo Park, Gove |
County, Kansas, where he continued his operations in I
this line of enterprise from 1884 until 1887, when he
again exercised the true Yankee trading proclivity by I
“swapping” his stock of merchandise and the good I
will of the business for a bunch of cattle. He there- I
upon returned to Ness County and filed entry on a pre- 1
emption claim, where he placed his cattle and resumed [
his activities as a farmer and stock raiser. He remained I

on this farm one year and proved up on the property, ft

From his farm he removed to the Town of Utica, Ness I
County, and there established a real estate office. He f

developed a substantial business in the handling of (

Kansas land, and at one time owned fully thirty 1
quarter-sections, but depreciation in the prices of land I
in that section of the Sunflower State led him to dispose I
of his holdings by his favored method of making I
exchange of properties, and in 1890, the year that 1

marked the organization of Oklahoma Territory he f

came to the present Oklahoma County and was a pioneer |
of the Town of Edmond. He remained only a few I
months, however, and then returned to Missouri, where I
he devoted one year to farming, in Jasper County.

Mention has already been made of the fact that Mr. j,
Drake is possessed of marked versatility, and after ft
leaving the Jasper County farm he engaged in work at I
the stone mason’s trade, at Carthage, that state, this I
trade having been learned by him in earlier years. He I
resumed work in this line principally for the benefit of I
his health and after following the same during one jt
summer he removed with his family to the City of I
Wichita, Kansas, where he engaged in the furniture 1
business until the financial panic of 1897 compelled him .
to sacrifice the same. From that time forward until I
1900 he served as a commercial traveling salesman, p
handling queensware.

In 1900 Mr. Drake purchased a general store situated I
five miles southeast of Hitchcock, Blaine County, Okla- |
homa, and after conducting this rural store one year he
removed, in 1901, to Hitchcock, becoming virtually one j
of the founders of the town, in which he erected the i
first building and in the same opened the first stock of I
merchandise. He named his establishment the Pioneer
Store, and conducted the same from August, 1901, until
the following February, when financial circumstances
compelled him to abandon the enterprise. In the same i
spring, however, he opened the first drug store in the
village, and after conducting the same four years he

$ —

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1823

sold the stock and business and turned his attention to
the handling of real estate, in which he has since con-
tinued with distinctive success, his operations having
been of broad scope and importance and having been
potent in furthering the settlement and development of
this section of the state.

In October, 1908, Mr. Drake purchased a half interest
in the Hitchcock Clarion, and in the following year he
acquired the full ownership of this newspaper property
and business. As editor and publisher of the Clarion
he has made the paper a most effective exponent of local
interests and has made it a valuable factor in the
directing of popular sentiment and action in the com-
munity. In the editing and publishing of the Clarion
Mr. Drake has an able coadjutor in the person of his
son, Frank, though the latter gives the major part of
his time and attention to the Stratford Tribune, at
Stratford, Garvin County, of which he is editor and pub-
lisher, the business at Hitchcock being conducted under
the firm name of D. A. Drake & Son. Mr. Drake was
assisted greatly in the movement that resulted in the
founding of the Hitchcock Clarion, which dates its
inception from March 27, 1908, and, as previously inti-
mated, he soon came into control of the property and
business, the paper being independent in politics and
having an excellent circulation in Blaine and adjacent
counties.

Mr. Drake has been one of the most vital, far-sighted
and progressive of the enterprising citizens who have
wielded great influence in the development and upbuild-
ing of the town of Hitchcock, and he has served two
terms as mayor of the village, besides which he here
held the office of justice of the peace eight years. He
has served two terms as clerk of the school board, and
within his incumbency of this position he was one of the
foremost in the movement that brought about the con-
solidation of six school districts and the erection, at
Hitchcock, of a substantial and thoroughly modern
building for the accommodation of these combined dis-
tricts, this action having made possible the bringing of
the school work up to a far higher plane of efficiency
•an was previously maintained, this being one of the
first of such consolidated school districts in this part
of the state.

Mr. Drake has been a member of -the Christian Church
since he was a lad of twelve years, and amid ‘ ‘ all the
changes and chances of this mortal life,” his abiding
Cl ristian faith has dominated his course and constituted
a bulwark of defense and reconciliation. He was one
of the founders of the Christian Church at Hitchcock
and is earnestly and ably serving the same in the office
of elder, his wife likewise being a zealous and valued
member. Mr. Drake is affiliated with Watonga Lodge,
No. 176, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, at
Watonga, the county seat of Blaine County, and is an
appreciative and popular member of the Oklahoma State
Press Association.

In February, 1879, at Harrisonville, Cass County,
Missouri, Mr. Drake wedded Miss Alma Robertson, whose
father, William A. Robertson, was a merchant of that
place, though he passed the closing period of his life as
a farmer in Oklahoma. Mrs. Drake was summoned to
the life eternal in 1892, in Jasper County, Missouri,
and she is survived by five children, concerning whom
brief mention is here made: Caroline is the wife of

William E. Beard and they reside in the City of
Claremore. Oklahoma, where Mr. Beard conducts a
garage. Hattie is the wife of Ford O. Shoemaker, of
Wichita, Kansas. Pearl is the wife of Oscar Burton, a
merchant at Caldwell, Kansas. George is engaged in
the grocery business at Wichita, Kansas. Florence is

Vol. v— 5

the wife of Harry Sumption, who is engaged in the
jewelry business in the City of Seattle, Washington.

In February, 1893, was solemnized the marriage of
Mr. Drake to Miss Hattie Robertson, a sister of his
first wife, and their only child is Frank, who was born
in March, 1894, who was graduated in the Watonga
High School, and who is associated with his father in
the newspaper business at Hitchcock. He is one of
the alert, successful and representative young newspaper
men of Oklahoma, and has shown marked ability in his
chosen field of enterprise.

Dr. Thomas Jefferson Dodson is one of the pioneer
physicians and surgeons of Mangum, Oklahoma, having
come here in 1900. He has been in constant practice
here since that time, and has a high standing in the
community and among his professional brethren. He
is a native son of the state, born in Coriell County,
Texas, on September 23, 1862, and his parents were
William P. and Rachel G. (Green) Dodson.

William P. Dodson was born in Kentucky in 1824, and
died in Paint Rock, Texas, in 1898. From his native
state he came to Coriell County, Texas, in 1849, one
of the pioneers of that time, and in 1879 he settled in
Concho County, Texas, where he passed the remainder
of his life. He was a rancher and stock raiser, and was
successful and prosperous. During the Civil war he
served the South as a frontier guard in Texas. Mr.
Dodson was a Methodist and was long a steward in the
church. He was a Mason, and was past senior warden
of his lodge. His politics were those of a democrat.
His wife was a woman of Missouri birth and parentage,
born in 1824, and she died in Paint Rock in 1907.
They were the parents of a family of nine children.
Adeline, the first born, married George Jackson, and
lives on their farm in New Mexico; Mary Jane is de-
ceased; she married C. A. Lewis, and he is now a
resident of San Angelo, Texas; Jesse P. is a carpenter
and builder in Oklahoma; J. F. is a stock farmer at
Paint Rock, the old home of the family; Sarah married
J. C. Oliver, a Baptist minister of Abilene, Texas;
Casana died at the age of ten years; the Seventh born
child was Thomas Jefferson, subject of this review;
Sophronia married Edward Dozier and they live at
Paint Rock; he is a stock farmer and has served as
county sheriff; Lucy married James Davis and they live
in Paint Rock, where Mr. Davis is a farmer.

Dr. Thomas Jefferson Dodson was born and reared on
his father’s ranch in Coriell County, and in 1879, when
he was seventeen years old, the family moved from that
place to Paint Rock, Concho County. From then until
1887 he lived at home and in that year he entered
Centenary College, Lampasas, Texas, and there completed
a three years’ course of study. In 1891 he was gradu-
ated from the medical department of the University of
Tennessee at Nashville, with the degree M. D. In 1891
Doctor Dodson began the practice of his profession at
Bartlett, Texas, continuing until 1898, and then he
engaged in practice in Sonora, where he remained until
October, 1900. It was then that he came to Mangum,
since which time he has been engaged in a general
medical and surgical practice, barring one year. 1904,
which he spent in the Chicago Post Graduate School in
further preparation for his work.

Doctor Dodson has his offices in the Elliott Building.
He is president of the Grier County Medical Society
and is a member of the State and American Medical
associations.

The doctor has always been readv and willing to give
public service when it was required of him. and he has
been heaPh ffiiysician of Grier County on the democratic
ticket. While practicing in Sonora he served as a mem-

1824

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

ber of the local school board, and he is a trustee of the
Methodist Episcopal Church of Mangum.

Doctor Dodson is a Mason, and those Masonic bodies
with which he is connected are as follows : Mangum

Lodge No. 61, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, of
which he is past master; Mangum Chapter No. 35,
Royal Arch Masons, in which he served for nine years
as high priest; Hobart Commandery, Knights Templar;
Mangum Chapter, Order of the Eastern Star, of which
he is past patron; India Temple, Ancient Arabic Order
of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, Oklahoma City. He is
also a member of the local lodge of the Knights of
Pythias and of the Modern Woodmen of America.

Doctor Dodson was married on October 15, 1890, in
Sonora, Texas, to Miss Della Pool, of Bartlett, Texas.
She died in 1894, leaving two daughters. Daphne, the
eldest, is a graduate of the Mangum High School, and
also studied music at Baylor University in Belton, Texas,
and at Epworth University in Oklahoma City. She is
now engaged in teaching music in Mangum. The second
child, Fay, died at the age of eleven years. In 1895
Doctor Dodson married Miss Elizabeth Smith, of Bart-
lett, Texas, a daughter of Benjamin R. Smith, who was
a well known farmer there, and who died in 1904. There
are two daughters of this marriage : Thelma, a graduate

of the Mangum High School in 1915, and Naomi, now a
senior in that school.

Daniel William Peery. In a record of the men who
have taken an important part in the upbuilding and
development of Oklahoma, it would be almost impossible
to avoid extended mention of Daniel William Peery. A
member of the First and Second Territorial legislatures,
one of the founders of the state, subsequently elected to
the State Legislature, the editor and publisher of a news-
paper for eight years, and one of the organizers of the
City of Carnegie, his name is indissolubly identified with
the history of the commonwealth, where he has been prom-
inent in business and political circles from the time of
his arrival.

Mr. Peery was born at Edinburg, Grundy County, Mis-
souri, August 16, 1864, and is a son of Dr. Arch and
Elizabeth (Kirk) Peery. The family is of Norman
origin, the name having been originally spelled Perie,
and was founded in the Colony of Virginia in 1717 by the
American ancestor, a native of the North of Ireland
who located in Augusta County. From that county,
William Peery, the great-grandfather of Daniel W.
Peery, moved to Tazewell County, Virginia, in 1775, and
enlisted from the latter county as a soldier in the Amer-
ican army during the War of the Revolution. As a.
soldier in the Revolution he served with Gen. Roger Clark
in his expedition against old Fort Vincennes and was one
of five men who were with General Clark from Tazewell
County. His son, George Peery, was born in Tazewell
County, from whence he migrated in 1835 as a pioneer to
Northern Missouri, where he rounded out a long and
active career in the pursuits of farming.

Arch Peery, the father of Daniel William Peery, was
born in Tazewell County, Virginia, in 1818, and was a lad
when he accompanied his father to Missouri. He grew
up amid pioneer surroundings and was reared on the
home farm, but was granted good educational advan-
tages, and after thorough preparation enrolled as one
of the early students of the old Missouri Medical College,
at St. Louis, where he was duly graduated with his
degree. He became one of the pioneer physicians and
surgeons of Grundy County, Missouri, and for many
years practiced at Edinburg, where he died, honored and
respected, in 1888. Doctor Peery married Miss Eliza-
beth Kirk, who was born in Giles County, Virginia, in
1826, a daughter of Maj. Thomas Kirk, of Giles County.

who was an officer -in the American army during the War
of 1812. Mrs. Peery died in Grundy County, Missouri,
in 1898, having been the mother of eight children, as
follows : Horace J., who at the time of his death at
Albany, Missouri, in 1911, was register of deeds and
county clerk; Florence H., who is the wife of John II.
Peery, a distant relative, of Jamesport, Missouri; Nash
A., now a practicing attorney of Portland, Oregon; Dr. T.

P., a graduate of the Missouri Medical College, and now
engaged in the practice of medicine and surgery in Yuba
City, Sutter County, California; Mary C., who has been
for thirty-three years a teacher, and for twenty-two years
of that time at Portland, Oregon; Arch, who is engaged
in farming and resides in the vicinity of Apache, Okla-
homa; Daniel William, of this notice; and John T., who
is now living on the old homestead farm at Edinburg,
near Trenton, Missouri.

Daniel William Peery received his education in the
public schools of Grundy County and Grand River Col-
lege, an institution which had been founded by his family ti
and chartered by the Legislature of Missouri in 1852.

He was brought up to farming pursuits, and remained
on the homestead until reaching the age of twenty-four
years. He came to Oklahoma April 22, 1889, and filed
on a homestead of 160 acres a few miles southeast of
Oklahoma City. Mr. Peery has been present and assisted
at every opening of public land in the state, and has
taken part in all the runs, including the Opening of the p

Sac, Fox, and Pottawatomie reservations, September 19,
1891; the opening of Cheyenne and Arapahoe counties,
iii April, 1892, the Cherokee Strip, September 16, 1893, ■
and the drawing of the Kiowa and Comanche reserva-
tions, and in the latter assisted in locating many of the
settlers.

On August 6, 1890; Mr. Peery was elected one of five
representatives from Oklahoma County to the First Ter-
ritorial Legislature, and in that capacity assisted in the
organization of the great State of Oklahoma. He was
sent to the Second Legislature, in 1893, and in that year
removed to El Reno, where, with William Clute, he to

founded the El Reno Globe, a newspaper which became on

one of the prominent and influential publications of the
state, and which he edited until 1901. In that year Mr. in
Peery came to Carnegie, Caddo County, as agent for the ha
Townsite of Carnegie, a capacity in which he sold the as
land and helped to found the town. In 1910 he was
again elected to the Oklahoma Legislature, representing
the counties of Caddo, Canadian and Cleveland. In that
body he was known as one of the most active and prom-
inent members, having charge of the bill which located
the capital at Oklahoma City, and also taking an active
part in educational legislation, in assisting in locating
the agricultural college at Stillwater, the university at
Norman and the normal school at Edmond. A leading
democrat, he was a delegate from the Territory of Okla-
homa to the Kansas City National Convention of his
party, which nominated William Jennings Bryan for the
presidency, and from the State of Oklahoma to the
Denver National Convention, which also chose that states-
man as the leader of the party. He has been active in am
state and county democratic conventions, nearly every
one of which he has attended since the organization of
the state, and over several of which he has presided. In
1911 he became a candidate for Congress from the North-
west District, becoming the seventh candidate in the
field, but met with defeat undoubtedly because he only
presented his name twenty-six days before the primaries,
when the greater number of his friends were already
pledged.

At the present time Mr. Peery is a member of the real
estate firm of Peery & Crose, his partner, L. P. Crose, j,a
being the present mayor of Carnegie. Among the men

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1825

who, as public servants, have made enviable records for
their faithful, earnest and successful efforts in securing
beneficial and wise legislation, none is better or more
favorably known than is Dan W. Peery. An earnest
worker for the advancement of his party’s interests, lie
yet has never allowed his partisanship to interfere with
his efforts in the advancement of what he has considered
best for the interests of his constituents as a whole. And
in every walk of life, whether public or private, the same
high principles have been found to govern his actions.

Posethia L. Sanders, M. D. The pioneer physician
and surgeon of Carnegie, Oklahoma, Dr. Posethia L.
Sanders, has been engaged in practice here since 1903,
and has been successful in building up a large and im-
portant professional business. Prior to coming to this
city, he had secured a thorough and comprehensive train-
ing in the line of his calling, and the newly-opened com-
munity offered a prolific field for the display of his
talents. Doctor Sanders was born in Christian County,
Illinois, February 11, 1877, and is a son of F. M. and
M. A. (Fultz) Sanders.

The Sanders family originated in Scotland, and from
that country the American progenitor came to this coun-
try long before the outbreak of the War of the Revolu-
tion, settling in the colony of Virginia, from whence the
family spread to various of the southern states, and
particularly to Kentucky, where the name is well known.
Members of the family have been well known in public
life, in business, agriculture and the professions, and
have always been men and women of substance and
standing, honored by and honoring their communities. F.
M. Sanders, the father of Doctor Sanders, is a member
of the branch of the family which went to Kentucky, and
I was born in that state in 1838. He received a common
? school education, and was brought up to agricultural
pursuits, , so that when he entered upon his career he
| adopted farming as his vocation. From his native state
he removed to Greene County, Illinois, and in 1860 went
to Christian County,- in the same state, where he settled
on a farm. There he continued successfully engaged in
farming and stockraising operations for many years, but
in 1892 removed to Sumner County, Kansas, where he
has since made his home. He continued to be occupied
as a tiller of the soil until a few years ago when advanc-
ing years caused his retirement and he moved to Welling-
ton, Kansas, where he is living quietly in his comfortable
' ; home, enjoying the fruits of his many years of honest
; toil. Mr. Sanders has been a lifelong democrat, but has
been content to remain a farmer, and has not let public
life lure him from his home. For many years he has been
identified with the Masonic fraternity, and is now a mem-
ber of the Royal Arch Chapter of that fraternity. Both
v he and Mrs. Sanders are consistent members of the Bap-
tist Church, in the faith of which their children have been
■ reared. To Mr. and Mrs. Sanders there were born three
children: Dr. Posethia L., of this review; Mattie M., who
is the wife of L. A. Boory and resides at Wellington,
5 Kansas, where Mr. Boory is engaged in the plumbing
and gasfitting business ; and Arleigh G., whose death
■occurred at the age of twelve years.

The early education of Dr. P. L. Sanders was secured in
the district schools of Christian County, Illinois, in the
vicinity of his father ’s farm, on which he worked as a
lad and youth during the summer months. He was fif-
teen years of age when the family moved to Sumner
County, Kansas, and there he continued his public train-
ing, attending both the graded schools and the high
school at Mayfield, Kansas. He had always cherished an
ambition to engage in the practice of medicine, and to
gratify this wish took up the study of the profession at

the University of Kansas, where he was duly graduated
from the medical department with his diploma and degree,
in 1901. His studies did not end there, however, for he
has continued to be an assiduous scholar, and has taken
several post-graduate courses, including a course in 1906,
at the New York Medical School, of the University of
New York, and courses in 1911 at the Chicago Poly-
clinic and the Chicago Post-Graduate School.

At the time of his graduation from the University of
Kansas, in 1901, Doctor Sanders embarked in practice at
Mayfield, Kansas, where he remained until 1903, at that
time coming to Carnegie and opening an office as the
pioneer physician and surgeon of the place. Important
professional business was soon attracted to him by his
undoubted talents, and as* the years have passed he has
steadily advanced in professional prestige and public
favor. His broad and general practice includes every
branch of his calling, and in each he is recognized as a
thoroughly capable and reliable practitioner. Doctor
Sanders maintains well-appointed offices on the second
floor of the Cole-Hugill Building. He holds membership
in the various organizations and societies of his profes-
sion, including the Caddo County Medical Society, the
Oklahoma State Medical Society, the Southwestern Med-
ical Society and the American Medical Association. That
he is highly esteemed by his professional brethren is
shown by the fact that he has served in the capacity of
president of the Caddo County organization. Doctor
Sanders has various financial and business interests at
Carnegie, and is a director in the Benedict Oil Company,
of Arizona. His fraternal connections include member-
ship in Carnegie Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted
Masons, the lodges of the Modern Woodmen of America
and the Woodmen of the World, at Carnegie, and the Fra-
ternal Mystic Circle, at Mayfield, Kansas. He is a repub-
lican in politics, but his only public office has been that
of health officer of Carnegie. He is a member of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, and a member of the board
of trustees of that congregation.

Doctor Sanders was married in June, 1905, at Carnegie,
to Miss Ethel Fredregill, daughter of G. W. Fredregill,
who was a pioneer hardware merchant of Carnegie, but
is now engaged in farming in Caddo County. One child
has been born to Doctor and Mrs. Sanders: Vera Berna-
dine, born in October, 1907, who is now attending the
Carnegie public schopis.

Eugene D. Powell. For a young man of twenty-four
years Eugene D. Powell has covered a good deal of
ground in the newspaper profession and is now editor
and manager of the Times at Altus. He was practically
reared in the trade and profession of printer and news-
paper man, and consequently knows all the ins and outs
of the business, and since taking charge of the Times has
succeeded in giving it a considerable impetus to increase
circulation and influence.

The Powell family which he represents came originally
from England and was settled in Virginia during the
colonial days. Eugene D. Powell was born at Wilton,
Arkansas, July 2, 1891, a son of Rev. C. M. and Georgia
(Walden) Powell. His father, who was born at Mineral
Springs, Arkansas, in 1860, is now a resident of Bellevue,
Texas. Rev. Mr. Powell was educated in the common
schools at his birthplace in Arkansas and studied the-
ology in the Southern Baptist Seminary at Louisville,
Kentucky. Since leaving the seminary he has been con-
tinuously active in his profession as a Baptist minister,
and his duties brought him in 1901 to Stillwell in Indian
Territory. From there he moved to Afton in the terri-
tory in 1904, subsequently to Eldorado, Oklahoma, and
finally to his present place of residence at Bellevue

1826

HISTOKY OF OKLAHOMA

Texas, where he is pastor of the Baptist Church. While
living at Wilton and also at Stillwell and Afton in
Indian Territory he edited the newspapers of those towns
in addition to his regular duties as a minister. He is a
democrat in polities, and served on the school board at
Wilton and was mayor of Afton. His wife, who was
born in Arkansas in 1866, died at Winthrop in that state
in 1900. She became the mother of eight children : Ruth,
wife of Charles Gallegly, of Lockney, Texas; Yerda, wife
of C. R. Carr, in the lumber business at Texarkana,
Texas; Augusta, wife of A. C. Smith, a salesman at
Erick, Oklahoma ; Doyle, who is a graduate of the Afton
High School and also attended Baylor University at
Waco, Texas, and is now city editor of the Altus Times;
Eugene D.; Mary, who was married in 1911 to Louis T.
Tucker, a salesman at Eldorado, Oklahoma; Maude and
Doris, both of whom are students in the Baptist College
at Decatur, Texas.

Eugene D. Powell received his early education in the
public schools at Wilton, Arkansas, and at Stillwell,
Indian Territory, and was graduated from the Afton
High School in 1905. Later in 1908 he took a business
course at the Oklahoma Baptist College in Blackwell.
Meantime, in 1900, when only nine years of age, he
secured his first instruction in printing and newspaper
work under the direction of his father, and from that
age has seldom been long absent from a newspaper or
printing office. In 1911- ’12 he was employed to conduct
a paper at Hale Center, Texas, and afterwards for one
year was with the Beacon-Times at Idabel, Oklahoma.
On September 1, 1913, he came to Altus and was associ-
ated with the Altus Times, and during 1915 was editor
and business manager of that paper. The Altus Times
was established in 1900, is a democratic organ, has a
general circulation throughout Jackson and surrounding
counties, and lives up to the reputation that Altus has
for a live and hustling town and business center. Mr.
Powell is himself a democrat and is affiliated with Altus
Lodge No. 62, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, with
Altus Lodge No. 134, Independent Order of Odd Fellows;
and with Altus Lodge, Benevolent and Protective Order
of Elks, No. 1226.

Paul H. Jones. The ancestral history of this well
known citizen of McAlester, Pittsburg County, is one
of the most interesting and distinguished order and he
is a scion of a family whose name has been prominently
linked with the annals of American history from the
early colonial era, each successive generation having
produced men of sterling character and women of fine
personality, while representatives have been found promi-
nent and influential citizens in New England, New York,
Maryland, Illinois, Georgia and other states of the Union.
Family tradition, amply fortified by records still extant,
indicates that the original American progenitor or
progenitors of this family of Jones came from England
on the historic ship Mayflower, and the lineage is
traced back to William Jones, one of the stern English-
men whose loyalty to principle led him to become a
member of the historic company of regicides who made
decisive blows in behalf of human independence. Mem-
bers of the Jones family were numbered among the
early settlers of both Massachusetts and Connecticut,
and the grandfather of Prince Jones, from whom the
subject of this review is a lineal descendant, was a
brother of the mother of the celebrated colonial hero,
Paul Revere. The mother of George H. Bissell, the dis-
tinguished sculptor, was a sister of Prince H. Jones, who
was the paternal grandfather of him whose name intro-
duces this article. Judge Samuel D. Lockwood, the first
attorney general of Illinois and later an associate justice

of the Supreme Court of that state, was a brother of
the mother of Prince II. Jones. Abraham Prickett,
great-grandfather of Paul H. Jones in the maternal line,
was one of the first settlers at Edwardsville, Illinois, I
became the first mayor of that town, was a member of
the committee that framed the constitution of Illinois
in 1818, was a member of the first Legislature of that
state, and became the founder of the first banking insti-
tution at Edwardsville, his son George having been the
first white child born in the pioneer village that is now
a thriving and beautiful city.

Paul H. Jones, who is numbered among the repre-
sentative business men of McAlester, Oklahoma, and
who served as a member of the State Board of Prison
Control until the board was eliminated by legislative
enactment in March, 1915, was born in the historic old
Town of Edwardsville, Madison County, Illinois, in the
year 1874, and is a son of William and Clare (Prickett)
Jones. The only other surviving child is Miss Minna
Jones, who remains with her parents at Edwardsville,
the family home being that in which the mother was
born, sixty years ago.

Mr. Jones continued to attend the public schools of his
native city until he had completed the curriculum of the
high school, and as his father met with severe financial
reverses about this time, the youth was denied the
advantages of a collegiate education. He initiated his
business career by obtaining employment in a bank at
Edwardsville, where he continued to be identified with
this line of enterprise until 1897, when failing health
rendered it imperative for him to seek less sedentary
occupation and it behooved him also to find a change
of climatic conditions. For a year thereafter he was a
cowboy on ranches in Wyoming and Colorado, the ensuing
year having been by him devoted to mining in the gold
and silver fields of the latter state, and the manual
application and free and open life having resulted in his
fully regaining his health, with the accumulation of a
robustness greater than he had previously enjoyed at any
period. Upon his return to the East he established his
residence in the City of St. Louis, Missouri, where he
was engaged in the coal business during the ensuing four
years. In 1902 Mr. Jones made a prospecting trip in
Indian Territory, and while on a hunting expedition out
from McAlester he became so favorably impressed with
the attractions and advantages of the locality that he
decided to make permanent location at McAlester. Here
he became identified with the brick-manufacturing
industry, in connection with which he was for several
years general manager of the Choctaw Pressed Brick
Company. In the spring of 1915 he severed his associa-
tion with this corporation and established an inde-
pendent brokerage business, in which he deals principally
in building material, his personal popularity and unsul-
lied business reputation having made the enterprise
successful from its initiation.

In politics Mr. Jones is aligned as a staunch sup-
porter of the cause of the republican party, and he has
not been permitted to deny his services in public offices
of trust during the period of his residence in Oklahoma.
Within recent years he served two terms as city clerk of
McAlester, and in 1913 he was appointed by Governor
Cruee a member of the State Board of Prison Control,
a position in which he served with utmost loyalty and
circumspection until the abolishment of this department
of the governmental service of the state, in March,
1915. This board recommended, upon careful investi-
gation, the - issuing of paroles to 385 prisoners in the
state penal institutions, and most of these paroles were
granted by the governor, only fourteen of the prisoners

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1827

thus paroled having failed to live up to the conditions
and provisions under which they were released.

Mr. Jones is one of the progressive and public-spirited
citizens of the vital and ambitious City of McAlester,
is an active and valued member of the McAlester Cham-
ber of Commerce ; is a member of the board of trustees
of All Saints Hospital, maintained in this city under
the auspices of the Protestant Episcopal Church; is
secretary of the McAlester Golf and Country Club; is
senior deacon, in 1915, of McAlester Lodge, No. 196,
Ancient Free and Accepted Masons ; and is one of the
most influential and popular members of McAlester
Lodge, No. .533, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks,
of which he has twice served as exalted ruler. Both he
and his wife are communicants of the Protestant Episco-
pal Church.

In 1909 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Jones to
Miss Agnes Stuart, daughter of Judge Charles B. Stuart,
of Oklahoma City, who was formerly a law partner of
Senator Bailey, who represented Texas in the United
States Senate. Under the administration of President
Cleveland Judge Stuart served on the bench of the United
States Court of the Eastern District of Indian Territory.
Mrs. Jones was graduated in a college for young women
at Lexington, Kentucky, and she is a leader in the repre-
sentative social activities of the City of McAlester. Mr.
and Mrs. Jones have one child, Halleck Stuart, who was
born in 1912.

A scion of honored and influential pioneer families of
Illinois, Mr. Jones has maintained a deep interest in
the history of his native state and among his most
prized possessions are a table, a rocking chair and a
straight chair which were there used by the martyred
President, Abraham Lincoln, upon whose death these
valued memorials became the property of Thomas C.
Prickett, a maternal ancestor of Mr. Jones. A few
years ago Mr. Jones loaned the table and chairs to the
Lincoln Memorial Association. He has in his possession
also a letter writter by President Lincoln under date
of September 27, 1852, in which Lincoln sought to
have the administrator of the Prickett estate correct
the title to some town lots that had been transferred
to “Billy, the barber,” a negro who had shaved Lin-
coln in Bloomington, Illinois.

. C. C. Atwood. A flourishing little center of trade
and business in Hughes County is named Atwood, a
village that was laid out along the M. O. & G. Railroad
by members of the Atwood family, and the railroad
company named it in honor of C. C. Atwood, who for
forty years has been a resident of Indian Territory, the
greater part of the time in what is now Hughes County,
and has been prominent as a cattle man, banker and
citizen.

A native of Texas, he was born in Coryell City, July
4, 1861, a son of Eli and Katy (Trousdale) Atwood.
His father was a native of Nashville, Tennessee, and his
mother of Springfield, Missouri. The father grew up
in Tennessee, but after his marriage in Missouri moved
to Texas in 1860 and he and his wife spent the rest of
their days there, his business being that of farmer.
During the war, though too old for active service, he
was a member of the home guard and served as a scout.
C. C. Atwood was twelve years of age when his father
died and eleven when his mother died. The six children
were: C. M. of Belton, Texas; Bettie, deceased wife

of Hugh Phillips; Eliza, deceased wife of A. A. Ed-
wards; William, deceased; Matt, deceased; and C. C.

The first fourteen years of his life C. C. Atwood spent
in Texas, and while there acquired a common school
education. * In 1875 he went into the Chickasaw Nation
and located near Tishomingo, moved from there to

Okmulgee in the Creek Nation, and then in 1881 to
Tobucksee County in the Choctaw Nation, and soon
afterwards located in the vicinity where he has ever
since kept his home and the center of his activities.
Througnout this long period of activity he has been a
farmer and stock raiser chiefly.

He nas seven children, and all of them have allotments
in Hughes County. When the M. O. & G. Railroad was
built they bought land for a townsite from Mr. Atwood,
and that was the origin of the present Village of
Atwood.

Mr. Atwood was one of the original stockholders in
the City National Bank of Calvin, and he is now a
director in the First National Bank of that place and a
director in the First State Bank of Atwood. At one
time he was president of the City National Bank at
Calvin. However, he has given his chief attention and
has made his success in farming and stock raising. At
one time he grazed very large herds over his own
holdings and leased lands. At the present time his
landed possessions comprised, with those of his children,
several sections of rich land, and about 640 acres are
under cultivation. He is a democrat and is an elder
in the Church of Christ, of which he has been a member
for the past twenty years.

In 1882 Mr. Atwood married Miss Patsy Ann Burris,
who was born at old Doaksville in the Choctaw Nation,
a daughter of Benjamin and Sally (Nelson) Burris.
Both her father and mother were half-blood Choctaws.
Mr. and Mrs. Atwood have seven children, all of whom
were born at Atwood, and briefly noted as follows :
Ottie, wife of R. C. Lee of Parsons, Kansas; Arry, wife
of Dr. W. B. Berninger of Atwood; Bennie, of Cordell,
Oklahoma; Ollie, wife of R. L. Henley of Atwood;
Colman of Atwood; Lizzie, who lives at home; and
Ambrose, also at home.

Henry C. Dorroh, M. D. Possessing in generous meas-
ure the qualities which make the personally popular as
well as financially successful physician, Dr. Henry C.
Dorroh has a firmly established reputation at Hammon
as an earnest, cautious and painstaking healer of men.
He represents a kind of medical practice which is a long
way removed from the standards of even a decade ago,
his progressive mind rejecting mercilessly dogmas whose
only claim is their antiquity, and which have no place in
the light and intelligence of modern investigation.

Doctor Dorroh is of Irish descent, his great-grand-
father, who spelled his name O ’Dorroh, coming from Erin
about the time of the Revolutionary war and settling in
North Carolina. William W. Dorroh, father of Doctor
Dorroh, was born at Fredonia, Kentucky, February 22,
1827, and in 1875 removed to within four miles of Prince-
ton, the county seat of Caldwell County, Kentucky, where
he pa«sed the remaining years of his life in the pursuits
of farming and stockraising and died in September,
1904. He was a stalwart supporter of the democratic
party and with his wife belong to the Baptist Church.
Mrs. Dorroh, who bore the maiden name of Mary Easley,
was born in 1830, in Virginia, and when nine years of
age was taken by her parents to Fredonia, Kentucky,
where she received her education and was reared and
married. She died at Princeton, Kentucky, in Febru-
ary, 1891, the mother of six children, as follows: Bobbie,
who is the wife of Charles W. Guess, a farmer of Prince-
ton; Frankie, who is the wife of J. J. Rorer, a farmer of
Fredonia, Kentucky; William T., who is engaged in agri-
cultural pursuits in Caldwell County; Annie, who is the
wife of W. T. Hurst, a carpenter and mechanic of Hop-
kinsville, Kentucky; Dr. Henry C., of this notice; and
Doctor Lee, a graduate of the Louisville Hospital Col-
lege, of Louisville, Kentucky, and now engaged in a med-

1828

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

ieal and surgical practice, a sketch of whose career will
be found elsewhere in this work.

Henry C. Dorroh was born at Salem, Livingston County,
Kentucky, December 23, 1869, and in the following year
was taken by his parents to Caldwell County, where he
attended the public schools. He was reared on the home
farm, but had no liking for an agricultural career, and
on attaining his majority, in 1891, went to Washing-
ton, in which state and Oregon he spent the next six
years in engineering. His next location was Angels
Camp, California, where he was connected with the Utica
Gold Mining Company until 1903, and in that year joined
the gold-hunters of Alaska, spending 1% years at Nome
in search of the precious yellow metal. Returning to
California at the end of that period, for a time he was
engaged in engineering at San Francisco, but finally
turned his attention to the profession of medicine, and in
the fall of 1905 entered the Louisville Hospital College
of Medicine, at Louisville, Kentucky, which he attended
for two years. During his vacation, in 1907, he returned
to California, but in the fall of the same year went back
to Louisville and completed his medical course, being
graduated with the class of 1910 and receiving the degree
of Doctor of Medicine. Shortly thereafter Doctor Dorroh
came to Oklahoma and commenced practice at Aledo,
Dewey County, but August 15th of the same year changed
his field of practice to the Town of Hammon, where he
has since continued in the enjoyment of a rapidly growing
medical and surgical practice, his offices being located in
the Hammon News Building on Broadway. Practicability
and simplicity have been the professional efforts and he
is a most careful and expert diagnostician as well as a
close and inquiring student. In the search for clearer
vision and larger usefulness he has allied himself with
the various organizations of his vocation, being a member
of the American Medical Association, the Oklahoma
Medical Society and the Roger Mills Medical Society, of
which latter he served one term as treasurer, his service
expiring in January, 1915. He is a democrat in politics,
but not particularly active in public affairs save as a
good citizen and a supporter of progressive and beneficial
movements. Fraternally, he is connected with Russell
Camp No. 51, Woodmen of the World, and the local camp
of the Woodmen’s Circle.

Doctor Dorroh was married at Angels Camp, Cali-
fornia, in 1904, to Miss Edna Covens, of Chicago, Illinois,
and they have one child: Edna May, born April 17,
1913.

William C. Hughes. One of the most fertile counties
in Eastern Oklahoma is that of which Holdenville is
county seat, and it was created at the time of statehood
and was named in honor of William C. Hughes, one of
the most striking and influential figures in the Constitu-
tional Convention. Mr. Hughes is an able brilliant law-
yer, practiced law in Oklahoma for many years, and is
now a resident of St. Joseph, Missouri.

He comes of an old and distinguished Missouri family.
He was liberally educated, and from Kansas City he
moved to Oklahoma in March, 1901, locating at Oklahoma
City. As a lawyer he had soon established a state repu-
tation.

He was elected a member of the Oklahoma Consti-
tutional Convention in 1906 from the Twenty-eighth Con-
ventional District, comprising the business center of Okla-
homa City. He was chosen as a democrat and by an
overwhelming majority. In the convention he was a
prominent candidate for president, and lost that dis-
tinction by a very small majority, largely on account of
becoming seriously ill. In the constructive work of the
convention his was one of the most important individual

influences. He was chairman of the Municipal Corpora-
tion Committee, and the imprint of his judgment and
foresight is upon all the provisions of the organic law
affecting this subject. He is author of provisions of the
constitution as follows : The provisions giving to the
people of the cities the right to make the charters for
their government, the rights of the initiative and referen-
dum in city affairs, the right to require by direct vote
the granting of franchises; the provisions prohibiting the
granting, renewal or extension of franchises without ap-
proval by the people by direct vote; the provisions ex-
pressly authorizing cities to own and operate their pub-
lic utilities and providing means by which they may raise
money for such purposes; the provisions creating the
office of state commissioner and corrections; the jiro-
visions prohibiting child labor.

It was as a tribute to his valuable services that Hughes
County was named in his honor.

William C. Hughes was born at Georgetown, then the
county seat of Pettis County, Missouri, October 24, 1869,
a son of Dr. B. F. and Catherine (Kidd) Hughes, and
he later lived in Sedalia- and Kansas City. His parents
were also native Missourians and the grandparents on
both sides were pioneers in the state, Grandfather Hughes
having come from Virginia and grandfather Kidd from
Kentucky. Mr. W. C. Hughes was one in a family of
seven children, four of whom are still living. Doctor
Hughes, his father, served as surgeon of the Seventh Mis-
souri Cavalry, and also of the Sixth Missouri Cavalry, in
the Civil war. He was afterwards a member of the Mis-
souri Constitutional Convention known as the “Drake”
Convention, having been elected from Pettis County as an
independent, and he ardently fought against the estab-
lishment of a military despotism by that convention, which
was in a measure a result and consequence of the re-
construction following the war. His name is signed to
the ordinance abolishing slavery in Missouri.

On June 14, 1893, W. C. Hughes married Luella Gaines
of Clinton, Missouri. They are the parents of four
daughters and one son: Jeanette Cameron, Elizabeth,
Lucy Briscoe, William C. Jr., and Donna.

Joseph W. Childers. When Joseph W. Childers came
to Okmulgee in June, 1905, he brought with him the
accumulated experience of twenty years as a successful
lawyer in the State of Missouri. In the past ten years
Mr. Childers has gained prominence as an attorney in
the new state and has also taken an active part in local
and state politics. The people of Okmulgee County espe-
cially appreciate' his service as county attorney for four
years. He was first elected to that office in 1910, and
his first term brought him a vote of renewed confidence
in his re-election in 1912. In 1914 Mr. Childers lost the
nomination for district judge, his successful opponent
being Judge Hughes.

Though most of his life until coming to Oklahoma was
spent in Missouri, Joseph W. Childers was born ill
Monroe County, Iowa, near Blakesburg, August 11, 1859,
a son of Isaac and Huldah A. (Tharp) Childers. The
Childers family is of Welsh stock, and there had been a
number of prominent men of that name in Wales, one of
them having served as a member of the parliament and
an active supporter of the Gladstone administration. The
Tharp family is of Scotch descent. Mr. Childers’ father
was born in Wood County, West Virginia, December 10,
1819. and his wife in Harrison County in the same state
in 1824. They were married in West Virginia in 1841,
and in 1850 went out as pioneers to the new State of
Iowa, where the father entered a tract of government
land in Monroe County. They lived there until 1861,
and then moved to Sullivan County in Northern Missouri.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1829

The father was a sturdy and practical farmer and had
an honorable career in all its relationships. He died in
Missouri August 29, 1891, while his wife passed away
April 2, 1887. They became the parents of a large fam-
ily of fourteen children, two of whom died in infancy.
A brief record of the others is as follows: Preston R.,
who is now seventy-two years of age and lives at Little-
ton, Colorado, served four years as a Union soldier, hav-
ing veteranized after his first enlistment, and was with
Sherman on the famous march to the sea; Sylvanus W.
lives in the State of Oregon; Delia Ann Tipton lives at
Nuckols, Nebraska; Mary died at the age of twelve
years; Stephen L. is a farmer at Helena, Oklahoma;
Addison H. is a contractor at Denver, Colorado; Hulda

A. Page lives on the home farm back in Sullivan County,
Missouri; W. H. is an attorney at Milan, Missouri;
Joseph W. is next in age; Marion V. met an accidental
death in 1883; Sherman died at the age of fourteen; and
Emma L. Akers lives at Alva, Oklahoma.

Joseph W. Childers grew up on the home farm and
remained there until 1879. In the meantime he had
attended the district schools, and on leaving home his
first experience was as clerk in a store at Milan, Missouri.
In 1884 he began the study of law in the office of John
P. Butler at Milan, and was admitted to practice May
16, 1886. Continuing to make his home at Milan, he
soon built up a promising profitable practice and con-
tinued it until his removal to Oklahoma in 1905. In this
state in addition to his large private practice he has ac-
quired considerable interests in oil lands. In politick he
is a democrat, and is a member of the Presbyterian
Church.

On November 15, 1888, he married Lillie M. Graham.
She was born at Milan, Missouri, June 29, 1869, a
daughter of James S. and Samantha (Swanger) Graham.
Mr. Childers has one daughter, Wodenia, wife of Louis

B. Bradfield, of Greeley, Colorado.

John Walker Tillman. An able and influential
member of the Oklahoma bar, John Walker Tillman, of
Pawhuska, has won unmistakable prestige, his scholarly
attainments and comprehensive knowledge of law having
won him an assured position in the. legal fraternity of
Osage County. He was born June 16, 1886, in Fayette-
ville, Washington County, Arkansas, coming from dis-
tinguished ancestry, being a son of John N. Tillman,
LL. D., and a descendant of the same immigrant
ancestor that founded in America the family from which
Benjamin R. Tillman, who won distinction as United
States senator from South Carolina is descended.

A native of South Carolina, John N. Tillman moved
with his parents to Southwestern Missouri in childhood,
and during his earlier life received exceptionally good
educational advantages. Entering the legal profession,
he became prominent as a lawyer, and after his removal
to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he still resides, was one
of the leading educators of that state, for seven years
serving as president of the University of Arkansas. A
lifelong democrat, he has exerted great influence in the
councils of his party, and has filled various public
offices with ability and fidelity, winning the approbation
of his constituents. He was circuit judge for some time,
and is now serving his third term as congressman from
the Third Congressional District of Arkansas. His wife,
whose maiden name was Tumpy Walker, was born, bred,
and educated in Benton County, Arkansas. Three chil-
dren were born of their union, namely: John Walker,

the special subject of this sketch; Frederick Allen, of
Fayetteville, Arkansas, a lawyer, and his father ’s secre-
tary; and Kathleen, wife of L. B. Shaver, of Oklahoma
City.

After his graduation from the University of Arkansas,
John Walker Tillman began the study of law with
Messrs. C. B. Wall and Charles H. Brough, and in 1907
was admitted to the Arkansas bar. Beginning the. prac-
tice of his profession in his home city, he met with
most encouraging success as a lawyer, and was soon
prominently identified with public affairs, serving two
terms as assistant prosecuting attorney, and for two
terms being city attorney of Fayetteville. In 1911 Mr.
Tillman located at Pawhuska, Oklahoma, and has here
gained an excellent position among the leading men of
this section of the state. In 1912 he was elected assist-
ant county attorney of Osage County, and after serving
two years under C. K. Templeton was elected, on March
3, 1914, county attorney of Osage County, his election
being proof of the satisfactory manner in which he
performed the duties of his previous office.

Politically Mr. Tillman is a stanch adherent of the
democratic party, supporting its principles by voice and
vote. He is a member of both the county and the state
bar associations, and bejongs to two fraternal organiza-
tions, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and
the Knights of Pythias.

Mr. Tillman married, in November, 1911, Miss Jennie
Walker, a daughter of C. W. W. Walker, a well-known
attorney of Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Daniel P. Lowe. The experienced engineer is able to
operate noiselessly and smoothly a complicated machine
because he understands the power exerted by every
minute inanimate part, and it is often a marvelous
accomplishment. It is, likewise, a notable achievement
when an executive can control wisely and efficiently a
great human organization, because, unlike the engineer,
it is not possible for him to comprehend fully the
capacity of its working parts. The office of a county
superintendent of schools is one of honorable but heavy
responsibility. In his field there is vital work to be done
but not always is he able to find the hidden screw or
lift the governing lever, as can the engineer, and only
through the knowledge and ripened judgment that long
experience has brought about can he satisfy both the
public and himself when he assumes the duties pertaining
to this office. Beckham County, Oklahoma, in Superin-
tendent Daniel P. Lowe has an official thoroughly equip-
ped to still further advance the present high standards
of the county’s educational system, and his untiring
efforts are meeting with general approval.

Daniel P. Lowe was born in Cook County, Texas,
January 12, 1870, and is a son of J. D. and M. M.
(Tittle) Lowe. The Lowe family is of Scotch-Irish
descent, early settlement being made in Virginia, from
which section they were pioneers in Texas and later a
branch settled in Missouri, and in that state the father
of Professor Lowe was born, in 1833. From there, in
1859, he moved to Cook County, Texas, where he married
M. M. Tittle, who was born in 1838, and to this union
six children were born : Joan, who is the wife of Paris

Hodge, who is a farmer in Oklahoma; Daniel P. ; Janey,
who is the wife of J. F. Walker, a farmer near Orr,
Oklahoma; Julia, who was the victim of an accident,
died at Forestburg, Texas, in her twenty-second year;
T. B., who is a farmer and stockman near Sweetwater,
Oklahoma; and W. A., who died at Forestburg, Texas,
at the age of twenty-five years.

J. D. Lowe in 1873 removed with his family to Mon-
tague County. Texas, and from there, in 1907, came to
Sweetwater, Oklahoma, where he yet resides, a retired
farmer and stockman. During the war between the
states he served four years in the Confederate army,
enlisting from Texas, in Marsh’s Regiment, surviving all
the hardships and dangers of that time and returned

1830

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

home practically unharmed. He is identified with the
democratic party and both he and wife are members
of the Christian Church and are people justly held in
high esteem.

Darnel Jr*. Lowe began school life in Montague County,
Texas, continuing until his graduation from the high
school, afterward taking a course in the commercial
department of the normal school, some years afterward,
in 1905, taking the teacher’s course in the Denton Normal
School. Beginning educational work in 1897, Mr. Lowe
has been almost continuously in this field ever since, in
the fall of 1914 coming to Beckham County in his
present capacity with eighteen years ’ of varied educa-
tional experience behind him.

At Forestburg, Texas, in 1897, Mr. Lowe had his first
teaching experience, remaining there until 1900, after
which he taught two years in Fannin County and tlieu
two years in Denton County, when he was recalled to
Forestburg and taught there for three more years. In
1907, on the day that Oklahoma became a state, he filed
on a claim of 160 acres in Beckham County situated ten
miles due north of Texola, later proved up and still owns
this property, which has become very valuable. In the
same year he began teaching in this county and continued
until 1912, when he accepted the position of principal
of the higli schools of Delhi, Oklahoma, where he con-
tinued until November 6, 1914, when he was elected
county superintendent of the schools of Beckham County,
assuming the duties of this office on July 1, 1915, taking
up his residence at Sayre, his offices being in the court-
house. Superintendent Lowe has under his care, control
and supervision, 72 schools, 130 teachers and 5,000 pupils.
In his administration he has proved wise, resourceful and
firm and there is great reason for the citizens of this
county to be well satisfied with their choice.

At Forestburg, Texas, on December 29, 1900, Mr. Lowe
was united in marriage with Miss Josie Wylie, who is a
daughter .of J. F. Wylie, who is a retired farmer residing
in that city. Professor and Mrs. Lowe have two chil-
dren: Fay, who was born January 30, 1912, and D. P.,

who was born April 3, 1914, both at Delhi, this state.

Although not particularly active in politics, Mr. Lowe
has always been firm in his adherence to the principles
of the democratic party. He is quite well known in
fraternal life, having membership in Erick Lodge No.
327, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons ; Sayre Lodge
No. 258, Odd Fellows; and Delhi Camp, Modern Wood-
men of America. As a representative educator of the
state he is frequently called on for addresses and lectures
and is a valued member of both the Beckham County and
the Oklahoma State Teachers’ associations. Both he and
wife are members of the Christian Church.

Wilbert W. Brunskill. A considerable part of the
enterprise and energy that have gone into commercial and
agricultural development in and about Elgin has been
supplied by Wilbert W. Brunskill, president and owner
of the Bank of Elgin. Mr. Brunskill is a banker of long
experience, having been identified with that business back
in Iowa, and is also a large land owner and is identified
with several of the most important enterprises at Elgin.

The Brunskills were pioneer settlers in the vicinity
of Dubuque, Iowa, where Mr. Brunskill ’s grandfather,
Joseph J., who came from England and first settled in
Ohio, located about the time Iowa was admitted to the
Union and before any railroads had been constructed to
Dubuque. He was identified with the development of the
lead mines in that region, and owned some large interests
of that kind. He died at Dubuque. It was in Dubuque
City that Wilbert W. Brunskill was born April 15, 1877.
His father, J. W. Brunskill, who was born at Dubuque in
1848, removed not long after his marriage to Cherokee

County, Iowa, where he was a farmer and also in the
grain and general merchandise business. In 1884 he re-
moved to Hawarden in Sioux County, Iowa, where he
was a hardware, harness and implement dealer, also owned
the opera house at the time, and had farming property.
In 1902 J. W. Brunskill left Iowa and settled at Bridge-
water, South Dakota, on a farm, but since 1907 has been
a farmer at Sauk Center, Minnesota. He is a member
of the Methodist Episcopal Church and of the Masonic
fraternity. His wife was Maria Frost, who was born
in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1850, and died at Hawarden in
Sioux County of that state in 1892. The children now
living are: Nettie E., a resident of Petaluma, California;
Wilbert W. ; Grace M., of Gray Eagle, Minnesota; and
J. William, who is with his father at Sauk Center,
Minnesota.

Most of his early schooling Wilbert W. Brunskill ac-
quired in the public schools of Hawarden, Iowa, where
he was graduated from the high school with the class
of 1894. He had already become connected with the
Northwestern State Bank of Hawarden, and was assistant
cashier in that institution until 1900. That year he
became vice president of the Bank of Chatsworth, Iowa,
but in 1906 removed to Elgin, Oklahoma, and for the
past ten years has made himself one of the leading factors
in the development of that town. On coming to Elgin
he bought the Bank of Elgin, but sold out in 1908, and
the following six years were spent in other local affairs.
In February, 1914, he again acquired the sole ownership
of the bank, and both during his former ownership and
at present has been president. The Bank of Elgin was
established in 1902 as a state bank by J. A. Butler and
F. B. Dykeman. Its building, situated on Main Street,
was erected in 1902. While Mr. Brunskill is president,
the vice president is B. M. Brunskill and the cashier is
A. L. Boberts. The bank has a capital stock of $5,000,
and surplus of $3,500.

Mr. Brunskill is also secretary and treasurer of the
Elgin Farmers Telephone Company, is owner of the Elgin
elevator and Elgin flour milling plant, and one of the
largest stockholders in the Elgin Bonded Cotton Ware-
house Company. His interests as a farmer are extensive,
including the supervision of the efforts of a number of
tenants who employ his 800 acres situated in Cotton, Co-
manche and Garfield counties for diversified agricul-
ture. He is a member of the Oklahoma State Bank Asso-
ciation and the Oklahoma Grain Dealers Association, has
served on the local school board, and in 1915 was elected
mayor of Elgin. In politics he is a republican.

At Lyons, Nebraska, in 1900 Mr. Brunskill married
Beatrice Coffin, whose father, L. C. Coffin, is a general
merchant and . farmer at Elgin, Oklahoma. Four chil-
dren have been born to their marriage: Donovan W. is
a student in the state university at Norman, where he is
specializing in the Spanish language and in music ; Hollis
W. is in the fourth grade of the Elgin public schools ; and
the two younger children are Milo S. and James Bonar.

Frederick E. Dolson, M. D. The first physician
and surgeon to locate permanently at the new Town of
Faxon in Southwestern Oklahoma was Dr. Frederick B.
Dolson, who has been identified professionally with that
community for the past eight years and has also con-
tributed to the commercial life of the village by estab-
lishing and maintaining the only drug store. He is other-
wise a factor in public affairs and has a large practice
and is one of the most useful members of the com-
munity.

Born at New Orleans, Louisiana, November 6, 1869,
Doctor Dolson has had a life of varied effeetfulness and
experience. His early schooling was continued only to

HISTORY OP OKLAHOMA

1831

about twelve or thirteen years of age, at which time he
went out to the great cattle range of Kansas, and for
several years pursued the active and exciting life of a
cowboy. He became ambitious for a good education and
for a work of more permanent usefulness than that of
cattle herder, and while in Kansas he attended night
schools at Wichita for six years and also completed a
three years ’ course in a preparatory college conducted by
the Adventist Church at Battle Creek, Michigan. In
1898 Doctor Dolson completed his medical course in the
Tulane University at New Orleans, where he was grad-
uated M. D., and almost immediately after leaving college
enlisted for service in the Spanish-American war as a
surgeon. He was surgeon on duty at Fort St. Philip at
the mouth of the Mississippi two months, was then trans-
ferred to the First Army Corps, and sent to Jackson-
ville, Florida, two months, then to Savannah, Georgia,
and finally to Cuba. His service with the army con-
tinued for two years. After this experience as an army
surgeon Doctor Dolson practiced medicine at Fort Worth,
Texas, from 1900 to 1903, removed to Lawton, Oklahoma,
in the latter year, and maintained his office in that city
up to 1907, in which year he identified himself with the
newly established Town of Faxon. Both his business
and reputation have been of growing proportions since
locating there, and in 1907 he also opened a drug store
now the only enterprise of that kind in the village,
situated on Main Street.

Doctor Dolson ’s grandfather emigrated from England
and settled near Chatham, Ontario, Canada, where he was
a hardware merchant. He also lived in Louisiana for a
time, where his son J. A. Dolson was born in 1838.
Doctor Dolson ’s ' father died at Frankfort, Indiana, in
1880, having removed to that locality from Louisiana.
He was a stock broker by trade, and during the war
between the states had served 3% years in a Louisiana
regiment in the Confederate army. He was once wounded
and taken prisoner. In religion he was a Presbyterian,
and was affiliated with the Masonic Order and the Inde-
pendent Order of Odd Fellows. His wife was Jane Cham-
bers, who was born in Ohio, in 1823, and died at Frank-
fort, Indiana, in March, 1915. Her children were: Stella,
who is the wife of Fred Mash and lives on their farm
near Tulsa, Oklahoma; Nettie, who is still living at
Frankfort, Indiana; Bessie, who died in 1900 when
about twenty- two years of age; John, who is a con-
tractor and builder in California; and Doctor Frederick,
the youngest.

Doctor Dolson is a democrat, and for the past seven
years has been city treasurer of Faxon. He is affiliated
with Faxon Lodge No. 534 of the Independent Order of
Odd Fellows, and is also identified with the various
medical organizations. At Lawton in 1908 he married
Miss Ida Covell, whose father-, Winkell Coveil, is a resi-
dent of St. Louis, Missouri. They have one son, Jack
Woodrow, who was born August 27, 1912.

Hon. Jerry C. Dulaney. A representative of the
type of citizenship which has been the main factor in the
upbuilding and development of the newer towns of Okla-
homa is found in the person of Hon. Jerry C. Dulaney,
mayor of Devol and proprietor of the only drug establish-
ment at this place. Since his arrival here, in 1909, he has
identified himself with the best interests of this thriv-
ing community, and in his official capacity, in which he
has served since 1912, has instituted many reforms and
secured numerous advantages which have combined to
add to the importance and prestige of his adopted place.

Mayor Dulaney was born February 11, 1864, in Texas,
and is a descendant of ancestors who came to America
from France prior to the Revolutionary war. From one

of the eastern states members of the family migrated as
pioneers to Mississippi, where in 1829 was born the
father of Jerry C. Dulaney, William Payton Dulaney.
The latter, as* a young man of twenty years, moved to
Texas and engaged in farming, and continued to be so
occupied until 1863. In the meantime he had enlisted
in the Home Guards, and was made captain of his com-
pany, and in the year mentioned was sent out to hold
the hostile Indians in check, taking his family with him.
He had reached Weatherford, Parker County, Texas,
when he met his death, shot by one of his men for an
Indian. In December, 1863, Mrs. Dulaney, who had been
born in Mississippi in 1830, at once started back toward
Corsicana, Navarro County, Texas, with her children, but
ere she could reach there, her child, Jerry C., was born,
about two months after his father’s death. Mrs. Du-
laney bore the maiden name of Lucinda White, and sur-
vived her husband many years, dying at Devol, Oklahoma,
in January, 1915, when in her eighty-third year. She
and her husband were the parents of eight children:
T. J., who resides in Harper County, Oklahoma, and is
engaged in agricultural pursuits ; Susie, who married
James Chappell, a farmer of the State of New Mexico;
J. N., who carries on farming at Temple, Oklahoma;
Sarah, who married S. A. Ritchie, and resides at Paris,
Texas, Mr. Ritchie being a carpenter and builder; J. W.,
the proprietor of a cotton gin at Altus, Oklahoma; J. G.,
who was a merchant at Paducah, Texas; J. D., who is a
carpenter and builder of New Mexico; and Jerry C., of
this notice.

Jerry C. Dulaney received his education in the public
schools of Texas, which he attended, off and on, until he
was twenty-one years of age. He was reared to agricul-
tural pursuits, and when he entered upon an independent
career t started farming in Falls County, Texas, where
he remained until 1888. In that year he entered the
drug business at Durango, Texas, where he remained
three years, subsequently drifting from place to place
in Western Texas for two years, and finally coming to
Ryan, Oklahoma, where he remained three years as a
druggist. Returning to Falls County, for four years
he had a pharmacy of his own, and in 1901 returned
to Ryan, Oklahoma (then Indian Territory), and con-
ducted a drug store until the opening of the Comanche
country in the fall of the same year. At that time he
obtained a claim south of Temple, Oklahoma, on which
he lived until he had proved it, and in 1907 went to
Temple and engaged in the grocery business, remaining
something more than a year. In 1909 Mr. Dulaney
came to Devol and started a drug store, and this has
since continued to be the only establishment of its kind
in the city. The business is located on Wichita Avenue,
where Mr. Dulaney carries an up-to-date line of drug
goods of all descriptions, attractively arranged and
moderately priced. He has built up an excellent busi-
ness through good management and a spirit of progress
and enterprise, and is known as one of the substantial
merchants of the city. A democrat in his political
views, Mr. Dulaney ’s well known ability caused him to
be chosen by his fellow-citizens for the office of mayor,
in 1912, and he still retains that office, his administra-
tion having been marked by faithful and efficient per-
formance of duty and careful conservation of his city’s
interests. He is a member of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, South, is an active worker in the Devol Com-
mercial Club, and fraternally is affiliated with Lodge
No. 548, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, of which
he is past grand; and Devol Lodge No. 11,823, Modern
Woodmen of America, of which he is past venerable
consul.

Mr. Dulaney was married in 1896, in Lee County,

1832

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Texas, to Miss A*bie Martin, of Giddings, Texas, daugh-
ter of C. M. Martin, who is now a farmer and resides
at Devol, Oklahoma. To this union there have been
born seven children, as follows: Willie Earl, who died at
the age of eighteen months; Ima, who is a freshman at
the Devol High School; Ila, who died at the age of
eight years; LeRoy, who died at the age of six years;
Thelma, who is attending the public schools; and Edna
and an infant daughter.

Willard R. Bleakmore. Prominent among those
who are lending dignity and distinction to the bench
and bar of the State of Oklahoma is Judge Bleakman,
who has served as associate justice of the Supreme
Court of this commonwealth, who has been a resident
of Oklahoma since 1890 and a representative mem-
ber of its bar since 1892.

Judge Bleakmore is a scion of an old and honored
family of the historic Old Dominion and takes just
pride in reverting to that commonwealth as the place
of his nativity. He was born in the City of Rich-
mond, Virginia, on the 22d of September, 1872, and is
a son of Wylie H. and Mary E. (Goddard) Bleakmore,
who now maintain their residence at Ardmore, Okla-
homa, where they established their home in 1894 and
where the father is a representative merchant and an
honored and influential citizen, he having been an able
representative of the newspaper fraternity prior to turn-
ing his attention to his present line of" business enter-
prise.

He whose name initiates this review was a boy at
the time of his parents’ removal to the State of Iowa,
where he was reared to maturity and where he duly
availed himself of the advantages of the public schools.
In 1890, when seventeen years of age, Judge Bleakmore
came to the Territory of Oklahoma and established
his residence in Oklahoma City, where he studied law
under effective preceptorship and where he was admitted
to the territorial bar in 1892. He was here engaged
in the practice of his profession until 1894, when he
removed to Ardmore, now the judicial center of Carter
County, where he has since maintained his home save
for the time that his official duties on the supreme
bench have demanded his presence in the capital city
of the state. At Ardmore he was engaged in the
active general practice of his profession until his eleva-
tion to the bench of the Supreme Court, in 1914, and
from 1898 to 1910 he was there a member of the repre-
sentative law firm of Cruee, Cruce & Bleakmore. In
1912 Judge Bleakmore was elected county attorney of
Carter County, of which office he continued the incum-
bent until May 25, 1914, when he was appointed an
associate justice of the Supreme Court of the state, to
fill out the unexpired term caused by the retirement of
Judge Stillwell H. Russell. He continued a zealous, cir-
cumspect and valued member of the supreme tribunal
of the state until the expiration of the term for which
he was appointed, in January, 1915, when he resumed
the private practice of his profession at Ardmore, where
he retains a substantial and representative clientage.

Judge Bleakmore is prominently identified with the
Masonic fraternity, in which, in addition to being affil-
iated with the lodge, chapter and commandery bodies
of the York Rite, he has received the thirty-second de-
gree of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, and holds
membership in India Temple of the Ancient Arabic
Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine at Guthrie.
In his home city he is affiliated with Ardmore Lodge,
No. 648, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. Both
he and his wife are members of the Presbyterian Church
of Ardmore, and his political allegiance being indicated

by his zealous and effective advocacy of the principles I
and policies, of the democratic party.

In the year 1892 was solemnized the marriage of II
Judge Bleakmore to Miss Annie Hazen, daughter of H
Alonzo E. Hazen, of Oklahoma City, and they have four f
sons, Prank W., Jack K., Robert and Kenneth.

Thomas Lane, M. D. A worthy vand capable repre-
sentative of the medical fraternity of Oklahoma is found j|
in the person of Dr. Thomas Lane, who since 1899 has II
been engaged in an ever-increasing practice at El Reno. [I
That measure of resource, energy and broad-mindedness [I
which is required of the professional man of today I
seem to be an integral part of his equipment, and being II
an enthusiastic and careful thinker, while he 'maintains jl
a respect for tradition, he is not afraid of untrod paths, I
or independent individual effort.

Doctor Lane was born near Springfield, Missouri, II
August 10, 1858, and is a son of Calvin and Cynthia II
(Harris) Lane. When he was four years of age his II
mother died, and only one year later his father passed II
away, so that he was taken to the home of his grand- I
parents in Illinois, and by them was reared. His literary |
education was obtained at Mountain Grove (Missouri) ||
Academy and Blackburn University, Carlin ville, Illinois, II
and thus equipped entered upon a career as an educator, 11
but after four years thus spent turned his attention to I
the study of medicine, for which profession he had had a I
predilection from boyhood. He subsequently entered the I
Missouri Medical College, now the medical department 11'
of Washington University, St. Louis, from which he was |j
graduated with his degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1886. ||

He at once entered upon the practice of his profession II
at Mountain Grove, Missouri, and continued there for II
fourteen years, building up a very satisfying professional I
business. In 1899, seeking a wider field for his labors, j|
Doctor Lane came to El Reno, Oklahoma, where he has j|
continued as a practitioner to the present time. Doctor 11
Lane’s practice is broad and general in its character, II
he being equally at home in the various departments of ||
his profession. His superior talents and abilities have II
been demonstrated on numerous occasions, and among [I
his professional brethren he enjoys a high reputation I
as one who observes the unwritten ethics of the calling. II
He has kept fully abreast of the various advancements II
made in medicine and surgery during recent years, and, II
unlike many others, did not cease his studies when he I
left college, for he has continued to be an earnest, I
zealous and painstaking student, and has pursued post- II
graduate work at various institutions in Chicago, St. [I
Louis and New Orleans. Doctor Lane’s professional [I
connections include membership in the Canadian County I
Medical Society, the Oklahoma State Medical Society I
and the American Medical Association. In his political w
views he is a democrat, but confines his public activities II
to taking a good citizen’s interest in matters that affect [l
the welfare of the community. Fraternally he is con- I
neeted with the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, |
the Ancient Order of United Workmen and the Modern |
Woodmen of America, and is also a Mason and a past jl
master of his lodge.

In 1884 Doctor Lane was united in marriage with p
Miss Emma Dora McCuiston and to this union there L
have been born three children: Gertrude, Ray and i

Lorraine.

H. M. Freas. Every community owes a debt of grat- |
itude to the men who protect it from the depredations |
of the criminal classes. A once popular song contained I
the line, “A policeman’s lot is not a happy one,” and it j]
is often the case that the arduous duties of the guardians I
of the law are faithfully performed without meeting with jl

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1833

an adequate reward or a due measure of appreciation.
The latter, however, cannot be said of H. M. Freas, of
Pawhuska, Oklahoma, whose services as sheriff of Osage
County for the last five years are highly regarded by his
fellow citizens. Sheriff Freas was born in Berwick, Col-
umbia County, Pennsylvania, March 15, 1863, and is now
therefore in the prime of life. His parents were Jona-
than and Susanna (Campbell) Freas, who in 1868 moved
to Sterling, Illinois, and later to southeastern Kansas,
the father dying at Independence, Montgomery County,
that state, in 1909, at the advanced age of eighty-seven
years. He was a farmer by occupation, and a veteran of
the Civil war, having served Vs captain of Company G,
One Hundred and Fifth Pennsylvania Infantry. . A re-
publican in politics, he belonged also to the Grand
Army, and was a loyal, patriotic and useful citizen, in
short, a good American. His widow is still living and is
a resident of Independence. They were the parents of
five children, namely: H. M., the subject of this sketch;
Sadie, who resides in Waterloo, Iowa; Ella, wife of W.
H. Tasker of Tyro, Kansas; Ida, wife of Frank Shudy,
of Okmulgee; and Bertha, who married W. H. Harper,
and resides with her husband in Independence, Kansas.

H. M. Freas resided in Montgomery County, Kansas,
for the first twenty-two years of his life, from early boy-
hood being engaged in agricultural pursuits. In 1886
he came to Oklahoma, settling in Osage County and buy-
ing a farm about three miles east of Pawhuska, on which
he still resides, and which he is operating successfully.
A democrat in politics, he has long taken an active in-
terest in public affairs, and in 1910 was elected sheriff
of Osage County, being re-elected to the same office in
1912 and 1914, so that he is now serving in his third
term. Fearless in the discharge of his duty, he has
proved his efficiency by sending over seventy men to the
penitentiary, many of whom were among the worst crim-
inals in the state. In thus safe-guarding life and prop-
erty he has made himself a terror to evil doers and has
rendered a great service to the county, which his fellow
citizens appreciate.

Sheriff Freas was married in 1885 to Miss Pauline
Palzin, who was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1862, and
emigrated with her parents to Illinois, where he first met
her. They have had seven children born to them, namely:
Bertha, who is the wife of J. M. Gordon, of Osage County,
Oklahoma; Florence, wife of Joe Bowers, of Osage
County; Amy, who married Sam Kennedy and resides
with her husband in Pawhuska; Bessie; Pauline and H.
M. Freas, Jr.

Leland H. D. Cook. When the City of Okmulgee
adopted a new municipal charter of the commission form,
the people chose as their first commissioner of finance
L. H. D. Cook and during his one term in that office
he made a very creditable record and completely reor-
ganized the financial system of the city.

He was able to bring to that office a thorough ex-
perience in commercial affairs, acquired largely through
the insurance business. Mr. Cook has lived in Okmulgee
since 1908, and since then has been in the real estate
and insurance business with the exception of the term
he served the city government. Among other interests
which he represents he is general agent for the United
States Fidelity & Guaranty Company of Baltimore. He
has also acquired oil interests in the new state and is
secretary and treasurer of the John Owen Oil Company
of Okmulgee.

L. H. D. Cook was born in Newfield, New York, in
Tompkins County, June 27, 1884. His parents, S. Dudley
and Anna (McDaniels) Cook were also born at Newfield,
New York, but for the last three years have made their

home at Bochester in that state. The father is a retired
merchant. He was one of the organizers of the Tomp-
kins County Co-operative Fire Insurance Company, said
to be the most successful company of its kind in the
United States. Mr. Cook’s grandfather was Dr. C. C.
Cook, a successful physician who was engaged in recruit-
ing and other service during the Civil war. It will be
pf interest to state that Doctor Cook was a schoolmate
and friend of Grover Cleveland, and Mr. Cook of Ok-
mulgee has in his possession some letters written by the
former president to his grandfather.

The only child of his parents L. H. D. Cook lived at
home until he was fifteen, and his early experiences out-
side of home were connected with the public schools of
Newfield and with his father’s store. At the age of
fifteen he entered Cornell University, where he became
a member of the class of 1904, and remained in college
two years. After that for a year he was clerk in a drug
store at Corning, New York, and then took up the busi-
ness which has been his real vocation. He represented
the Prudential Life at Corning until 1907, and then went
to Syracuse as manager of the Syracuse office for the
Security Mutual Life Insurance Company of Bingham-
ton, New York. From there he removed to Okmulgee
in 1908.

In politics Mr. Cook is a republican, is a member of
the Episcopal Church, and has been especially interested
in Masonry. His Blue Lodge affiliations are with King
Hiram Lodge No. 784, Ancient Free and Accepted
Masons, at Newfield, New York. His grandfather was a
charter member of this lodge, and both his father and
uncles were members. Mr. Cook is a member of the
Boyal Arch Chapter and of Commandery No. 25, Knights
Templars, at Okmulgee.

In April, 1909, he married Linnie Parker, who was
born October 13, 1884, at Clarksburg in Carroll County,
Tennessee. She came to Muskogee, Oklahoma, in 1907.
They are the parents of two children: Anna Lynn and

Dudley Parker.

Harper Wright, M. D. Many of the new towns in
Western Oklahoma are attracting professional men of
decidedly superior attainments and training, and the gen-
eral average of proficiency and ability to be found among
the professional men of these new communities is de-
cidedly higher than that which prevailed in the older
part of the state in earlier years. An example of these
younger leaders in the professional life of Western Okla-
homa is Dr. Harper Wright, a physician and surgeon who
has recently taken up practice at Grandfield.

Born at Farill, Alabama, November 23, 1887, Harper
Wright attended the public schools there, graduated from
the Gaylesville High School in Alabama with the class
of 1904, in 1907 finished the course of the noted old Webb
Preparatory School at Bellbuckle, Tennessee, and in the
same year took a business course in Eastman’s Busi-
ness College at Poughkeepsie, New York. In 1913 Doctor
Wright was graduated from the Atlanta College of
Physicians and Surgeons at Atlanta, Georgia. His thor-
ough training in preparation for the profession also in-
cluded one year spent as interne at the Erlanger Hospi-
tal in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and for six months he was
associated with an eminent surgeon, Dr. Raymond Wal-
lace, F. A. C. S., of Chattanooga.

The Wright family came from England to Georgia
prior to the Revolution, and was related to the family
of General Oglethorpe, the founder and leader of the
Georgia colony. Doctor Wright’s father was A. R.
Wright, who was born at Cave Springs, Georgia, in 1859,
and for the past thirty years has been prominently identi-
fied with the business community of Farill, Alabama,

1834

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

where he has been a merchant, a farmer and stock raiser,
sawmill owner, manufacturer of charcoal, and with
practically every enterprise of any importance in that
town. He is a democrat and a member of the Baptist
Church. He died March 1, 1916. His wife was Effie
Stewart, who was born at Atlanta, Georgia, in 1867, and
died at Fanil, Alabama, in July, 1911. Doctor Wright
was the oldest of their children, and the others were:
Annie, wife of J. F. McGee, who is assistant to the secre-
tary and treasurer of the Anchor Duck Mills at Borne,
Georgia; Gus, who is a farmer at Farill, Alabama; Mar-
garet, wife of Lewis Lilley, of Parrot, Georgia; and
Mose, attending the preparatory school at Borne, Georgia.

Doctor Wright was married in September, 1914, at
Indianapolis, Indiana, to Ellen C. Gallagher, whose home
was formerly in Winona, Minnesota. She is a member of
the Catholic Church. Doctor Wright belongs to the Phi
Chi Greek letter medical fraternity, is a member of the
Baptist Church, and has fraternal affiliations with Lodge
No. 91, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, at
Chattanooga, Tennessee, with Grandfield Lodge No. 378,
Ancient Free and Accepted Masons; with Gaylesville
Lodge No. 256, Independent Order of Odd Fellows in
Alabama; and with Banyan Camp No. 573, Woodmen of
the World at Grandfield. He located for practice at
Grandfield, Oklahoma, September 23, 1914, and already
enjoys a substantial practice and reputation as a physi-
cian and surgeon. His offices are in the Tillman County
Bank Building.

J. C. Ferguson, who was one of the early business
men to add his enterprise to the City of Pawhuska, has
during the last ten years not only developed a successful
local industry, but has also exercised much influence on
local affairs. Mr. Ferguson is an Ohio man who enjoyed
a substantial position as a business man in that state
before coming to Oklahoma, and his record has been a
continuation and amplification of the work with which he
was identified back in his native state.

His birth occurred in Highland County, Ohio, March
19, 1862, a son of Joseph C. and Mary Elizabeth
(Gwinett) Ferguson. His father was born in Ohio
while his mother was a native of Germany, and came to
•America with two brothers. She died in 1867 at the
age of thirty-two, leaving four children. The father
married again, having five children by his second mar-
riage, and died in 1880 at the age of sixty-two. Prac-
tically all his life was spent in the vicinity of Cincinnati,
and he developed a large business there as blacksmith,
and also had a carriage shop, employing a force of from
eighteen to thirty men.

It was with this industry that J. C. Ferguson, after
gaining his advantages in the public schools, became
identified at the age of sixteen. He learned blacksmith-
ing in all its details under his father’s direction, and
was one of his valuable helpers until twenty-one. At
that time he leased from his father the blacksmith
department of the business, and conducted it until the
death of his father. He then bought the entire business,
and continued it successfully until November, 1899,
when he sold out.

It was fifteen years ago that Mr. Ferguson came to
Oklahoma. His first location was in Garfield County,
near Waukomis, where he bought a farm and set up a
blaeksmithing shop. Later he moved into the town,
bought a blaeksmithing business, but sold out in 1904
and moved to Pawhuska, which was then a somewhat
inconspicuous village. He bought a shop, and soon
began to develop a business which is now the chief
iron working and repair business of the city, and its
facilities have recently been extended to include a

general automobile repair and garage. His two sons,
Joe W. and Fred L., are now his active partners under
the firm name of J. C. Ferguson & Sons. This firm
handles the local agency for the Ford and Hudson auto-
mobiles, and automobile repairing is now an important
part of their business. While all three of the partners
are engaged in the business, they also require the services
of three blacksmiths and four other men in the garage.
They have recently erected a new garage 50 by 100 feet
on East Sixth Street. Mr. Ferguson also owns a fruit
farm of forty-five acres adjoining the city, though this
is operated through a tenant. A republican voter,
Mr. Ferguson has never been a politician, but at dif-
ferent times has been honored with positions of respon-
sibility and in such places has always worked with an
eye single to the good of the community. While living
in Ohio he served eight years as township and school
director, and in 1908 was honored with election to the
office of mayor of Pawhuska for a term of two years.
The citizens desired an efficient business administration,
and he gave them one which was marked by a big
forward movement in the matter of municipal improve-
ment. His administration witnessed the beginning of
effective street paving, an issue of bonds for electric
light and waterworks system, and the beginning of con-
struction on these important local utilities, and he also
thoroughly cleaned up the city, paying no attention
whatever to local politics while engaged in this work.
He is a member of the Presbyterian Church and one of
its trustees, is affiliated with the various bodies of
Masonry, including the thirty-second degree of Scottish
Bite, and also with the Knights of Pythias and the
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.

In 1885 Mr. Ferguson married Miss Mary L. Waddell,
who was born in Ohio June 2, 1866, a daughter of
Waverly and Naomi Waddell. They have a fine family
of eight children: Jessie, wife of J. L. Darby of

Pawhuska; Joseph W. and Fred L., both already men-
tioned as partners of their father; Nell, who is married;
Margine, Clifford, Delos and Leone, all at home and
several of them in school.

W. Lusk. One of the pioneers of the Town of Morris,
Okmulgee County, W. Lusk has been a very energetic
factor in local business affairs and has supplied much
of the capital and enterprise for the upbuilding of that
section.

He was born in Springfield, Missouri, February 5,
1866, a son of Alfred T. and Elizabeth (Bond) Lusk,
both of whom were born in Tennessee and came to
Missouri in 1835, in childhood, with their respective
parents. They married in Missouri and lived in that
state on a farm the rest of their days. The father
passed away in 1901 at the age of eighty-three and the
mother in 1908 at the age of seventy-three. Their four
children were: C. D. Lusk of Fort Scott, Kansas; W.

Lusk; Isabella, wife of Bobert Kimmons at Missouri;
and Benjamin, of Missouri.

W. Lusk lived on the Missouri farm with his parents
until he was eighteen years of age. Since then he has
been in active business, working for himself and others,
and was principally identified with the drug business
until 1914, when he sold out. He acquired his knowledge
of pharmacy in the St. Louis School of Pharmacy, from
which he received a diploma in 1886. For a number of
years he worked as a drug clerk in Kansas City,
Missouri.

It was in 1907 that he came to Morris, Oklahoma, and
invested his small capital and started the Morris Drug
Company, a business which is still conducted under the
same name. Since then his interests have taken on a

HISTORY OP OKLAHOMA

1835

much wider scope, and for the past two years he has
been in the oil business, having four wells in the district
around Boynton. He has been associated with a num-
ber of other men in developing this section of the coun-
try, and owns himself about 320 acres of farm land in
Okmulgee County. It was his money and enterprise that
constructed the garage on Main Street, one of the
largest buildings in the town, which he sold in 1915.
He is now having built an opera house, which will be
used for moving picture shows.

Since statehood Mr. Lusk has served as township com-
mitteeman of the democratic party and has also been a
member of the school board and of the town board the
greater part of the time since Oklahoma entered the
union. One example of his public spirit was the donation
of a portion of the site for the Morris Library. He is
affiliated with the Masonic Order, the Independent Order
of Odd Fellows and the Fraternal Order of Eagles.

On June 30, 1908, Mr. Lusk married Myrtle M. Gris-
som of Okmulsree. She was born in Okmulgee, a daughter
of J. E. Grissom of that town. They have one daughter,
Wynema, who is now four years old.

Lewis Dale Souter. Prominent among the county
officials of Osage County is Lewis Dale Souter, of Paw-
huska, who is now serving with acceptance as county
assessor. A son of Georsre W. Souter, he was born,
January 11, 1874, in Pontotoc County, Mississippi, and
was there reared to man’s estate.

Born in South Carolina in 1837, George W. Souter was
brought up in Mississippi, where his parents located
when he was a child. He engaged in agricultural pur-
suits as a young man, in 1890 moving with his family
to the northwestern part of Texas, from there coming,
in 1896, to Oklahoma. Locating in Cleveland, he was
there engaged in agricultural pursuits until his death,
which occurred February 22, 1905. He was a demo-
crat in politics, and during the Civil war served for four
years in the Confederate army. Both he and his wife
were active members of the Baptist Church, and he was
one of the founders of the church of that denomination
in Cleveland. His wife, whose maiden name was Salet.a
Bodmers, was born in Georeia, and died, August 8, 1898,
in Cleveland, Oklahoma. Four of their six children are
now living, as follows: B. V., of Osage County; Lewis
Dale; F. M., of Cleveland; and Jettie E., wife of Dr.
Ira Mullins, of Hominy, Oklahoma.

Brought up on the home farm, Lewis Dale Souter was
educated in the public schools, and as a boy and youth
was trained to habits of industry, becoming skilful in
the various branches of agriculture. Coming with the
family to Oklahoma, he began life for himself at the
age of twenty-four years, engaging in the peaceful and
profitable occupation of a farmer, buying land in the
vicinity of Cleveland, where he still has title to 160 acres.
In 1912 he was elected county assessor of Osage County
on the democratic ticket, and displayed such energy and
ability in responding to the demands of the office that
he was re-elected in 1914.

On December 19, 1907, Mr. Souter was united in mar-
riage with Hnie Tocy, who was born in Texas, a daugh-
ter of I. S. Tocy. The union of Mr. and Mrs. Souter has
been blessed by the birth of six children of whom two
have passed to the bright life byond, Dale having died at
the asre of five years, and Bert when but seven months
old. Four are living, namely: Prentiss, Dyke, Iris, and
Mullins. Politically Mr. Souter is a steadfast democrat
and active in party affairs. Fraternally he belongs to
the Ancient Free and Accepted Order of Masons, at
Cleveland, Oklahoma. Religiously he is a member of
the Baptist Church, with which he united while living in
Mississippi.

Calvin Jones. The State of Tennessee has contrib-
uted a considerable amount of brain and muscle necessary
to the building of the new State of Oklahoma. In every
county and in nearly every community it is represented.
It has sent some of the brightest lawyers and most skilled
physicians. The elements of Tennessee progress are con-
tained in the fundamental elements of social and religious
life wherever white men have formed communities here.
It has been said that many of them crossed the Arkansas
line seeking office, and this humorous reference was based
on the fact that in many counties in earlier years Ten-
nesseeans were in the majority in office-holding circles.
Two generations ago Tennessee sent some of ifs leading
ministers here as missionaries, and in recent years many
of the state’s leading educators have come from the col-
leges of Tennessee. It has furnished more ministers to
Oklahoma Methodism than any other state, birth and
parentage considered. Many of the ablest and most
prominent club women in the recent years in Oklahoma
came from Tennessee.

A Tennesseean at Hugo is Calvin Jones, one of the
city’s brightest and most successful young lawyers. He
was born at Summerville, Fayette County, in 1883, a son
of J. M. and Anna (Moody) Jones. His father, a native
of Fayette County, has spent most of his life on the
farm, and served through the Civil war as a soldier in the
Cavalry Brigade of General Forrest. The paternal grand-
father was also named Calvin. He was a native of North
Carolina and gained distinction in two fields. As an
educator he was once professor in the University of Ala-
bama, and later as a lawyer he became the first chancellor
in the district in which he lived in West Tennessee.

After completing his public and high school education,
Calvin Jones entered the University of the South at
Sewanee, Tennessee, and later the law department of
the Cumberland University, from which he received his
degree LL. B. in 1903. Beginning practice at Summer-
ville, he remained there until 1906, when he located at
Grant, a small town near Hugo, and from there moved
to Hugo. For two years Mr. Jones was deputy county
attorney under Robert K. Warren. In June, 1915, he
became junior member of the firm of McDonald & Jones.
He is a democrat, a member of the Benevolent and Pro-
tective Order of Elks and the Woodmen of the World,
and also of the County and State Bar associations.

Bart M. Wooldridge. The kind of western energy,
resource and large-mindedness required of the young man
who would succeed in the field of finance in these days
of strenuous effort and severe competition, seem to be an
integral part of the equipment of Bart M. Wooldridge,
who since February 1, 1914, has been cashier of the
Citizens Bank of Headrick. Notwithstanding his well
known caution and respect for conservative measures in
banking, he has the progressiveness and courage of the
present, and while carefully conserving the interests of
the depositors has contributed materially to the growth
and development of the institution, the prominence of
which adds to the prestige of the community.

Mr. Wooldridge was born in Russell County, Ken-
tucky, September 22, 1877, and is a son of Jesse and
Nancy A. (Blankenship) Wooldridge, and a member of a
family which came from Ireland to Amer’ea during
colonial times and settled in Virginia. Jesse Wooldridge
was born at Jamestown, Russell County, Kentucky,
November 3, 1844, and there grew up, was educated, and
married, his wife having been born in the Blue Grass
State in 1847. In 1869 he went to Northwestern Mis-
souri, where he spent two years, but soon returned to his
native state, and remained there engaged in farming and
stockraising until 1894, when he again went to Missouri.

1836

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

After two years he removed to Eddy, McLennan County,
Texas, where he continued actively engaged in agricul-
tural pursuits until 1906, and then came to Hollis, where
he now makes his home, practically retired. Mr.
Wooldridge has been industrious aud energetic all his
life, and "although now over seventy years of age, still
takes a keen interest in affairs of an agricultural nature.
In political matters he is a democrat, but has not been
an office seeker, while his fraternal connection is with
the Masons. He has been a lifelong member of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Mrs. Wooldridge
died in Missouri, in 1896, aged forty-nine years, the
mother of six children: Ada, who is the wife of G. D.

Mabery, a farmer of Eddy, Texas; Bart M., of this
notice; May, who married Bell Sasser and resides on his
farm at Memphis, Texas; Mervin H., who is engaged in
the hardware business at Hollis, Oklahoma; Everett R.,
who is engaged in farming in the vicinity of Hollis;
and Walter R., who is a banker and resides at the home
of his parents. Mr. Wooldridge was married a second
time in 1899, when united in marriage at Eddy, Texas,
with Mrs. Martha (Shelton) Hix, a native of Tennessee,
but a resident of Bruceville, Texas. One child, Thelma,
has been born to this union, she being a student in the
public schools.

Bart M. Wooldridge was reared on the home farm and
secured his education in the public schools of Russell
County, Kentucky, being graduated from the high school
there in 1894. Until 1898 he remained on the home-
stead, engaged in assisting his father in its operation,
and then turned his attention to educational work and
for five years taught in the country schools of McLennan
County, Texas. Mr. Wooldridge’s advent in Oklahoma
took place in 1903, when he located at Martha, and was
principal of the school there for two years. While he
had gained a reputation as an efficient and popular
educator, he was not satisfied with his progress, and in
1907 entered the Altus State Bank, in the capacity of
bookkeeper, giving up his teaching work entirely.
Through faithful and competent performance of duty he
was promoted to the position of assistant cashier and
remained with that institution until 1909, when he or-
ganized the Martha State Bank, of which he was cashier
until January 1, 1914. On February 1, 1914, he came to
Headrick to accept the position of cashier of the Citizens
Bank, and this he has retained to the present time.
This institution was established in 1904, the founder
being J. E. Ernst, and in 1912 the present handsome
banking house was erected on the corner of Main and
Fourth streets. The capital of the bank is $10,000, its
officials are W. E. Sanderson, president; J. R. McMahan,
vice president, both of Altus; and B. M. Wooldridge,
cashier, and it is known as one of the substantial finan-
cial concerns of Jackson County. Mr. Wooldridge has
thoroughly established himself in the confidence of the
people of this community, and his own well-known in-
tegrity has done much to attract business to the bank’s
coffers. He is a director in the Wichita Southern Life
Insurance Company of Wichita Falls, Texas.

In political matters Mr. Wooldridge is a democrat, but
he has selected his career and has followed it closely, and
in it public service has played no part. With his wife
he attends the Methodist Episcopal Church, of which
both are active members, Mr. Wooldridge being a mem-
ber of the board of stewards. His fraternal connections
are numerous, including membership in Altus Lodge No.
62, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons; Altus Chapter
No. 60, Royal Arch Masons; Altus Council; Eldorado
Commandery, Knights Templars; Altus Chapter, Order
of the Eastern Star; and Altus Lodge of Odd Fellows,

and he is also a member of the Oklahoma State Bankers
Association.

In September, 1909, at Altus, Oklahoma, Mr. Wool- 1
dridge was married to Miss Crowell Ham, daughter of II i
J. R. Ham, of Artesia, New Mexico. They have no I
children.

James P. Thompson. The wild, untamed, uncivilized, j
romantic West of the old pioneer Indian Territory meets I
and merges into the modern Oklahoma with its progress-
ive and bettered civilization in the life of Col. James
P. Thompson of Woodville. Colonel Thompson has lived li
in that section of the present state, in what was old
Pickens County of Indian Territory, for the past thirty
years. Born in the strenuous days before the Civil ||
war, at historic Preston Bend, just south of Red River
in Grayson County, Texas, and reared amid the thrill-
ing scenes enacted on a frontier unfettered by the re- I
strictions of law, his life has contained enough incidents I
to make material for an intensely interesting romance. [I

Not only ✓by residence but by family relationships I
and early experiences he has been in many ways identi-
fied with old Indian Territory as well as with modern II
Oklahoma. He was born November 26, 1850. His father
was James G. Thompson, who was born in 1802 in North II

Carolina, moved to Tennessee and then to Alabama, and II.

in the latter state became acquainted with and married |

Miss Mary McNary, member of a prominent Cherokee
Indian family, and herself a quarter blood. In 1831 they
accompanied the first emigration of that people to the ji
Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory, locating at Web- I
ber’s Falls, where James G. Thompson established a j
general mercantile store which he conducted for about 11
twelve years. At the death of his wife, in 1843, having
sold his business in Indian Territory, he moved to the U

south side of Red River in Grayson County, Texas. ;

There he spent the rest of his life until his death in 1879. I

He was a member of the Legislature of Texas, when that J

state seceded from the Union and in the early ’50s
was county judge of Grayson County. He always had the
high esteem and unqualified confidence of the Indians, to N
whom he was a good and faithful friend, and the people
of the Cherokee Nation often solicited him to return
and live among them. After his removal to Texas he
married Miss Martha J. Caruthers, who was born in
Georgia in 1820 and who was of white family, the
Caruthers having been among the pioneers of Grayson H
County, Texas. At one time she owned the townsite of
Denison. Her death occurred in 1894. By the second I

marriage there were eight children, namely: Elizabeth, 1

who married Capt. Tom Randolph, a merchant and very I

prominent citizen of Sherman, Texas; James P. ; Vir-
ginia, who married James Potts, a stockman; Arizona,
who became the wife of Judge David E. Bryant, formerly I
a United States district judge, and one of the distin-
guished citizens of Sherman; Frank P., who is a retired I
merchant and farmer; Josephine who was drowned when
a little girl; Breckenridge, who died in infancy; and n

Alice, who married Joe Meadows, a farmer and stockman I

of Grayson County.

Reared on the old farm in Grayson County, Col.
James P. Thompson from early boyhood felt the fascina-
tion of the wild and free life of the frontier. He at-
tended the common schools of Preston Bend, also Sher- |
man High School, and for a time was a student in Burle- I
son College. It was with difficulty he kept his mind
on his studies, since he was by nature too closely akin j
to the free untrammeled life of the country and scenes
among which he had been reared. As a boy be-
fore the war he had helped his father haul and sell
corn to the United States military post at Fort Washita, |
Arbuckle, and Cobb. This corn sold at a price as

HISTORY OP OKLAHOMA

1837

high as $2.25 per bushel. In the years following the
war he became an expert in all branches of ranch life.
His father had a large horse ranch at Pottsboro,
and his cattle ranch, on which frequently ranged
3,500, head, was five miles west of Sherman. Before
coming to Indian Territory Colonel Thompson be-
came well known as a stock man all over Northern Texas
and after the building of the railroad across Indian Ter-
ritory he used Denison, Texas, as a shipping point for
his stock to the markets at St. Louis and Chicago.

In 1877 Mr. Thompson married * Miss Maggie E.
MaSsey, a member of an old Kentucky family that emi-
grated to Texas in 1848. Mrs. Thompson died in 1883,
being survived by two children: Myrtle Lillian and

Henry M. The daughter Myrtle is now the wife of
Claude R. Howard. His son Henry M. married Miss C.
F. Taylor, and their two children are named Ollie Lee
and Maggie May.

After the death of his first wife Colonel Thompson
married Lucy Juzan, who was a resident of Indian
Territory and a descendant of the Chickasaw lineage,
being a fourth blood Chickasaw. Her parents were
Jackson and Mississippi Juzan. Jackson Juzan belonged
to the Choctaw tribe and was born in Tennessee but
came to Indian Territory during the ’40s, and for
many years followed farming in the vicinity of Atoka.
He was one of the Choctaw volunteers in the Confederate
army during the Civil war, and afterwards was active
in the affairs of his nation until his death in 1866. Jack-
son Juzan married Mississippi Allan, who was of Chick-
asaw blood. She was born in Mississippi, and came to
Indian Territory in 1835. She died in December, 1865.
After their marriage Colonel and Mrs. Thompson took
up their residence at the present beautiful homestead
adjoining the Town of Woodville in July, 1886. No
children were born to their union, and Mrs. Thompson
died there in April, 1898. It is noteworthy that she
was a cousin of Charles Le Flore, who was the father-
in-law of former Governor Lee Cruee of the State of
Oklahoma.

After locating in Pickens County, Colonel Thompson
soon had extensive holdings. His cattle covered many
hills and his brand became well and widely known. In
one season he marked 1,200 calves. In Wood-
ville he provided for his family the finest house in the
town, with all the comforts and furnishings that wealth
and culture can suggest. He has now reached the age
of sixty-five, but still retains his interest in all that
affects his community, and is a partner with his son
Henry M. in the cattle business. In many ways his
business judgment has been almost infallible, and his
prosperity is only an adequate return f<Jr his abilities and
energy. Colonel Thompson possesses many fine per-
sonal qualities, is whole souled and genial and as he
knows everybody in his section of the country so every-
body knows and honors “Uncle Jim.” His loyalty to
friends and neighbors has often been tested, and one
case in point wiil illustrate the quality of his friendship.
He spent much of his valuable time and $16,-
000 of his money -a few years ago to prove the inno-
cence of Steve Bussell. He belongs to no secret organ-
izations or fraternal societies and finds his greatest en-
joyment in the management of his farm and in associa-
tion with his old and tried friends.

John J. Gayman. High personal character and
solid attainments as a business man and citizen have
given John J. Gayman an important place in Lincoln
County, where for the past five years he has held the
responsible office of county treasurer. He was first
elected to that position in 1910, and his present term
expires in June, 1915. Mr. Gayman has been identified

with Oklahoma citizenship for many years, and he has
exerted his influence in many ways for the benefit of
his home and community. In 1905 he served in the
Oklahoma Territorial Legislature.

John J. Gayman was born August 27, 1875, on a farm
in Indiana, a son of Isaiah Gayman, a native of Ohio.
His father was reared in Indiana, became an early settler
in Indiana, and enlisted and served for three years in the
Union army as a member of the Eighth Indiana Volun-
teer Infantry. He married Sarah Wilson, who was
descended from an Irish family of County Antrim,
Ireland. They were the parents of nine children, eight
of whom are living, as follows: Mrs. M. Drumm of

Columbia, Missouri; Dr. S. E., a successful physician
at Agra, Oklahoma; Mrs. L. Johnson, of Monett, Mis-
souri; W. K. of Edmond, Oklahoma; John J. ; Mrs.
W. A. Moore of Lincoln County; Mark, a student in thc-
University of Oklahoma; and Arthur, in business in
Little Rock, Arkansas. Isaiah Gayman brought his family
to Lincoln County, Oklahoma, many years ago and died
there in 1901. He was a. member of the Grand Army of
the Republic, and belonged to the Christian Church. His
widow is now living at Oklahoma City.

John J. Gayman grew up on a farm, and there de-
veloped his physique and gained his first lessons in
honest toil. He received a public school education, and
from an early age took much interest in republican
politics attending as a delegate a number of county and
district conventions. His constituents had special reason
to be proud of his services as a member of the Legisla-
ture. He was connected with the passage of some of
the be«t bills in that term of the Territorial Legislature.

In 1901, in Lincoln County, Mr. Gayman married Miss
Grace Newell, who was born in Iowa and was reared
and educated in that state and in Kansas, a daughter of
J. A. Newell. To this union have been born four
children, Ruth, Marion, John H. and Riehard N. Mr.
Gayman has given much attention to Masonic activities,
is a member of the lodge, chapter and Knight Templar
Commandery. He and his wife are members of the
Presbyterian Church. Mr. Gayman is a man of splendid
stature and physical proportions, has a pleasing address,
and no one connected with official affairs around the
courthouse has more stanch friends.

E. Lee Adams has been a resident of Oklahoma
for fifteen years or more. In that time his life
has been one of service as a teacher, farmer, news-
paper man, and as an active and energetic worker in
local affairs and local and state polities. He is now
editor and owner of The Harper County Democrat at
Buffalo, and owns considerable valuable real estate both
in Buffalo and in the county.

His birth occurred in Linn County, Missouri, June 21,
1 880. He was the only child of Mr. and Mrs. A. A. Dick,
his present name being an adopted one. His father went
to the Black Hills of Dakota in 1882 and was never heard
from afterward. When but five years of age. with his
mother, E. Lee Adams left Missouri, and he attended his
first school at Harper, Kansas. His early life was one
of ahiect poverty, but his one determination was to secure
an education. At the age of fourteen he finished his
high school work at Hamilton, North Dakota, but after-
wards took a special normal course in the John B. Stetson
University at DeLand, Florida. In Florida and also in
Oklahoma. Mr. Adams followed the profession of teacher
in the public schools.

It was during his career as a teacher that in 1898,
soon after the outbreak of the Spanish- American war, he
enl’^ted in Company F of the First Florida Volunteer
Infantry. He was with that command for a year and
after his honorable discharge resumed his place in the

1838

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

schoolroom. In 1901 he moved to Oklahoma, . and in 1902
gave up school work to become one of the editors of the
Augusta Sun then published at Old Augusta, Oklahoma.
After two years, in 1904, he founded the Sun at Dacoma,
and a year later moved to his homestead in northwest
Harper County, on which he had filed a claim in 1903.
He spent two or three years in developing and improving
a first class farm, but then answered the old call to
newspaper work, and on April 19, 1907, founded The
Harper County Democrat at Buffalo, being the first busi-
ness institution started in the new county seat. He has
since owned and edited this very live and enterprising
journal and has given it much influence and a very satis-
factory circulation through his home and adjoining coun-
ties. From absolute poverty he has, in fifteen years,
risen to success and influence, all of which he attributes
to his own determination and the encouragement and as-
sistance of a good mother.

While an active democrat, Mr. Adams has never sought
office, though he has filled the place of chairman and
secretary of the County Central Committee and has held
a place on the State Committee. Fraternally he is a
thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason, being affiliated
with the Consistory No. 1 at Guthrie, and a Shriner. He
is also an Odd Fellow.

On January 1, 1908, in Harper County, Mr. Adams
married Miss Minnie E. Torrance, who was born in
Kansas December 17, 1888, a daughter of S. A. Tor-
rance, who is now one of the leading farmers in Harper
County. Mr. and Mrs. Adams have four children, three
daughters and one son: Marion, Maxine, Wilmer and
Evelyn.

Charles G. Nesbitt. In his capacity as editor and
proprietor of the Hinton Record Charles G. Nesbitt
has a splendid opportunity of voicing the public opinion
in regard to general improvements. He has been a resi-
dent of Hinton since the fall of 1909 and his citizenship
here has ever been characterized by a loyal interest m
all matters tending to advance the good of the com-

A native of Nelson, Nebraska, Charles George Nesbitt
was born May 9, 1879, and he is a son of J. B. and Eva-
line (Lee) Nesbitt, both of whom are living, their home
being at Watonga, Oklahoma. The father was born in
the State of Ohio, in 1840, and as a young man he
journeyed west to Iowa. In the latter state was solem-
nized his marriage and there he continued to reside until
1873, when the family home was established on a claim
near Nelson, Nebraska. In 1889 removal was made to
Fairfield, Nebraska, but 1891 finds the family again in
the old community near Nelson. From 1894 until 1905
the Nesbitts resided at Eldorado Springs, Missouri, and
in the latter year came to Oklahoma, settling at Norman
and removing thence to Watonga in 1908. Mr. J. B.
Nesbitt has devoted much of his active career to work as
a contractor and builder. He gave evidence of his
loyalty to the cause of the union during the Civil war by
enlisting for service in Company B, Twelfth Illinois Vol-
unteer Infantry. He served as a soldier for four years
and five months and participated in many important
battles marking the progress of the war. He and his wife
are devout members of the Baptist Church and to them
were born seven children, as follows: E. F. resides at
Altus, Oklahoma, where he is manager of the wholesale
grocery firm of Williamson-Halsell-Frazier ; Walter died
at the age of nine years; Paul, whose home is at Mc-
Alester, Oklahoma, was a member of the State Legisla-
ture in 1915; Lura Rose is the wife of C. E. Harritt, a
farmer near Watonga; Maud married Louis Shaw, who
is engaged in farming at Fairfield, Nebraska; Charles G.

is he whose name forms the caption for this review; ,
and Howard is a newspaper man at Mounds, Oklahoma.

Charles G. Nesbitt was educated in the public schools I j
of Nebraska and lived at home on his father’s farm until I j
he had reached his sixteenth year. At that time he went f?
to Eldorado Springs, Missouri, where he was engaged in j I
truck farming until September, 1899, at which time he I
removed to Watonga, Oklahoma. In February, 1900, in ; I
partnership with his brother, Paul, he established the ||
Oklahoma Senator, which they edited for about a year. I
In the fall of 1990 Mr. Nesbitt was matriculated as a Ij
student in the University of Oklahoma and he attended I
that institution for eighteen months. From January, ||
1902, until the fall of 1904 he was engaged in news- [j
paper work in Watonga and on the latter date he and his ||
brother Paul took over the Watonga Herald which they I
owned and edited until 1907. For nine months there- |
after Mr. Nesbitt worked in a newspaper office in Okla- I
lioma City and during that time he made up the first [j
sixty editions of the Oklahoma News. In May, 1908, [I
he began to work for Tom Ferguson on the Watonga I
Republican and in the fall of 1909 he bought the Hinton i
Record from Henry A. White. This publication was I
established in 1902; it is independent in politics and
has a large circulation in Caddo and neighboring coun- [I
ties. The offices of the Record are on Main Street and ' i
the printing machinery and presses are up-to-date in |j
every particular.

Mr. Nesbitt is a democrat in his political allegiance IJ
and he is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, fj
In October, 1903, at Watonga, Oklahoma, was celebrated I
his marriage to Miss Lillian Woolverton, a daughter of [
W. C. Woolverton, a farmer in the vicinity of Abilene, I
Kansas. Mr. and Mrs. Nesbitt have four children, as I
follows: J. Wellington, C. Hubert, Norma May and Wil- I
liam N., the three former of whom are attending school I
at Hinton.

M. H. Mills. In 1909 M. H. Mills was admitted to
the bar of the State of Oklahoma, since which time he
has been engaged in a general civil and criminal prac-
tice in Mangum. In 1912 he formed a partnership with
Judge J. L. Carpenter, under whom he had studied
while in training for his profession, and together they
enjoy a nice practice in the city and county.

Mr. Mills was born at Burleson, Johnson County, H
Texas, on January 24, 1878. He is a son of W. F.
and Cora (Hix) Mills, and is one of their large family I
of ten children. W. F. Hills was born in Illinois in |
1841 and died in Greer County, Oklahoma, in 1898. fi
When he was yet a boy his parents moved from Illinois 1
to Mississippi, arid in 1851 they came to Texas, settling I
at Burleson, Johnson County, and there he continued to 1
live for many years. He married there and his children |
were all born at Burleson, where he carried on a farming |
and stock-raising business. Mr. Mills served three years I
in the Confederacy as a member of a Texas regiment of I
volunteer infantry, and he was a life-long democrat and S
a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. 1
In 1890 he moved to Grier County, Texas, now Grier I
County, Oklahoma, and there homesteaded 160 acres of |
Government land, which he later increased to 320 acres, |
and which his wife sold after his death. The land was J
situated sixteen miles south of Mangum.

In 1869 Mr. Mills married Cora Hix. She was the
maternal granddaughter of the Lee family. Her great
grandfather was of English birth and ancestry. She was
born in Kentucky in 1851 and is now living in Mangum.
Their children are here briefly mentioned as follows:
Rosa, the first born, died at the age of eighteen years.
Mollie married J. B. Roberson and lives in Martin |

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1839

County, Texas, where Mr. Eoberson is engaged in farm-
ing. Price lives in Springfield, Colorado, and is a stock
raiser. Annie married J. B. Hacker and resides in
Hollis, Oklahoma, where Mr. Hacker owns and operates
the telephone exchange. The fifth child was M. H. of
this review. William lives in Springfield, Colorado, and
is a farmer. Alice married J. P. Eddleman, and they
have their home at Cleburne, Texas. Walter is a
machinist and lives at Marshall, Texas. Mattie married
H. E. Galbraith, and lives at Hollis, Oklahoma, where
l her husband is a manufacturer of soft drinks. Queen
| married Charles Brock, a machinist of the oil mill at

I Man gum.

M. H. Mills was raised on his father’s farm and at-
■ tended the schools of Greer County. He was twenty
I years old when he left home in 1898 for the first time.
I He went to Montana and worked on cattle ranches and
| in the mines for four years, and in 1902 returned to
I Greer County, Oklahoma, and spent a year in work on a
I farm there. He then entered the Tyler Commercial Col-
I lege in Tyler, Texas, and finished a thorough business
I course, after which he entered the office of Judge J. L.
I Carpenter in Mangum and began the study of law. He
I also read law in the office of G. A. Brown, now a judge
I of the Supreme Bench, and in several other offices did
| he get some training. He spent something like five years
in study and in 1909 was admitted to practice. Eor three
l years he conducted an independent practice, and then,
|, in 1912, joined forces with Judge Carpenter, and they
| have since worked together under the firm name of Car-
[ penter & Mills. They have their offices in the Mangum
I National Bank Building.

Mr. Mills is a democrat, a member of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, South, and of Lodge No. 1169, Benevo-
I lent and Protective Order of Elks.

In 1908 Mr. Mills was married to Miss Edna Der-
{ rick, daughter of W. A. Derrick, for many years a
minister of the gospel of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
South. Reverend Derrick is now an old man and resides
in Wheeler County, Texas. Mr. Mills and wife have
one child, Frances Byron, born October 10, 1914.

It may be said here that the Mills family is one of
the old ones that came to this country from England in
early Colonial days, settling in Pennsylvania, where many
of the name are to be found today. Jonathan Mills,
grandsire of the subject, was 'born in Hlinois, whither
a branch of the family had migrated, and he later lived
in Mississippi and still later in Texas, where he died
j in advanced years. He was a farmer and a successful
merchant, and like all the family, of the Methodist faith.
His wife was a Miss Bond, born in Illinois, and she died
in Burleson, Texas.

Charles M. Cope. An attorney of wide experience in
practice both in this state and in Kentucky, Charles M.
Cope formerly served as county attorney of Osage
County, has figured prominently in democratic politics
in the state, and enjoys a secure and substantial position
in his profession at Pawhuska.

A native of Kentucky, he was born in Menifee County
February 20, 1872, a son of Thomas T. and Ruth Ellen
(Tyre) Cope. His parents were also natives of Ken-
tucky, and are now living at Jackson in that state. His
father has for more than forty years been a practicing
lawyer, and for sixteen years served as county attorney.

The second in a family of seven children, Charles M.
Cope spent all his younger career in Kentucky, and from
that state came to Pawhuska in 1907. He received most
of his literary education in the S. P. Lee Collegiate and
Military Institute, from which he "was graduated in
1898. His law studies were pursued under the direction
Vol. v— 6

of his father, and in March, 1906, he was admitted to
the Kentucky bar and practiced for about a year in his
native State, serving during that time as attorney for
a large coal company.

Since coming to Oklahoma Mr. Cope has found
abundant employment for his time and energies in a
general practice. For two years he served as county
attorney of Osage County, and Governor Cruee appointed
him county assessor vfor one year. In 1914 he was a
candidate before the democratic primaries for the office
of attorney general of the state, and his candidacy,
while unsuccessful, has served to familiarize his name
among many remote sections of Oklahoma. Mr. Cope
has attained thirty-two degrees in Scottish Rite Masonry,
being affiliated with the Consistory at Guthrie, belongs
to the Blue Lodge at Hominy, and is also a member of
the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. On
November 4, 1908, he married Miss Edna May Venus,
who was born in Texas.

Charles O. Blake, of JE1 Reno, for the past nine years
has been the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad
attorney for Oklahoma. He is one of the pioneer lawyers
of the old Oklahoma, having located in El Reno in 1890,
after five years of practice in Southern Kansas. His
work and reputation as a lawyer have been fully pro-
portionate to his long experience as a resident in this
state.

Born at Blake’s Landing, Ohio, October 29, 1860, he
is a son of C. B. and Gratia (Fuller) Blake, both natives
of Ohio. His father was born on the farm where his
father before Mm was born, and has spent his entire
active career as a farmer and stock raiser, and is still
living on the old homestead in Ohio. He finished his
education in the college at Marietta, Ohio, and at the
outbreak of the Civil war organized a company and
entered the Federal service, where he continued until
mustered out in 1863 for disability. In 1857 he married
Miss Fuller, who died May 22, 1915, after nearly sixty
years of married companionship. They were the parents
of six sons : A. F., an oil operator at Louisville, Ken-

tucky; C. O. ; Edward, a farmer in Canadian County,
Oklahoma; Clarence, who died at the age of six years;
Ernest E., a lawyer at Oklahoma City; and C. B., an
oil operator at Louisville, Kentucky.

Charles O. Blake studied law in the Cincinnati Law
School, and in 1883 was admitted to practice at Indian-
apolis, Indiana. He soon afterwards came west and in
1885 located at Coldwater, Kansas, where besides his
private practice he was elected on the republican ticket
as county attorney of Comanche County.

It was in 1890 that Mr. Blake came to El Reno, and
with his brother, Ernest E., established a law office
under the firm name of Blake & Blake. In 1900 Mr.
Blake became local attorney for the Chicago, Rock
Island & Pacific Railway, and in 1907 was appointed
attorney for Oklahoma and Indian Territory to represent
the interests of the Rock Island Line. He still holds
the same office, though his official designation has been
changed to correspond to the admission of the two terri-
tories as a single state.

During the last quarter century, covering almost the
entire political history of old and new Oklahoma, Mr.
Blake has been active in republican polities, though he
never sought an office for himself. He served as a
member of the board of regents of the State Agricultural
and Mechanical College and of the Oklahoma State Uni-
versity at different times. Fraternally he is affiliated
with the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and
the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

On February 18, 1885, he married Miss Cora Bryan,
daughter of William H. and Julia Bryan of Gallipolis,

1840

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Ohio, but natives of Virginia. Mr. and Mrs. Blake have
four children: Bryan T., Marion, Bordwell and Ansel.

Horace A. Smith. Since his arrival at Perry, in
1893, Horace A. Smith has been continuously engaged in
practice, and during a large portion of this time has
served in positions of trust and public responsibility, of a
county, civic and judicial nature. As a lawyer he bears
a reputation for legal information and acumen, and in
the capacity of county attorney of Noble County is
serving faithfully the interests of the people who placed
their confidence in his integrity and fidelity.

Mr. Smith was born near Waukegan, Lake County,
Illinois, January 6, 1858, the son of Charles H. Smith.
His father, who served in an Illinois volunteer infantry
regiment during the Civil war, was engaged in farming
in Illinois for some years and then removed to St. Clair
County, Missouri, where he located on new land. In
1881 or 1882 he moved to Eldorado Springs, Cedar
County, Missouri, where he is still living in retirement.
He is one of the well known and influential citizens of
his community and has served as circuit clerk of Cedar
County and as a justice of the peace for several years.

The boyhood of Horace A. Smith was passed on a farm
in St. Clair County, Missouri, near Appleton City, where
he secured his early education in the public schools and
Stahl Academy. He had decided upon a career in the
law, but lacked the means to secure a university training,
and in order to supply this deficit began teaching school
while still in his ’teens; thus working his way through
college. He attended the University of Missouri, at Co-
lumbia, during 1880 and 1881, and received his diploma
and was admitted to the bar in the latter year. Mr.
Smith at once engaged in practice at Eldorado Springs,
Missouri, but in 1885 removed to Coldwater, Kansas, at
that time a new town. Two years latet he was elected
county attorney of Comanche County, Kansas, an office
in which he served for two terms, or four years, and
during this time he secured some valuable experience in
the carrying of the old county bond case to the Supreme
Court, as well as in several notorious murder trials.

In 1891 Mr. Smith came from Coldwater, Kansas, to
El Reno, Oklahoma, and practiced at the latter place
until September 16, 1893, when he made the run for land,
and choosing the vicinity of Perry, secured 160 acres
southwest of this city. This he proved up as soon as
permitted. In the meantime he opened a law office at
Perry, where hundreds of attorneys had hung out their
shingles, and some remained for several years, but only
three of the original lawyers are still here, these being
Henry S. Johnston, H. A. Johnson and Mr. Smith. Mr.
Smith continued to be engaged in practice until 1901,
when he was elected county judge of Noble County, and
acted in that capacity during that and the following years
under the territorial government. He was mayor of
Perry at the time of statehood, and during his adminis-
tration the city secured the Carnegie Library as well as
the valuable city waterworks, and the city ’s finances were
placed upon a 'substantial basis. In the fall elections of
1914 Mr. Smith was elected county attorney of Noble
County, and since assuming the duties of that office,
January 1, 1915, has administered its affairs in an expe-
ditious, capable and conscientious manner. He has
always been a stanch republican, and at various times has
been a delegate to state, county and congressional con-
ventions of his party, where he is in much demand as a
speaker. In fraternal affairs Mr. Smith is an Odd Fellow
and a Mason, and was one of the organizers of the Odd
Fellows Lodge at Ponca City.

On June 6, 1897, Mr. Smith was married in Kay
County, Oklahoma, to Miss Mabel A. Dean, of Arkansas

City, Kansas, who until the time of her marriage had , j
been a teacher in the public schools. She is well known jl j
in social circles of Perry, and a valued and popular I j
member of the Tuesday P. M. Club. Mr. and Mrs. Smith W
are the parents of one son: Horace Adrian.

Owen Frederick Renegar. One of the younger pro- ill
fessional men of Cordell is Owen Frederick Renegar, who M
has been engaged in a general law practice here since he j|!

was admitted to the bar in 1913. Mr. Renegar is of i

Tennessee birth and parentage. He was born near Fay- I
etteville, Lincoln County, Tennessee, on June 23, 1892.

The Renegars settled in Virginia and North Carolina ,
in early colonial days, and many of the name will be

found in those states today, while at least three genera- (

tions of them have helped to develop the state in which I
the subject was born. His father, J. F. Renegar, passed I
his early life as a stockman and farmer in Lincoln County, j
and in 1905 came to Oklahoma and settled near Cordell. II!
J. F. Renegar married Elsie Snoddy, the daughter of a jj|
prominent Lincoln County farmer and of the union there I
were four children: Owen F. was the first born; Carrie I
and Loris are living and Alton, the youngest, died in in- |||
fancy.

Owen Frederick Renegar attended the country schools H
of Lincoln County and finished the common school work ||
there. Soon after his parents decided to move West |u
and this seemed to bring somewhat of a stop to school ||
work for Mr. Renegar. He quit school work for about ra
three years and followed the work of a printer in the i
emulation of Franklin. Soon he began to realize the I
necessity of a higher education and he entered Cordell 1
Academy and finished high school and did some college I
work there, and was graduated therefrom. After gradua- I
tion he taught school for a while and was very success- |
ful in that field holding a number of good positions, 1
among them superintendent of Cowden Consolidated I
School. All the time he was teaching he studied law I
and higher literary work attending school whenever he 1
could and taking extension work and graduated from I
Potomac University, Washington, District of Columbia, I
in the law school and in the arts and sciences departments I
with the degrees A. B. and LL. B. He was admitted to I
the bar in 1913, since which time he has conducted a gen- H
eral office practice. He has thus far enjoyed a reasonable I
measure of success and his future seems well assured.

Mr. Renegar is a democrat and a Christian. He is a n
member of the Masons, Odd Fellows, and Woodmen of I
the World. He has already shown himself a leader in I
politics, and is the organizer and manager of the demo- I
cratic clubs of the Seventh Congressional District. Mr. j
Renegar is a member of the Commercial Club of Cordell, I
and is a member of the County, State and National Bar I
associations.

Mr. Renegar is a young man filled with the vim and I
power to accomplish something in this world. He is I
progressive and believes in the motto: “Lead always I
when the opportunity is right and just; follow never I
without thorough consideration.” He has accepted the |
call of the world: “Young man, show us what thou |
canst do.”

Emery W. King, M. D. In the practice of medicine
at Bristow since 1905, Doctor King is now one of the
oldest established physicians of that little city. He has
an excellent practice and has well and worthily won his
place in professional life. He is both a physician and
business man and a few years ago was honored by his
fellow citizens with the post of mayor.

His birth occurred at Charleston, Coles County, Illinois,
December 22, 1879. His parents are John and Susan

HISTORY OP OKLAHOMA

1841

(Kelley) King, the former a native of Missouri and
the latter of Illinois. They are now living in Charleston,
where the father is a retired farmer. He still owns 220
acres of good Illinois land and has been thoroughly pros-
I pered in all his undertakings. At different times he has
I quietly exerted a considerable influence in local politics,

I though never as a candidate for public office. Both are
| active members of the Baptist Church.

Doctor King, who is the oldest of six children, spent
[ the first nineteen years of his life on a farm. He had its
discipline combined with the instruction of rural schools.
In order to secure a more liberal education he attended
the Southern Illinois Normal School two years, and was
also a student in a private school at Aledo, Illinois. Like
many successful professional men he preceded his active
career by work as a teacher, and altogether taught three
I years. Entering the Hospital Medical College at Louis-
i ville, Kentucky, he continued his studies there until he
earned his M. D. degree in 1905. Soon after graduating
Doctor King located at Bristow, which only two or three
years before had started its growth, and has been rapidly
| acquiring a fine practice and lending his aid to every
public spirited movement in behalf of the town ’s welfare.
He is a member of the County and State Medical soci-
[ eties and the American Medical Association, and is affil-
iated with the Knights of Pythias. As a republican he
has done much in behalf of local organizations of the
party. The only important office he has held was as
l mayor of Bristow one term. He has three times been a
. delegate to state conventions of his party.

On December 23, 1905, Doctor King married Gertrude
Rice. She was born near Carrollton, in Greene County,
Illinois, a daughter of Fisher and Elizabeth (Bradley)
Rice, who still live in Greene County. Doctor and Mrs.
King have one child, Nadine.

Hon. Alonzo McCrory. It has been frequently ob-
j served that politics is America’s oldest pastime, and a
great many men .take as naturally to politics as others
i do to baseball. Since the pursuit is so well established
among the activities of men, it is not surprising that its
duties and responsibilities rest so lightly on the shoulders
' of the majority who are thus employed. That citizen-
I' ship is a duty as well as a privilege is not so frequently
exemplified as to be commonplace. The individual who
assumes an earnest attitude for the public welfare has
bepn sufficiently rare at all times. For this reason there
is much promise for the future and commendation for
what has already been accomplished by such an able
young political leader as Alonzo McCrory, who is the
present speaker of the House of Representatives in the
Fifth Legislature. As a profession Mr. McCrory is a
newspaper editor and publisher, with residence at Ring-
ling, in Jefferson County. He has gone into politics
actuated by certain ideals and schemes the basis of
which is the fundamental principle of service, and there
are a great many who predict for him a splendid career
as a public leader far beyond what he has already ac-
complished, creditable though that is in every sense.

Born in Fayette County, Texas, September 10, 1878,
Alonzo McCrory was educated in the Texas public schools
and was a student in Baylor University at Waco, for two
years, 1896-98. He did not complete his college course,
but took up a business career, and in 1903 moved to
Durant, Oklahoma, and for a time manufactured soda
water, extracts, syrups, etc. In 1904 he became book-
keeper in a general mercantile establishment at Comanche,
Oklahoma. December 1, 1905, he removed to Cornish,
Oklahoma, and continued the mercantile business as secre-
tary of the firm of Bennett & Spragins. He sold out his
interest in that business in 1909, and on the 18th of

June of that year founded the Cornish News, which he
published there until May, 1914. At that date the Town
of Cornish was moved bodily to the new site of Ringling,
and the newspaper went along, changing its name at the
same time to the Ringling News.

Mr. McCrory represented Jefferson County in the
Fourth Legislature, having been elected practically with-
out opposition after over 500 representative citizens of
the couuty had signed a petition offering support in the
race. He came into the Legislature with an unusual
equipment' gained both by observation of practical poli-
tics and by a close study of politics as a science. He had
participated in county and state conventions of the demo-
cratic party, and for a time was clerk of the County
Court at Cornish. He was president of the first demo-
cratic club organized in Cornish after Oklahoma became
a state. As a member of the House in the Fourth Legis-
lature Mr. McCrory was chairman of the Judicial and
Senatorial Redistricting Committee, and was author of a
bill, which never became a law, that provided for de-
creasing the number of district judges from thirty-one to
twenty. When he returned to the House in the Fifth
Legislature he was elected speaker after a brief cam-
paign, the other candidates having withdrawn from the
contest. He accordingly obtained this much coveted
honor without prejudice, and has used his office with one
idea to secure the utmost efficiency from the body over
which he presides and also to maintain an effective har-
mony among the members and between the Legislature
and the governor. Among important measures that have
claimed Speaker McCrory ’s attention was the one amend-
ing the bank guaranty law so that the guaranty system
would be on a better and more substantial basis.

Mr. McCrory is a son of A. S. and Clara (Wier) Mc-
Crory. His father, a native of Tennessee, was a Con-
federate soldier under. Gen. Sterling Price. His mother,
a native of Mississippi, was of Irish and Dutch descent.
Among the father’s ancestors were two Irish boys who
came to America and participated as soldiers in the
Revolution. A. S. McCrory died in 1913, and his widow
now lives at Waelder, Gonzales County, Texas. There
were seven boys and five girls in the family. A. W.
McCrory, the oldest, is a stockman and farmer at
Waelder, Texas; Mrs. Sallie Johnson is the wife of a
stockman and farmer at Jeddo, Texas; Mrs. Maggie
Galloway is the wife of a farmer and stockman at Me-
Caulley, Texas; William is a stock raiser at Flatonia,
Texas; Mrs. Katie Miller is the wife of a farmer and
stockman at Waelder; Sam Houston, nicknamed “Pug”
and who named himself Sam Houston when four years
of age, is a teacher and stockman at Flatonia ; Mrs. Cora
Fike is the wife of the second assistant superintendent
of a tramway company at San Antonio; Mrs. Bessie
Cowan is the wife of a stockman and farmer at Waelder;
Marshall E. is a bookkeeper at Waelder; and Dorsey is a
farmer and stockman at Waelder. Speaker McCrory was
married July 26, 1902, to Una B. Cochran of Fayette
County, Texas. Their four children are Staton, aged
twelve;’ Lucile, aged nine; Claude, aged six; and Harry
Lee aged four. Mr. McCrory is a member of the Ring-
lino-’ Lodge of Woodmen of the World, and is a member
of the board of directors of the Cornish Orphans Home,
a state institution. , . ,

His political career has been primarily characterized
by straightforwardness and an absolute integrity in all
Ids relations. At different times he has been offered sup-
port in politics during county seat fights and other con-
tests that would have compromised him, and has rejected
all such overtures and his success is entirely due to
methods eminently fair and above board. He is a fine
type of young man with wide experience, unusual execu-

1842

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

tive ability, unassuming, and ambitious only for the good
service he can perform.

William Penn Hickok. Worthily in the front rank
of his important and difficult profession, William Penn
Hickok, of Taloga, has won his own way to his present
position. His early years were devoted to widely dif-
ferent vocations, but from youth he was determined upon
a career in the law, his success in which has evidenced
the fact that he made no mistake in the choice of an
occupation. Mr. Hickok was born at Guilford, Nodaway
County, Missouri, February 23, 1862, and is a son of
James E. and Olive L. (Bowen) Hickok.

The Hickok family is one which dates back to the
Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, where it was founded
at an early day by William Hickok, the emigrant
ancestor, who came from England. His son, Aaron
Hickok, removed from Massachusetts to Connecticut,
and the latter’s son, James, fought in the Revolutionary
‘army as captain of a company in a Connecticut regiment.
James Hickok ’s son, also names James, went to Ver-
mont, where his son, David Nicholas Hickok, the grand-
father of William Penn Hickok, was born in 1806.
From that state the grandfather moved to Pennsylvania
as a pioneer farmer, fought throughout the Civil war
as a Union soldier, was once wounded, and returned to
his agricultural operations and finally died at St. Joseph,
Missouri, in 1892, to which point he had moved with his
family just before the war.

James E. Hickok, father of William Penn Hickok, was
born in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, in 1833, and
there passed his early years, receiving a common school
education and being reared as a farmer. He was mar-
ried in Pennsylvania, and after marriage moved to
Fayette County, Illinois, that community being his home
and the scene of his agricultural activities until 1860. In
that year he took his family to Nodaway County, Mis-
souri, and in 1869 moved on to Andrew County, in the
same state. His next location was Peabody, Kansas,
where he resided from 1879 until the spring of 1883.
Up to that time Mr. Hickok had been engaged in farm-
ing, but on removing to Sumner County, Kansas, he
embarked in merchandising and met with more or less
success there until his retirement in 1901. Two years
later he went to Anthony, Kansas, and there his death
occurred in 1905. As a business man Mr. Hickok was
straightforward and honorable in his dealings with his
fellows. He was a professed Christian and lived his
religion every day, being a devout member of the Baptist
Church and a member of the board of trustees for many
years. His political support was given to the principles
"and candidates of the republican party. Mr. Hickok
married Miss Olive L. Bowen, who was born at Colden,
Erie County, New York, in 1839, and she survives and
makes her home in Sumner County, Kansas. There were
eight children in the family, as follows: James E., who

died in Anderson County, Kansas, at the age of twenty-
one years; Luella B., who is the wife of W. G. Rupp, a
contractor and builder and brick and tile manufacturer
of Trinidad, Colorado; William Penn, twin of Luella
B. ; Charles D., who is engaged in the banking business
at Ulysses, Kansas ; Esther C., of Argonia, Kansas, widow
of J. C. Colin, formerly a school teacher for a long
period, superintendent of schools of Sumner County,
Kansas, for a number of years, and postmaster at
Argonia at the time of his death; Mary A., who died
at Oquawka, Illinois, as the wife of James W. Gordon,
an attorney of that place; Hadassah, who died in child-
hood; and Galen R., who is engaged in the real estate
and farm loan business at Satanta, Kansas.

William Penn Hickok received his early education in
the public schools of Missouri and Kansas, to which

latter state he accompanied the family when he was
seventeen years of age, graduating from the Peabody
High School with the class of 1880. He had been reared
as a farmer’s son and remained on the home farm until
reaching his majority, at which time he turned his
attention to mercantile lines, conducting a store at
Harper, Kansas, for three years. His next venture was
in the line of real estate at Harper, and while thus
engaged for three years found the leisure to pursue his
legal studies, having decided to follow the law as his life
work. In 1889 Mr. Hickok went to Fort Supply, Indian
Territory, where he became teacher at the army school,"
a position which he retained for three years, then partici-
pating in. the opening, in 1892, of the Cheyenne- Arapaho
Reservation for white settlement, when he secured a
homestead of 160 acres. He proved up on this land and
sold it for a satisfactory consideration in 1897, having
in the meanwhile continued to teach school and to devote
what time he could to his legal studies. In December,
1898, Mr. Hickok came to Taloga, having been admitted
to the bar of the state September 13 preceding, and here
has continued to practice in civil and criminal law to
the present time. His practice carries him into all of
the courts, his admission to practice before the Supreme
Court having been granted January 10, 1902, and his
clientele is representative of the largest interests in
this section of the state. In the fall of 1898 he became
the candidate of the democratic party for the office of
county attorney of Dewey County, a position which he
retained for two terms, or four years, having been re- .
elected in 1900. He has served also as a member of the
town board and the town school board, and at present is
the incumbent of the office of town treasurer. Fraternally
Mr. Hickok is connected with Taloga Lodge No. 179,
Ancient Free and Accepted Masons; Taloga Chapter
No. 54, Royal Arch Masons; Taloga Council; Taloga
Commandery, Knights Templar; India Temple, Ancient
Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, Oklahoma
City, and Consistory No. 1, Valley of Guthrie, having
attained the thirty-second degree of Masonry; and with
Taloga Lodge, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, of
which he is past noble grand, and the Modern Woodmen
of America of this city. His professional affiliation is
with the Dewey County, Oklahoma State and American
Bar associations, while his numerous business connections
include the treasurership of the Taloga Oil Company,
Inc.

Mr. Hickok was married September 15, 1895, at Taloga,
to Miss N. E. Shumate, daughter of the late Balus
Shumate, a farmer of the locality of Taloga. Three
children have been born to this union, namely: Charles

B., a graduate of the class of 1914, Taloga High School,
and now a teacher in the public schools of Dewey County ;
Gordon W., a freshman at Southwestern State Normal
School, Weatherford, Oklahoma; and Galen J., who at-
tends the public schools of Weatherford.

John F. Kroutil. A lad of about ten years at the
time when he accompanied his parents on their immigra-
tion from Austria to the United States, the career of
Mr. Kroutil has shown in a most significant and emphatic
way how great are the opportunities afforded in our
great republic for the achievement of large and worthy
success on the part of a young man who has the will
to dare and to do, and who, dependent upon his own
exertions, has the energy and self-reliance that make for
personal independence and prosperity. Far from the
Fatherland, now involved in the most horrible warfare
known in the history of the world, Mr. Kroutil pursues
tlie even tenor of his way under the benignant con-
ditions of peace, and has secure status as one of the influ-
ential and representative business men of Oklahoma, he

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1843

and liis elder brother, Prank L., having been residents
of Oklahoma since the year the territory was organized
and having kept pace with the marvelous advancement
that has here been made under the territorial and state
regimes. They are now interested principals in what
is undoubtedly the most extensive and important enter-
prise of its kind in the State of Oklahoma, the subject
of this sketch being president aud his brother secretary
and treasurer of the Yukon Mill & Grain Company, at
Yukon, Canadian County.

Prom the status of a young man without more than
nominal financial resources, Mr. Kroutil has risen to that
of executive head of the largest and most modern flour
mills in Oklahoma, the products of which are shipped to
many distant states of the Union, as well as into Cuba,
and in connection with which has been developed a
grain business of extensive volume. The Yukon Mill &
Grain Company dates its organization back to the year
1902, and within the intervening period its business has
had an almost phenomenal expansion in scope and import-
ance. The original mill purchased by the Kroutil brothers
at Yukon .was a modest establishment with a daily
capacity for the output of only seventy-five barrels, or
one carload of flour a day. At the present time the
splendid plant, with the best of modern equipment and
facilities, has an output capacity of 1,200 barrels a
day, the equivalent of twenty carloads. The average
daily business has attained to the noteworthy aggregate
of nearly $10,000, and the flour and other mill products
are of the highest grade. The mill is a substantial brick
structure of four stories and of modern design archi-
tecturally as well as in the matter of providing the
best facilities for the purpose for which it was erected.
The mill elevators are of large capacity and the facilities
for storage are adequate to meet the demands of the
enormous business controlled. Prom this fine milling
plant products are shipped throughout Oklahoma and also
into the states of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missis-
sippi, Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Ten-
nessee, New York and Connecticut, the substantial and
widely disseminated trade affording the most effective
voucher for the specially high grade of the products.
By the way of the City of New Orleans the company
ships flour to Cuba, and this export trade is constantly
increasing. In addition to the central elevator at Yukon
the company maintain also and own well equipped ele-
vators at Union, Oklahoma, and other points in the state.
The officers of the company are as here noted: John
F. Kroutil, president and general manager; Anton P.
Dobey, vice president; and Prank L. Kroutil, secretary
and treasurer. The Kroutil brothers became residents
of Oklahoma in 1890, and they have been closely asso-
ciated in their business activities during the intervening
years. The subject of this review acquired at Ponca
City, Kay County, this state, his initial experience as
a buyer of grain, and there he was soon joined by his
elder brother, Prank L., their residence and business
operations having there continued for six years. In
1902 they purchased a sawmill at Yukon, and from this
nucleus has been developed the fine milling plant of
which mention has already been made. In the earlier
period of their residence in Canadian County the brothers
were associated in the development and management of
a farm, but their ambition and progressiveness soon
led them into broader fields of industrial enterprise.
They came to Oklahoma Territory from David City,
Nebraska, in which state they had previously been
engaged in agricultural pursuits. They were born near
the city of Prague, Austria, — Prank L. in 1872, and
John P. on the 16th of May, 1875, — and thus both were
boys at the time of the family immigration to America

in 1882, the father establishing a home on a farm near
David City, Nebraska, where the sons were reared to
adult age and were afforded the advantages of the
public schools. The parents, Prank and Katherine (Vice)
Kroutil, are still living and maintain their residence in
Oklahoma, as do also their four sons and one daughter,
the latter being the wife of Anton P. Dobey, vice
president of the Yukon Mill & Grain Company. He
whose name introduces this article has become one of
the substantial capitalists of Oklahoma and in addition
to being president of the Yukon Mill & Grain Company
he is president of the Yukon National Bank. While
he has been unflagging in his application to business and
has achieved large success, he has had appreciation of
the responsibility imposed by such success and is most
loyal, liberal and public-spirited in his civic attitude.
Though a strong supporter of the cause of the demo-
cratic party he is essentially a business man and has had
naught of ambition for the honors or emoluments of
public office. He and his family are communicants of
the Catholic Church, and he is a life member of the
Oklahoma City Lodge of the Benevolent and Protective
Order of Elks. As a man of large business activities,
Mr. Kroutil has formed a wide acquaintanceship in the
state of his adoption, is liberal in the support of measures
and enterprises advanced for the general good of the
community at large, and his honorable, straightforward
course, as combined with a genial and buoyant nature,
has gained to him hosts of staunch friends.

The maiden name of the first wife of Mr. Kroutil
was Leonora Borek, and she is survived by one child,
Bernice. A few years after the death of his first wife
Mr. Kroutil wedded Miss Mary Pisher, and they have
one daughter, Margarette, the family home being one
of the most attractive in Yukon and a center of most
gracious hospitality.

Henry H. Edwards, city attorney of Mangum, and
former member of the state legislature, is a native son
of the State of Illinois. He was born in Greene County
on September 29, 1878, and is a son of George P. and
Jane (Moore) Edwards, both of Illinois birth.

George P. Edwards is a prosperous and well known
farmer in Greene County, Illinois, and has his home in
the Town of Whitehall at the present time. He was
born in 1850 and has passed his days in the county and
state of his birth. Five children were born of his mar-
riage to Jane Moore. Henry H. of this review is the
eldest. Ward, living in Greene County, has charge of a
drainage district on the Illinois River. Walter lives in
Humboldt, Iowa. Grover is a locomotive engineer and
lives in Centralia, Illinois. Nina married Minor Morrow,
a traveling salesman, and they have their home in White-
hall, where her parents live.

Henry H. Edwards attended the common schools of
Greene County and was graduated from the Whitehall
High School with the class of 1897. He taught for
three years in the public schools of the county, and then,
in 1900, went to Chicago where he was engaged as an
instructor in a business college. For five years he con-
tinued in that work, reading law in his spare time, and
in 1905 he took a position as a traveling salesman. In
1907 he came to Oklahoma, located in Stigler, and soon
after was admitted to the bar. He began the practice
of law in Stigler at once and continued in practice there
until 1911. He was prominent and popular in the county
and in 1910 was elected to the Legislature, serving
through 1910 and 1911. He served on several commit-
tees during that time, among them the Judiciary, Insur-
ance, Federal Relations, Code and Special Investigations
committees. During his incumbency he fathered and in-

1844

HISTOEY OF OKLAHOMA

traduced three companion bills on road laws, which were
passed and entered upon the statute books. In 1911 he
resumed the practice of law, locating in Dallas, Texas,
and he was there until 1914, coming to Mangum in July
of that year. He has since been engaged in general
practice. In February, 1915, Mr. Edwards was elected
to the office of city attorney for a four year term, and
since his election has taken quarters in the city hall.

Mr. Edwards was married in January, 1914, in Calera,
Oklahoma, to Miss Bertha Burrow, a daughter of B. B.
Burrow, former postmaster of Calera, where he now lives
retired. Mr. and Mrs. Edwards have found many warm
friends in their new home, and they are prominent in
social circles of the community.

T. T. Blakely is now secretary and manager of the
Chamber of Commerce at Okmulgee. However, he is the
type of man who is always larger than any office with
which he happens to be connected. Mr. Blakely is a
man of unusual parts and talents. Perhaps the dominant
quality in his makeup has been enterprise, and he has
succeeded not only in doing a large amount of work and
business through his individual efforts, but has been
peculiarly 'effective in getting other men to do what he
wants them to do.

He was born at Grafton, Massachusetts, April 18, 1873,
son of C. J. and Nellie M. (Bacon) Blakely. His father
was born in Northern Vermont and his mother in Canada,
so their birthplaces were not far apart, being separated
by the international boundary line. They grew up and
married in that community, and by trade the father was
a shoemaker. Eventually he was made foreman of the
finishing department in one of the large shoe factories
of Grafton, Massachusetts. He later invented a machine
which performed an important part in the making of
shoes. Leaving the East he finally located at Janesville,
Wisconsin, when his son T. T. was two years of age. He
established a shoe factory at Janesville and has spent
the rest of his days in that city. The mother passed
away in 1906 at the age of sixty-two. She was at one
time president of the Grand Lodge of the Rebekahs of
the State of Wisconsin and the father was also an active
lodge man. In their family were five children, three
daughters, after whom in age comes T. T. Blakely, and
then a younger brother.

Mr. Blakely was reared in Janesville, and finished the
high school course there in 1891. At an early age, though
he lived in a comfortable home, he found it necessary
to do something practical in addition to acquiring knowl-
edge and living the usual routine of boyhood. He paid
much of his expenses through high school by carrying
laundry. In 1891 he entered the State University at
Madison, where he paid his expenses by handling a
laundry agency, by collecting bills and running a
students’ club. In the summer vacations he sold books
for three years. In 1895 leaving the university he spent
a year as a teacher in Janesville, and then returned
to school and completed the literary course in 1896. He
also gained some credits in the engineering course.

From 1896 to 1900 Mr. Blakely was principal of the
high school at Middleton, Wisconsin, and from 1900 to
1904 was superintendent of schools at Sun Prairie, Wis-
consin. During that period he also conducted summer
schools for teachers at Janesville and other places in the
state. Mr. Blakely has the distinction of having or-
ganized the first teachers’ association in Dane County,
Wisconsin, a county of which Madison, the state capital,
is the county seat with 400 teachers connected with the
schools. He was elected the first and second president
of the association, and filled that office in 1898-99.
While engaged in teaching in Wisconsin he spent his

summer vacations largely as a book agent, selling stu-
dents’ reference books, the Encyclopedia Britannica and
Stoddard’s Leetui’es. Probably few men have had a
more successful experience in the book business than
Mr. Blakely. Because of his success he received an
offer from the E. R. Dumont Publishing Company of
Chicago, at $50 per week and expenses, to cover the
company’s territory in Wisconsin, Missouri, Illinois,
Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. He was then South, the
company paying the expenses of the removal of his
family, and lie covered the states of Kentucky, Tennessee,
North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia.
During this time his family resided at Shelby, North
Carolina, Spartansburg, South Carolina, Columbus and
Dawson, Georgia, and Montgomery, Alabama. He was
next sent north to Toronto, Canada, and continued his
work as a canvasser all along the lake region, and still
later located at Coffeyville, Kansas. For two years his
family lived at Mound Valley, Kansas, and he continued
his work as a canvasser through Louisiana, Arkansas,
Texas and Oklahoma. In that district he covered every
town above 5,000 population. •

From 1907 to 1912 Mr. Blakely had his residence at
Caney, Kansas, having gone there when gas was dis-
covered. He entered the real estate business, and for a
time was very successful in that field. When the gas
supply gave out he lost all his investments and 'started
all over again. This time he began selling Florida lands,
with headquarters at Lakeland, Florida.

In September, 1914, Mr. Blakely was elected secretary
of the Chamber of Commerce of Bartlesville, Oklahoma,
and after a year accepted a similar position at an
advanced salary at Okmulgee, where he is now doing a
great deal to vitalize and organize the work of the local
chamber of commerce. During his residence at Caney,
Kansas, he was elected a member of the city council and
also served on the county high school board of Inde-
pendence, Kansas, having been chosen as a republican.
Fraternally he is a Mason and Odd Fellow. Mr. Blakely
has great ability as a public speaker and in his lone and
varied career has been called upon to exercise this talent
on many occasions.

In 1898 he married Hattie Louise Ferrin, who was
born at Darlington, Wisconsin, and is a graduate in
music. Five children have been born to their union, but
their daughter Moyne died at the age of eight months.
The four sons are: Thurston, Merle, Kenneth and Mal-
colm. Mr. and Mrs. Blakely are members of the Presby-
terian Church at Okmulgee.

Hon. Albert Rener Museller. One of Oklahoma’s
lawyers, and one of the assistant editors of this work,
whose home is now in Pawhuska, was formerly register
of the United States land office at Alva, and his name
and influence have been identified in manv important
ways with the development of this new state where he
has lived since 1893.

He was born June 3, 1857, at Clayton, Illinois. His
father, Rener R. Museller, was born in the province of
Aurich, Germany, and was a subject of the King of
Hanover. He emigrated to the United States and
became a naturalized citizen before his death which
occurred in 1864, when the subject of this sketch was
only six years old. He was a gunsmith and blacksmith
and he married Malissa Wallace of Winchester, Illinois,
who was born in 1837 and still lives at an advanced age
in Wichita, Kansas. Malissa Wallace was a daughter of
Joseph Wallace, one of the pioneers of Illinois, at whose
house in Winchester, Illinois, Stephen A. Douglass lived
when he taught his first and only term of village school.
The father of Joseph Wallace was Charles Wallace, who

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1845

married Peggy Short in Longford County, Ireland, and
in 1776 emigrated to Baltimore, Maryland. These
Wallaces were Seotch-Irish, and descendants of the Wal-
laces who left Scotland and settled in Northern Ireland
in the seventeenth century.

Albert E. Museller had no inheritance. What he has
been able to accomplish in life has been the result of
his own effort and ambition. He educated himself and
had only the advantages of the common schools of his
country, and yet he is a man of liberal education, for
which he always says, he is largely indebted to an aunt,
Mrs. H. W. Craig, of Vermilion County, Illinois, with
whom he lived for several years when a boy.

He taught school in Illinois and Indiana for several
years, read law in Lincoln, Illinois, was admitted to the
bar of that state and subsequently in Kansas and also
Oklahoma.

He resided for several years in Wichita, Kansas, and
for four years was judge of the City Court of that city.
After coming to Oklahoma, in the year 1893, he was for
two years, county judge of Noble County, was county
attorney of the same county for two years, and for four
years was register of the United States land office at
Alva, Oklahoma. He is now. engaged in the practice of
I law in Pawhuska.

In politics he has been identified with the republican
! party, although in 1912 he supported the progressive
ticket nationally. He is a fluent and ready public
speaker, and there are not many cities or towns in old
Oklahoma in which his voice has not been heard dis-
cussing the political issues. He has contributed articles
to various magazines, chiefly on games and sports and
the aborigines of this country. The Indians have always
been of great interest to him. He loves God’s out of
doors, and there are few plants, birds, insects, trees or
flowers with which he is not familiar. His chief recrea-
tion is artificial bait casting for bass, in which accom-
plishment he is an adept. Mr. Museller ’s ready pen has
also contributed many articles to the various papers of
his state on agricultural subjects.

Fraternally, he is affiliated with Wahshahshe Lodge
No. 110, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, of Paw-
huska, and is a member of the Consistory of Scottish
Rite at Guthrie.

On May 6, 1880, at New Holland, Illinois, he and Ida
E. Thomas were married. Mrs. Museller is of old New
England stock and is a descendant of Gen. Israel Putnam
of Revolutionary fame. The Thomases emigrated from
Ohio to Illinois in the early years of the nineteenth
century. Mr. and Mrs. Museller are the parents of three
children. Crete is now the wife of Fred M. Merkle, who
is in the Government service at Perea, New Mexico.
Leo, the second daughter, is the wife of Hon. John B.
Doolin, formerly state fish and game warden of Okla-
homa, and their only son, Albert E. Museller, Jr., is
occupying a good position with the Southern Pacific
Railway at Redwood City, California.

Shawnee Carnegie Library. One of the first insti-
tutions to mark the growth of Shawnee as a center of
culture and liberal education was the Shawnee Carnegie
Library. This central city of Oklahoma now has much
to be proud of, not only as a commercial metropolis of
a large and distinctive territory, but as a city of
churches, schools, and the various institutions and
organizations that increase the attractiveness and
advantages for those who not only seek opportunities to
advance in a business way, but the facilities of enlight-
enment.

The handsome new library building in which the large
collection of books are stored and are distributed to

the public was erected in 1905 in beautiful Woodland
Park, on North Broadway. This building cost $15,768.
The library now comprises 10,500 volumes and is
steadily growing, not only in additions to the book col-
lection but in a more important degree in the use of
the books themselves.

The first librarian was J. C. Holt, who was succeeded
by Mrs. J. C. Parker in 1907. Since 1909 the librarian
has been Mrs. T. S. Funk. The present library board
is made up of the following persons : Mayor F. P.

Stearns, president; Judge W. M. Engart, vice president;
George E. McKinnis, Otis Weaver, Mrs. W. H. Dodge,
Mrs. Agnes Amos and Mrs. George Larch-Miller. Mrs.
Funk was secretary of the library board almost from its
organization in 1902. The first president of the board
was Mrs. J. R. Schloss. Other members who at different
times have been especially identified with the work of
this organization were : Mr. and Mrs. C. J. Benson,

Mrs. Dr. Shive, Mrs. Glen Lehman, Mrs. Henry Beard,
Mrs. James Aydelotte, Hon. R. E. Wood, Victor E. Har-
low, Paul Cooper and Mrs. Frank Boggs.

Mrs. T. S. Funk. Librarian of the Carnegie Library
at Shawnee, Mrs. Trimmier (Sloan) Funk was born at
New Albany, Mississippi. The Sloans came originally
from Ireland and England and were early settlers in
South Carolina. Another branch of her family were
the Henrys, who were of Scotch-Irish descent. Mrs.
Funk is a great-granddaughter of Nancy Trimmier,
whose father was born in a Revolutionary camp. Nancy
Trimmier lived in South Carolina near Spartanburg.
The Trimmiers were of French origin, and were extensive
planters, cotton mill owners, conducted carriage factories,
and were prominent in the South in an official way. Mrs.
Funk’s father was Capt. T. B. Sloan, who was born at
Srartanburg, South Carolina, in 1830, but when a boy
his parents settled in New Albany, Mississippi. He is
still living at New Albany at the age of eighty-five. He
received his early education at Spartanburg and New
Albany, and in 1861 went into the Confederate army,
and at Gettysburg he was wounded and made a prisoner,
and remained in the Federal prison on Johnson’s Island
in Lake Erie until the close of the war. He then settled
at New Albany, was married, and became a planter
and merchant. He married Mary Henry, who was born
in South Carolina in 1840 and died at New Albany,
Mississippi, in 1885. Their children were: Georgia A.,

widow of W. H. Gantt, and she now resides on a planta-
t:on in Arkansas; Mrs. T. S. Funk; Minnie Frances, wife
of Major W. Stroud, who is a large shipping contractor
and at the head of a transfer business at Greenwood,
Mississippi; Willie Theodore, wife of W. H. Bone, a
planter at New Albany, Mississippi; Compton, whose
whereabouts have been unknown for several years;
Elizabeth Irma, wife of Frank W. O ’Keeffe, connected
with a department store at Meridian, Mississippi.

Mrs. Funk received her early education in the public
and private schools of Mississippi. She spent some time
training for library work in the Carnegie Library at
Oklahoma City. In 1886 in New Albany she married
Richard Walker Funk. He was born in Wallerville,
Mississippi,- received a public school education in his
native town and at New Albany and in the University
at Oxford, Mississippi, and in business became a general
merchant and furniture dealer in Mississippi. In 1902
he moved to Shawnee, where he established the Shawnee
Furniture Company in partnership with J. B. Armstead.
This house was burned out in 1904, and since then Mr.
Funk t'P been connected with the Flemm’n "--Brown Fur-
niture Company at Shawnee. He is a democrat and is a
member of the Knights of Pythias. Mr. and Mrs. Funk

1846

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

have two children: Waller Adair, who received a high

school education at Shawnee and pursued further train-
ing in a school of technology in Chicago and is now
superintendent for an electric company in New York
City. Louise Trimmier is now a sophomore in the high
school at Shawnee.

F. P. Stearns. For a good many years Shawnee lias
reposed the administration of its municipal affairs in
the hands of Frank P. Stearns. He is one of Oklahoma ’s
very capable mayors. He is one of the old settlers and
has lived in Shawnee and has been a witness and par-
ticipant in its growth and development for more than
twenty years.

He was born in Paris, Maine, October 5, 1861. His
ancestors came over from England in Governor Win-
throp’s ship in 1636 and three brothers of the name
settled in Waltham, Massachusetts. S. P. Stearns, father
of Mayor Stearns, was born at Paris, Maine, in 1829,
and has spent all his life in that community as a farmer
and banker. Though past eighty-five years of age he
is still attending to his duties as a banker. In polities
he is a republican and is a member of the Hniversalist
Church. He married Isabelle Partridge, who was born
in Paris, Maine, in 1832, and is also still living in
advanced years. Their children were: Austin P., a

farmer at Paris, Maine; Frank P.; Henry K., a miller
at Hebron, Maine; William C., on the old homestead at
Paris; Mary, wife of E. C. Park, a lawyer at Bethel,
Maine; and Joan, wife of E. S. Kilborn, a retired
lumberman, who spends part of the year in Bethel and
during the winter resides in Portland, Maine.

Mayor Stearns attended the public schools of his
native village, in 1881 graduated from Hebron Academy,
and for one year was a student in Colby College. In
the meantime he had begun teaching and for a time
was principal of the high school at Pine Hill. In 1885,
coming West, he located at Abilene, Kansas, and spent
two years in the grain and stock business at Chapman.
Removing from there to Dighton, Kansas, he became a
• rancher, handled real estate, and for two terms filled
the office of county superintendent of schools.

At the opening of the Cherokee Strip he entered
Oklahoma, secured a homestead of 160 acres one mile
north of Enid, but after a year sold out and since
November 7, 1894, has lived in Shawnee. Since then
Mr. Stearns has been identified with many of the busi-
ness activities of this city. For two years he conducted
a general store. He established the first gas plant, but
after a year sold out to present Gas Company. To a
greater or less extent he has been in the real estate
business. He was elected and served three years as
city treasurer, and for 4% years held the office of post-
master, having been appointed at the close of McKinley ’s
administration and remaining in office until 1905. He
was secretary of the chamber of commerce a year and
its president one year. In the spring of 1906 he was
elected mayor, and held that office for two terms, or
four years. After being out of office a year he was
again selected, this time for a three year term, and is
now serving a second three-year term. In politics he is
a republican, and is affiliated with Shawnee Lodge No.
657, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, with
the Maccabees, the Fraternal Order of Eagles, the
Modern Woodmen of America, and the Brotherhood of
American Yeomen. Mr. Stearns is a director in the
Shawnee Building and Loan Company, has served on the
board of education, is president of the Provident Asso-
ciation, having been chosen for a second term in that
office on November 11, 1915, and is by virtue of his
office president of the Carnegie Library Board. Mayor

Stearns was largely instrumental in securing the estab-
lishment of the splendid hospital at Shawnee and it is
recognized as the finest municipal hospital in the state
and the only one that is on a paying basis. He is now
governor of the hospital board.

In 1893, at Dighton, Kansas, Mayor Stearns married
Miss Winifred Arnold, daughter of S. E. Arnold, now
of Kansas City. They have two children: Helen, who

graduated from Bethany College in June, 1915, and is
now taking a special course in music in Kansas City;
and Arnold, in the first year of the Shawnee High School.

Judge William Marshall Engart. A prominent
Shawnee attorney and vice president of the Shawnee
library board, Judge Engart was born in Boone County,
Indiana, October 14, 1849. The Engart family is of
Dutch-Irish descent and arrived in Virginia about the
time of the Revolutionary war. His father, Absalom
Engart, was born in Virginia in 1818 and died in
Clinton County, Indiana, in 1886. He came to Boone
County, Indiana, about 1845, having been reared and
married in his native state. He was a farmer and stock
raiser and about 1876 he moved to Clinton County, where
he died. Absalom Engart -married Elizabeth Brawley, .
who was born in Virginia in 1820 and died in Clinton
County, Indiana, in 1876. Their children were: Diana
Johnson, a widow, who lives in Clinton County, Indiana;
Marietta, who married J. C. Ghent, a druggist, both being
now deceased; Martha, who married John Pauley, a
stockman, and they also are deceased; Caroline, who mar-
ried John Jelf, a carpenter, and both died at Chat-
tanooga, Tennessee; Rush, a farmer, who died at Frank-
fort, Indiana, and William M.

Judge Engart attended the common schools in Boone
County, Indiana, and for a time was a student at Thorn-
ton Academy, under John C. Ridpath, the great popular
historian. He graduated Bachelor of Science in 1869
from Stockwell University. His early life was spent on
his father’s farm, and for three terms he was a teacher
in the district schools of Boone County. In the mean-
time he took up the study of law, and also attended the
law department of the Indiana University at Blooming-
ton. He was admitted to the Indiana bar in 1873, and
has had more than forty years of active experience as
a lawyer. His first practice was done at Colfax, Indiana,
from 1873 to 1881. Then for a few years, until 1888, he
was engaged in farming in Jasper County, Missouri,
and from there went to Dallas, Texas, and was in the
planing mill business there until 1892, in which year
he returned to Indiana.

Judge Engart is an Oklahoma pioneer, having come
to the territory in 1893, and after securing admission
to the bar practiced at Guthrie for ten years. On
January 1, 1904, he removed to Shawnee and has since
enjoyed a general civil and criminal practice, his offices
being over the State National Bank. He has frequently
served as special judge of the district court and in the
superior court of Pottawatomie County. He has served
as president of the Pottawatomie County Bar Association,
and in politics he is affiliated with the socialist party.
In Clinton County, Indiana, in 1875, Judge Engart
married Mrs. Matie J. (Dean) Long. Her father was
a farmer in Carroll County, Indiana. The seven children
of their marriage are: Linus M., who is connected with
the Royal Typewriter Company and resides at Corpus
Christi, Texas; Zoe, wife of A. E. Church, who is in the
fire department at Los Angeles, California ; Ethel, wife of
R. C. Raglan, also with the fire department at Los
Angeles; Grace, wife of Joe Hawkins, proprietor of a
restaurant in Shawnee; Blanche, wife of N. L. Hardin,
connected with the Pacific Railway at Los Angeles; C. R.,

HISTORY OP OKLAHOMA

1847

with the L. C. Smith Typewriting Company at Shawnee;
and Gertrude, a stenographer at Shreveport, Louisiana.

Bishop Theophile Meerschaert was born August
24, 1847, in the Village of R'ussignies, about an hour’s
walk from the City of Renaix, in the Belgian Province
of East Flanders. His father was of that sturdy stock
which has played so great a part in the history of North-
ern Europe; the stock which was first to declare its in-
dependence of feudalism to build up the great manu-
facturing and commercial cities of the middle ages —
Ghent, Bruges, Lille, Audenarde and Ypres — cities of
the guilds, the Christian prototypes of our modern
trades unions ; «ities which sent forth their armies
of tradesmen and mechanics, who, under the walls
of Courtraj, in 1302, humbled the pride of Philip the
Fair and his courtiers in the battle of the Golden Spurs.
His mother was of that other race of Belgium, Walloon,
whose ancestors Caesar, in the introduction to his History
of the Gallic Wars, declares, “Of all these, the bravest
are the Belgians. ’ ’

He was the eighth of ten children, a family of only
average size in that country even now. His earliest in-
struction was received in the public school of his native
village, as at that time the public schools of Belgium
were all Catholic. In 1859, at the age of twelve years,
his vocation to the priesthood must have been already
marked, for he entered the then recently founded diocesan
College of Renaix. Here the child studied each day from
8 A. M. to 6 P. M., making the journey of three miles
to and from home on foot. His first great sorrow came
during the first college year, on May 28, 1860, when his
mother died after an illness of only a few hours. His
eldest sister, Victorine, who had intended to enter the
convent, at once took her mother’s place in the care of
the growing family, remaining for their sake in, but not
of, the world, an humble heroine of simple devotion to
duty. She, whom the Bishop loves to call his second
mother, died December 23, 1914, on the forty-second
anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood.

When the College of Renaix, which was then far from
its present rank as it now includes, besides a complete
classical course, a famous school of weaving and other
manual training, could take him no further in his studies,
the young Theophile entered the diocesan College of
Audenarde in October, 1864, whence he was graduated in
August, 1868. While there, he devoted his leisure to the
Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and found in its work a
suitable outlet for his zeal and charity toward the sick
and poor. He was successively secretary and president
of the local conference, and obtained from the first the
rare privilege of being allowed to visit the sick at the
hospital, which he did each week for four years.

The time was now at hand to begin his immediate
training for the priesthood; and as he was resolved to
be a missionary in America, young Mr. Meerschaert en-
tered the American college at Louvain in October, 1868.
Here he had as professors the famous Dupont and Mon-
signor Cartuyvels, long the beloved vice-rector of Louvain
University. On June 10, 1870, he received minor orders;
took the irrevocable step to, subdeaconship, December 17,
1870; was ordained deacon June 3, 1871, and priest,
December 23, 1871 ; remaining, however, as a student in
the American college until July, 1872.

It may not come amiss to notice here an incident of
his seminary days that will serve to shed some light upon
his later life. A neighbor in his village, who lived alone,
had died. Victorine, his sister, invited the young semi-
narian to come with her and prepare the body for burial.
The man had been dead nearly twenty-four hours when
they arrived. It was summer, and although he took hold

bravely enough, the flesh was weaker than the spirit.
As she saw him about to faint, Victorine cried out,"
‘ ‘ Shame on you : Is that the kind of man who wants to
be a missionary?’’ The lesson was never forgotten and
served to buoy him up through many a sickening ordeal
in aftat years.

Now came the second great trial, the parting from
home and friends. To those who go abroad for a visit
or for recreation, there is little in this; yet even then
there is frequently a reluctance at thejast moment that
* causes emotion. For those who leave home for a longer
period to study in preparing for life work, the trial is
greater; yet even here there is great hope of return to
live at home; and the knowledge that one’s life is not
being torn up by the roots to be transplanted in an alien
soil. But when we definitely leave behind all that is dear,
and know that if we ever do return it will be only as a
visitor; when we go forth to face what difficulties we
know not, and to give ourselves for strangers who may
not appreciate or welcome our sacrifice; to labor among
people whose language, whose customs, whose very out-
look upon life is foreign and perhaps repugnant to our
own; and when we know that after all we need not go;
that friends without number would gladly bid us stay;
ah then, there is something to give up ! The Belgian
loves his home and native land. This is abundantly
shown by the fact that although it is the most densely
populated land upon the face of the globe, and condi-
tions of life are correspondingly hard, yet the number of
its emigrants is negligible. If our young missionary,
then, shed a few tears at parting, can we find it in our
hearts to blame him? Especially since through it all,
like so many of his brave countrymen, his purpose never
faltered, nor took one backward look on what it left be-
hind. On September 26, 1872, Father Meerschaert left
Russignies. He arrived in New York October 13th. His
first sea voyage was a long one, but was thoroughly en-
joyed by the young missionary, who was from the first
an excellent sailor. He did not tarry long to enjoy what
to him must have been a new world full of wonders, but
proceeded as rapidly as circumstances and the then slow
and arduous means of transportation would permit, to
report for duty to Bishop Elder of Natchez, Mississippi,
afterwards Archbishop of Cincinnati.

The young priest was blessed in his bishop. A man
whose combined learning and true holiness with greatness
of mind and soul and the simplicity of an apostle, Bishop
Elder was in deed as in word a pattern to his flock. His
angelic pity for the poor and suffering, and his heroism
during the repeated visitations of his war-scarred diocese
by the yellow fever, made him loved by both priests and
people.

On November 16, 1872, Father Meerschaert, after a
few weeks at the bishop’s house, was sent to his first
charge. No doubt he felt quite flattered to think he was
at once to be' a pastor. This feeling, however, promptly
subsided after his first visit to his missions. His parish
consisted of the missions of Jordan River, Pearl River
and Wolf River, in Hancock and Harrison counties,
along the sea coast. Although invited to make his head-
. quarters with a neighboring pastor in a well established
parish, he reserved this privilege for one week in three
months, and lived the rest of the time as best he could
in his own poor missions.

The first visit was not very encouraging. It was sixty
miles through the pine woods and swamps to his destina-
tion, and the trip was made in a little cart. Six or seven
miles out, while fording a stream, his valise fell out
into the water. To add to his discomfort a norther came
up and it began to sleet and freeze. Father Meerschaert
was afraid that his aged driver would be ill, so, although

1848

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

he himself was wet through from the rescue of the
precious valise, he wrapped the old man in his cassock.
They walked and drove alternately for twenty-five miles,
and at 3 o’clock in the afternoon arrived at the resi-
dence of a Catholic family, a one-room house, where they
sat down to a dinner of rice and cabbage. It is safe to
say that was the best rice and cabbage the young priest
had ever tasted. The aged driver was ill, and there was
not much room to spare, so Father Meerschaert walked
three miles to the home of a relative of his host to spend
the night. There* he found a family of ten, again in a ,
one-room house. The evening meal was sweet potatoes,
served alone. The missionary had not yet learned to
like them, so he concluded to wait for the second course.
But there was no second course! His bed was in the
corn crib upon a husk tick with one quilt for covering.
Old sacks were hung before the cracks in the corn crib
to keep out the wind'. On this bed he lay down, fully
dressed and tried to pray himself to sleep, while the wind
howled through the pines, and the latter kept up a con-
tinual crashing as they rid themselves of their accumu-
lated burden of encrusted sleet. The next morning he
set up a portable altar between the beds in the house, and
thus celebrated his first Holy Mass as pastor in his new
missions. As his feet were badly swollen from the pre-
vious day ’s trip, he decided to return on horseback. The
saddle was not well girded and when he attempted to
mount, it promptly turned under the horse. Finally he
got it securely fastened and rode off. Being yet but an
inexperienced horseman he got his horse into a hole at
the Wolf Biver ford, and was plunged into the icy water
to the hips. Before he could dry his clothes or obtain
food he had to ride through the cold three miles further
to a farmhouse.

It will readily be seen from these incidents, that his
people were desperately poor. They were people of some
education and refinement but had lost all their wealth in
the Civil war, then comparatively recent. For the most
part Catholics, they were sadly in need of instruction.
Many full grown and even old persons among them had
never made their first Confession or Communion, and
knew next to nothing of their religion. Added to this
was a certain spirit of hostility toward the church, and
this spirit it was the task of the young missionary to
eradicate.

During the first winter he called his people to a week s
encampment at a central point. Here each day was
begun with Mass, followed by a solid forenoon ’s instruc-
tion on the catechism, the prayers, the ceremonies of the
church, etc. At noon a recess for lunch, and all after-
noon was again devoted to study and instruction. Con-
fession began Thursday, and Sunday morning nearly a
hundred, ranging from sixteen to seventy years, made
their first Holy Communion. All received confirmation
at the hands of Bishop Elder at Bay St. Louis, February
2, 1873. _ .

Father Meerschaert was changed to Ocean Springs m
August, 1874, and had been in his new parish not quite a
year when yellow fever broke out. The first cases oc-
curred in the latter part of June, but the epidemic
reached its greatest virulence in September and October.
From the first outbreak the young pastor was in the
thick of the danger. He did not confine himSelf to
spiritual ministrations, but busied himself with nursing
the sick, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, sitting up
with them every alternate night, as a rule, and by word
and example heartening the people to care for their own
afflicted ones, instead of fleeing in panic to a place of
safety, and leaving husbands, wives or children to die
without consolation, as was so often the case in other
communities. Finally, on the last Friday in October,

after having spent the whole night by the bedside of a
dying German, he was called by a Protestant old lady
one of those who thought Catholics so bad that they
would not even sell vegetables to the priest, but who said
in calling him : “ Mr. Priest, my neighbor is sick and

wants you. She is a Catholic and I know you will do her
good.” It was three miles in the country and the trans-
portation was apostolic; that is, on foot. After he had
given the sacraments to the dying girl, “Mr. Priest,”
said the old lady, “you are sick, too?” “No,” replied
Father Meerschaert, ‘ ‘ Only a bad cold. ” “ But you look
bad; perhaps you are afraid?” “Well, hardly, after
nursing the sick for eight weeks. ” “ Well, if you take
the fever, send for me; I will come and nurse you.”
The following day, Saturday, she came after Mr. Priest
to come and bury the dead girl, and on Sunday, during
Mass the premonitary symptoms appeared. After Mass
came the chill; and a non-Catholic, whose daughter was
being instructed for first communion, put the priest to
bed. On Tuesday he suffered a relapse, and for a week
his life was despaired of, as he had even the black vomit,
considered a sure sign of death. The next day, though
still unable to sit up, he was brought six miles into the
country in a soring wagon, supported by a man on each
side, to give the last sacraments to the little girl he had
been instructing for first holy communion, the daughter
of the man who had put him to bed. He was brought
back home, arriving at half past one in the morning.
The girl died the same morning at nine.

In 1878, while on his first visit to Europe, he learned
that the yellow fever had again broken out in Mississippi,
and hurried back to his flock. This enidemic was worse
than the preceding one and out of twenty-six priests, six
died with the fever, and thirteen sisters. During this
second epidemic, Father Meerschaert had to attend, not
only his parishioners, but those of Biloxi, and Pascagoula
as well, as the pastors of both these places were down
with fever.

In June, 1879, Father Ledue, then pastor of Bay St.
Louis, was sent away on sick leave, and Father Meer-
schaert was sent to replace him until his return. In
November, 1880, he was appointed to Natchez, where he
remained until his appointment as Vicar Apostolic of
the Indian Territory. In Natchez he continued the same
course which had so endeared him to the people in his
former parishes. No one, whether Protestant, Catholic,
Jew or atheist ever fell ill, without being visited by
Father Meerschaert and no one who was not glad to cail
him friend. After the coming of Bishop Janssens, after-
wards Archbishop of New Orleans, in May, 1881, Father
Meerschaert became acting vicar general, and after the
death of Father Grignon in April, 1887, he received the
title. Bishop Janssens was promoted to New Orleans
August 6, 1888, and Father Meerschaert was designated
Administrator of the Diocese of Natchez until the coming
of the new bishop. Bishop Heslin arrived in Natchez
June 23, 1889, and appointed Father Meerschaert again
vicar general.

On April 20, 1891, Archbishop Janssens received a
cablegram that Father Meerschaert was selected as Vicar
Apostolic of the Indian Territory. ■ The news reached
Natchez the same night at 3:30, but as Father Meer-
schaert was out visiting the sick, he did not receive it
until 6 o’clock in the morning. The announcement was
made in Consistory on May 7, 1891, and on June 11th,
the bulls appointing him Bishop of Sidyma and Vicar
Apostolic of the Indian Territory were issued. The new
bishop-elect made his retreat preparatory to consecration
at Jefferson College in New Orleans, from August 27th
to September 3d. His consecration took place in the
cathedral at Natchez, September 8, 1891. The conse-

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1849

crator was his dear friend, Archbishop Janssens, assisted
by Bishops Fitzgerald of Little, Bock, and Heslin of
Natchez.

The consecration of the new bishop was, most appro-
priately the grandest church function witnessed in
Natchez up to that time, or even since. Prelates, priests
and people vied with one another to do honor to the man,
who, after many years of arduous labor among the people
of Mississippi, was now calle’d by the voice of the
Supreme Pastor to a greater but no less trying field.
Among the testimonials of regard received by Bishop
Meerschaert on this occasion were, a purse of $700, full
pontifical robes, crozier, mitres, pectoral cross and chain,
chalices, etc. On the evening of his consecration he was
tendered a public reception by the citizens of Natchez,
and on the following evening, by the colored people.
While they could not but rejoice at the honor bestowed
' upon one so dear to them, still their hearts were saddened
at the thought that these honors signalized their separa-
tion from one whom they all, irrespective of religion,- had
grown accustomed to call “Father.”

Our Bishop ’s first Holy Mass in his new vicariate was
celebrated in the convent at Purcell in the early morning
of September 19, 1891. He arrived at Guthrie, the place
designated by the Congregation of the Propaganda as his
residence, the same day, and was met at the station by
Governor Steele, numerous officials of Oklahoma Terri-
tory, and other prominent citizens.

Let us now glance briefly at the conditions existing in
the new vicariate, comprising what is now the State of
Oklahoma, but at that time known as Oklahoma and
Indian Territory. Truly a beautiful land, but still
slumbering in the ignorance of childhood regarding the
bounteous material resources hidden within its breast,
and having as yet no idea of the greatness a few short
years would bring. Vast reaches of its area were as yet
forbidden to the settler. The only inhabited portion of
Oklahoma Territory comprised the counties of Logan,
Kingfisher, Oklahoma, and Canadian, with a part of Lin-
coln, Pottowatomie, and Cleveland. The population of
this territory was less than 6,000 souls. The Indian
Territory with its five civilized tribes and some smaller
tribal governments, together with a comparatively small
number of whites and negroes, numbered less than 200,-
000. Of railroads, there were only what are now known
as the main lines of the M. K. & T., the Santa Fe, and
the north and south line of the Bock Island, the latter
terminating at El Eeno. In the Indian Territory there
were no laws but the tribal governments, and this por-
tion of the future state was largely a refuge to the law-
less of other states. There were but sixteen priests, all
told; and nearly half of them were but more than fully
occupied with the labors and trials incident to the solid
foundation and upbuilding of College and Indian School
at Sacred Heart. The number of secular priests was
three. The total number of baptisms the first year was
347, of marriages, 52, and of burials, 78; while the total
Catholic population, white, Indian and colored, was 7,994,
and the total number of children in the Catholic College
and schools was 766.

One of our bishop’s first cares was to visit and con-
’ firm in every part of his vicariate. Though he was then,
as he has been ever since, received with honor, loyalty,
and the affection which those who know him best under-
stand so well, yet the physical labor of traversing _ so
great an area largely by wagon, fording streams, braving
storms, and enduring the hardships inseparable from
travel in a new, wild country, was always great. He had
now, however, -to concern himself more and more with the
spiritual burdens and financial responsibilities of his
position. He has traveled a great deal, both in and out

of the state ; and has always made good use of his travels,
especially his trips to Europe, to obtain young and zealous
priests and has employed the donations of the charitably
disposed to assist those laboring in the poorer missions,
as well as to provide for the education of those who de-
sire to devote their lives to missionary work, and who
would otherwise be prevented by lack of means. He has
always made his house a home for priests, and many
a weary missionary, coming to see the bishop after
months of discouragement and almost hopeless, has re-
ceived refreshment, both material and spiritual, and after
a short rest has departed with courage renewed for his
field of labor.

On August 23, 1905, the vicariate was erected in the
Diocese of Oklahoma with the Episcopal See at Okla-
homa City. Since that time, as before, its growth has
been steady, even during the reaction which followed the
early boom days. By way of comparison with the statis-
tics given for the first year of our bishop ’s presence here
we see that in 1915 there were in the diocese 71 secular
and 34 regular priests, 64 churches, with residence priests,
84 missions with churches, 127 stations, and 4 chapels,
Besides these there are 12 Brothers of the Sacred Heart
in Muskogee, and in the diocese 320 members of religi-
ous sisterhoods. There are 15 ecclesiastical students, 3
colleges for boys, Sacred Heart, Muskogee, and the
Catholic University in Shawnee; 238 college students,
two academies for young ladies, with 190 boarders, 2
hospitals, St. Anthony ’s in Oklahoma City and St. Mary ’s
Infirmary in McAlester; St. Joseph’s Orphanage at
Oklahoma City, with 70 orphans; 39 schools for white,
8 for Indian, and 2 for colored children with a total of
4,972 pupils and a total of 5,152 young people under
Catholic care. There were during the year 1,620 bap-
tisms, of whom 201 were converts; 387 marriages and
365 burials, and the Catholic population was 40,633.

It must not, however, be imagined that everything
has been easy sailing in the diocese during all these
years. The bishop has had his trials, and they have
been both many and heavy. The one thing that has sus-
tained him when everything looked darkest has been his
spirit of prayer. He has always enjoyed to a very high
degree the love and loyalty of both his priests and his
people, and forsooth the hope and prayer of all is —

‘ ‘ May he be still our Bishop and our Father for
many years to come.”

Leonidas Horton McConnell, M. D. The arrival of
Dr. Leonidas Horton McConnell at Elmer was coincident
with the opening of the village. At that time he was but
recently graduated from his medical college, and he was
forced to pass through the period of hard struggle to
gain a foothold that all young physicians must experi-
ence; but his abilities and knowledge of his calling soon
made themselves felt, and since that time he has at-
tracted to himself an excellent practice and established
himself firmly in the confidence and esteem of the people.

Doctor McConnell was born at Maryville, Blount
County, Tennessee, November 29, 1871, and is a son of
J. B. B. and Sarah (King) McConnell. The branch of
the family of which he is a member originated in Scot-
land and the original emigrant located in Virginia, prob-
ably prior to the War of the Bevolution. J. B. B.
McConnell was born in 1840, also at Maryville, where he
was engaged in farming at the time of the outbreak of
the Civil war, and enlisted in a Tennessee infantry regi-
ment in the Union Army, with which he served until the
declaration of peace. He continued to be a resident of
Tennessee until 1902, in which year he came to Oklahoma,
locating at Guymon, the county seat of Texas County,
where his death occurred in 1907. Mrs. McConnell, who

1850

HISTOKY OF OKLAHOMA

was born in Knox County, Tennessee, in 1845, died at
Maryville, that state, in 1885. They were the parents
of nine children, as follows: Moses, who was a farmer
and died at Maryville, Tennessee, in his thirty-second
year; Jennie, who resides at Guymon, Oklahoma; Dr.
Leonidas Horton; Josephen, who married John Nuchals,
and died in 1907 ; Annie, who married Clell Ballinger, a
carpenter and builder of Guymon; Elizabeth, who is the
widow of M. G. Wylie, an attorney, and resides at
Guymon; Adelia, who is the wife of John Curtis, a mer-
chant at Guymon; John, who is the editor of a news-
paper at that place; and Olive, who died at Carlsbad,
New Mexico, as the wife of B. B. Cline, a mechanic.

Leonidas H. McConnell grew up on his father’s Ten-
nessee farm. He attended the schools of Maryville, where
he was graduated from the high school in 1893, and
Maryville College, where he pursued a full course of
three years. Following this, he spent three years in
teaching school in Blount County, and in the meantime
applied himself to the study of medicine, which he had
decided upon as his life profession. In 1898 he matricu-
lated at the Chattanooga (Tennessee) Medical College,
where he was graduated in 1901, with the degree of
Doctor of Medicine. Between medical school courses he
taught public school to make the next medical school year.
While a member of Maryville College he was active in
college literary circles and a member of the Athenian
Literary Society. After a short period of practice in his
native state, July 11, 1901, Doctor, McConnell came to
Oklahoma, first taking up his residence at Yelldell, near
the present Town of Elmer, and when the latter town
was founded, in the same year, transferred his residence
and professional headquarters to this place. Here Doctor
McConnell has carried on a broad and general medical
and surgical practice, being equally at home in both
branches. He has kept in close touch with the profes-
sional brotherhood, belonging to the organizations of his
calling. His well-appointed offices are located on Main
Street, in the Elmer Drug Store. Doctor McConnell is a
republican in national affairs, but in local matters is dis-
posed to hold views of a rather independent nature,
preferring to use his own judgment in the selection of
candidates for office. He is somewhat interested in fra-
ternal work, being a member of Yelldell Lodge No. 196,
Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, Elmer Chapter of
the Order of the Eastern Star, and Elmer Camp, Wood-
men of the World, and has many friends in each. He
has always been known as a public-spirited citizen who
can be depended upon to give his energetic support to
movements of a progressive and advantageous nature.

On May 12, 1911, at Elmer, Doctor McConnell was
united in marriage with Miss Kate McCabe, daughter of
the late Barney McCabe, retired, of Litchfield, Ken-
tucky, who died in 1914. Doctor and Mrs. McConnell
are the parents of one son: Henry Lee, born at Elmer,
January 7, 1914.

Dudley B. Philltps, The genial, popular and efficient
cashier of the First National Bank of Yukon is recognized
as one of the representative executives in connection with
financial affairs in Canadian County and is well entitled
to consideration in this history of Oklahoma, within
whose borders he has maintained his home since 1889,
the year that marked the opening of the territory to
settlement. Mr. Phillips has been identified with the
First National Bank of Yukon for nearly a score of
years, and has had much influence in its development
into one of the substantial and important financial insti-
tutions of Canadian County, the while his character and
services have given him inviolable place in popular con-
fidence and good will.

Though a representative of one of the honored pioneer
families of Oklohoma, Mr. Phillips claims the fine old
Bluegrass state as the place of his nativity, and there
also were born his parents, John B. and Martha A. F.
(Lain) Phillips, who emigrated thence to Oklahoma
in 1889 and settled on a farm six miles southeast of
the present thriving little City of Yukon. There the
father continued to reside until his death, in 1897, at
the age of seventy years, his wife surviving him by a
number of years, and the names of both meriting endur-
ing place on the roll of the sterling pioneers who initiated
and carried forward the civic and industrial development
of a now vigorous and opulent young commonwealth.

Dudley B. Phillips was born in Hancock County, Ken-
tucky, on the 8th of March, 1867, and in . the schools
of his native state he received meager advantages. He
preceded his parents to the West, as he came to Kansas
in 1884, when seventeen years of age, and he remained
in the Sunflower state until the opening of Oklahoma
to settlement, in 1889, when he came to the new terri-
tory and established his residence in Canadian County,
where his parents located in the same year. Thereafter
he was for a few terms a representative of the peda-
gogic profession in this county, as a teacher in rural
districts, and in the furtherance of his own education
he attended for a time the University of Oklahoma.

In 1898 Mr. Phillips assumed the position of book-
keeper in the Bank of Yukon, and soon afterward he was
advanced to the position of assistant cashier, of which he
continued in tenure until he was made cashier of the insti-
tution in 1900. The Bank of Yukon was converted into
the First National Bank in 1902. Prior to entering the
banking business he had been identified with agricultural
pursuits in Oklahoma, but in his present vocation he
has found opportunity and scope for most effective service
and has become known as an able financier of marked
discrimination and progressiveness.

Vitally interested in all that touches the general wel-
fare of his home community, county and state, Mr.
Phillips is loyal and public-spirited, and though never
troubled with aught of ambition for the honors or emolu-
ments of political office he accords unwavering allegiance
to the democratic party. He is a Master Mason, and is
a member of the Baptist Church of Yukon, of the Sun-
day school of which he has served as superintendent for
more than seventeen years — covering virtually the entire
period of his residence in Yukon.

In 1899 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Phillips
to Miss Clara Artt, who was born in Iowa and whose
father, Jefferson Artt, was a sterling pioneer of Canadian
Gounty, Oklahoma. Mr. and Mrs. Phillips have six
children: Lucille, Daniel Artt, Dudley Bernard, Dorace,
George Dayton and Jean Lewis.

J. S. Barham. During the dozen years he has been
a resident of Oklahoma, J. S. Barham has become one
of the leading men of Seminole County, has been engaged
in merchandising, in the management of stock and
ranch interests, has served as a member of the Legis-
lature, and is now postmaster of Wewoka.

A native of Tennessee, he was born at Satillo June
8, 1867, a son of William I. and Tennessee C. (Hawk)
Barham. Both parents were born in the same locality
of Tennessee and the father died there in 1871 at the
age of thirty-five. He was a tanner by trade and also
a general merchant, and three of his brothers were in
active service in the Confederate Army under the noted
cavalry leader, Forrest. These brothers were Samuel
J., Newsom and A. P. Mr. Barham’s mother is still
living, having spent most of her life at the old home
in Tennessee, but is now residing at ^Grayson, Louisiana.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1851

Her five children were: Mollie N., now deceased;

Newsom R., who for the past twelve years has served
as district judge at Lexington, Tennessee; Samuel J.,
deceased; J. S. ; and Rena, wife of A. B. Mitchell, of
Grayson, Louisiana.

J. S. Barham grew up in Tennessee and lived in that
state until about 1903. He had limited opportunities
to gain an education, but made the best of them, and
at the age of sixteen began a business career as a mer-
cantile clerk. From 1898 to 1904 he was purchasing
agent for the Ayer & Lord Company of Chicago, buying
up timber for the manufacture of ties and other kindred
material. He was also for four years postmaster at
Parsons, Tennessee.

Since November, 1904, Mr. Barham has been a resi-
dent of Oklahoma. For a time he was a merchant at
Coalgate, but in April, 1905, moved to Konawa, in
Seminole County, was in the land and loan business
there until moving to Wewoka in 1908. From 1908 to
December 31, 1910, he served as under sheriff of Semi-
nole County and then resumed the real estate and loan
business during 1911-12. Again he filled the office of under
sheriff until July 27, 1913, and then accepted appoint-
ment as postmaster of Wewoka, an office in which he
has rendered valuable service to the community. While
Mr. Barham has also had some experience in handling
the. affairs of a postoffiee back in Tennessee, it is note-
worthy that his mother was for some time in charge of
the postoffice at Satillo, Tennessee, and Mr. Barham’s
sister, Mollie, was also postmaster of the same town.
Among other business interests Mr. Barham is closely
identified with agriculture in Seminole County, and has
about 600 acres under cultivation.

He has always been a democrat, and was chairman of
the first democratic campaign committee in Seminole
County. From 1911 to 1913 he represented Seminole
and Pontotoc counties in the State Legislature, and thus
in addition to handling his private affairs successfully
he has rendered public service to his county and home
community and also to the state at large. Mr. Barham
is a Mason, having attained thirty-two degrees in the
Scottish Rite, is a Knight of Pythias and a member of
the Woodmen of the World. In 1898 he married Miss
Eula Corine Payne at Iuka, Mississippi. To their mar-
riage have been born six children: Hugh Payne, Anna

Irene (who died in infancy), Willie Tina, Lewis, New-
som, and J. S., Jr.

Charles Williams. One of the enterprising and
progressive business men of the younger generation at
Hooker, Texas County, Hon. Charles Williams, is there
conducting a substantial enterprise through his well
established general insurance agency, and he has other-
wise been prominently identified with local interests, is
broad-gauged and public-spirited, and that he enjoys
unalloyed popularity is fully vouched for in his election
as representative of Texas and Cimarron counties in the
Fifth General Assembly of the Oklahoma Legislature.
Mr. Williams has reason to take pride in the fact that
he was born and reared within the present State of
Oklahoma, his parents having been numbered among the
pioneer settlers in Indian Territory, and though the
conditions of time and place placed certain limitations
on the advantages afforded to Charles Williams in his
boyhood and youth, he imbibed deeply of the progressive
spirit of the West, early learned the value of self-reliant
purpose, developed definite ambition, and thus was able
to make good all handicaps and to press forward to the
goal of worthy achievement. He is a young man of
strong mentality and well fortified opinions, and as a

member of the Legislature of his native state he has
acquitted himself with credit and no little distinction.

Mr. Williams was born in that part of Indian Ter-
ritory that is now Bryan County, Oklahoma, and the year
of his nativity was 1884. He is a son of Cicero B. H.
and Nancy (Swagger) Williams, the former of whom was
born in Mississippi and the latter in Virginia, both
families having been founded in the South several genera-
tions ago. Cicero B. H. Williams was a youth when he
accompanied his parents to Texas, in 1869, his father
having thus become a pioneer of the Lone Star State,
where he established his residence within a few years
after the close of his service as a loyal soldier of the
Confederacy in the Civil war. Cicero B. H. Williams
continued his residence in Texas until the early ’80s,
when he became a pioneer settler in Indian Territory,
where he engaged in farming and stock growing. He
has been successful in his association with these lines
of industrial enterprise in Oklahoma and he and his wife
reside on their well improved homestead farm near
Hooker, Texas County, being well known in this section
of the state and being honored as sterling pioneer citizens
who have done their part in accelerating the civic and
industrial development of Oklahoma.

The rudimentary educational advantages afforded to
Hon. Charles Williams and the other children of the
family were necessarily somewhat primitive, as the
pioneer facilities in what is now Oklahoma were meager.
In what is now Garvin County he pursued his studies
in a little log schoolhouse, the equipment of which was
on a parity with those in the qlder states of the Union
three generations ago, and the school was maintained on
the subscription plan. Mr. Williams made good account
of himself in his initial application to scholastic lore,
and later he was able to extend his education by broader
advantages and by personal application in an independent
way, so that he has become a young man of excellent in-
formation and mature judgment. "Concerning the other
surviving children of the family it may be stated that
Mrs. Benjamin D. Mills resides on a farm near Hooker,
her husband being a progressive agriculturist and a suc-
cessful teacher; Henry is now a resident of Richards,
Colorado; William likewise maintains his home at that
place; and the younger of the two sisters is the wife of
Michael C. Young, a successful farmer near Hooker,
Texas County, this state.

In the early youth of Mr. Williams the family home
was maintained for fifteen years at Elmore, not far
distant from Pauls Valiev, the present judicial center
of Garvin County, and after leaving the public schools
Mr. Williams completed an effective course in the Indian-
ola Business College at Ardmore, Carter County. In
1904 he accompanied his parents on their removal to
Texas County, where he has since maintained his resi-
dence and where his circle of friends is limited only by
that of his acquaintances.

In 1905-6, the only period of absence from his native
state, Mr. Williams was employed as freight and ticket
agent for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad,
at Hartland, Kansas, and in 1907 he settled on a farm
near Hooker, Texas County, Oklahoma. He still owns
this homestead, has made good improvements on the same
and has continued to be identified with farming in a
limited way. In 1913 Mr. Williams was appointed deputy
court clerk at Hooker, and of this position he continued
the incumbent until his election to the lower house of
the Oklahoma Legislature, in the following year. In the
campaign for representative of Texas and Cimarron
counties in the Legislature Mr. Williams made an
effective canvass and his popularity was shown in his
receiving at the polls a plurality 250 greater than his

1852

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

representative district accorded to the state ticket in
general.

In the Fifth Legislature Mr. Williams was assigned
to the following named House committees: Labor and
arbitration, insurance, county and township government,
state and school lands, public roads and highways, and
that on levees, drains, ditches and irrigation. He was
specially interested in legislation for good roads, a
measure which he had made an issue in his campaign,
and he was a supporter of the movement looking to the
abolishing of the office of county judge. He introduced
a few bills but in the main his ideas and policies were
embodied in bills that were introduced by other members
of the house, and he earnestly devoted himself to the
furtherance of legislative measures in harmony with his
convictions and his campaign pledges.

The political allegiance of Mr. Williams is given to
the democratic party; he is affiliated with Hooker Lodge
No. 366, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, in his home
village, and in the Scottish Rite of Masonry is identified
with the consistory in the Valley of Guthrie. He is
master of ceremonies of the Oklahoma State organization
of the Brotherhood of American Yeomen, besides being
secretary of his Masonic lodge. He is secretary of the
Hooker Commercial Club and has been active in the
promotion of its progressive policies, notably the obtain-
ing of better freight rates and passenger service for
Hooker in connection with railway transportation. Both
he and his wife hold membership in the Christian
Church.

On the 14th of January, 1914, was solemnized the
marriage of Mr. Williams to Miss Catharine Hiebert of
Hooker.

Maurice E. Bivens. The present mayor of Vici, Okla-
homa, is a man who has been engaged in the mercantile
business in this region for the past fifteen years. It
was not until the year 1911, however, that he established
a place of business in this town, and when the enter-
prise at Vici was well under way Mr. Bivens Withdrew
from his mercantile activities in the towns of Seiling
and Cestos, since which time he has confined his interests
to the upbuilding of the business here. Mr. Bivens has
been successful in the field of merchandising to which
he has devoted himself, and his present place of busi-
ness is a center for trading in hardware, implements
and furniture. As one of Vici’s leading business men
he is well entitled to the prominence he has won, and as
mayor of the town he is rightfully regarded as the first
man in the community.

Maurice E. Bivens was born in Madison County, Illi-
nois, on November 11, 1874, and he is the son of Charles
N. and Martha (McGilvery) Bivens. The father was
of Scotch-Irish parentage and the mother Scotch, Welsh
and English. Charles N. Bivens was born in Madison
County, Illinois, in 1843, and he died in Denver, Colo-
rado, in 1888. He spent his life in Madison County up
to the year 1880. when he went to Denver, unaccompanied
by his wife, but in 1884 the family joined him and
located in Burden, Cowley County, Kansas, where Mrs.
Bivens yet lives. Mr. Bivens went to Denver in search
of health, and died there in 1888. While resident in
Madison County and Denver he served as a policeman,
and while in Denver he also conducted a cigar factory
for some time. He was a veteran of the Civil war, and
served in Company K, Eightieth Illinois Volunteer
Infantry for three years. He saw much of the less
attractive side of war, and was in action in many
important engagements of the long conflict. Mr. Bivens
was a church member all his life, and was identified with
a number of the more prominent' fraternal organizations.

In Illinois he was married to Martha McGilvery, who

was born in that state in 1850. She was the daughter
of Martin McGilvery, who immigrated from Scotland in
young manhood and settled in Madison County, where
he spent the remainder of his life as a farmer and
stockman. He was a man of many sterling qualities,
and he was a leader in his community as long as he
lived. Coming into Illinois in its pioneer days he did
his full share in shaping the destinies of Madison
County, and his influence on that section of the state is
felt today. in the progressive spirit that has ever marked
its life.

To Charles N. and Martha (McGilvery) Bivens were
born five children, two of whom, daughters, died in
infancy. Laura May, the eldest, married John Burchell,
a farmer, and she now lives in Oklahoma City, Okla-
homa. The second child was Maurice E., of this review.
Arthur, the youngest, lives on his homestead farm in the
vicinity of Cestos, Oklahoma, and is a prosperous
farmer.

After the death of Mr. Bivens in 1888 his widow mar-
ried Edmond E. Ehodes, a Kentuckian, and two children
have been born to them, H. Eay Rhodes, who is asso-
ciated in business with his half brother, Maurice E.
Bivens, the subject, and Mabel, who died in infancy.

Mr. Bivens as a boy had such educational advantages
as usually fall to the lot of a country boy, and it might
be said that he had no actual schooling after he .was
sixteen years old. However, he has in a larger sense
gone to school all his life, for it is in the great school
of experience that he has had his best training. After
he left his books he applied himself to farming in Cowley
County, Kansas, where the family then resided, and he
was there until the latter part of 1897, when he came
to Dewey County, Oklahoma, and filed on a homestead
claim of 160 acres near the Town of Cestos. He lived
on that place until 1900, when he proved title thereto.
Mr. Bivens still owns the land, which is steadily increas-
ing in value, and which lies three miles east and a half
mile south of Cestos.

In 1901 Mr. Bivens engaged in the mercantile busi-
ness in the Town of Cestos with a Mr. Ingle as his
business partner. They prospered, as the result of good
management and a natural tact for the economical
administration of a small business house, both men being
fortunate in their possession of that invaluable quality,
and as time went on they established branch houses in
Seiling and Yiei. They broadened their lines from time
to time, until they carried very complete stocks in hard-
ware, farm implements and furniture. The Vici branch
was established in 1911, and the growth of the business
at this point broadened so rapidly that Mr. Bivens
decided to discontinue the stores at Cestos and Seiling,
so that the Vici establishment is the only one now con-
trolled by Mr. Bivens. The firm is called M. E. Bivens
& Company, and besides himself it includes his mother
and his half-brother, H. R. Rhodes.

This enterprise is undeniably one of the most suc-
cessful in the county, and it draws its patronage from
the counties of Dewey, Ellis and Woodward. Splendid
business principles have been the rock on which the
house has made its stand, and its growth has been sure
and steady. The house has the confidence of the public
and its patronage follows as a natural sequence.

In 1912 Mr. Bivens became mayor of Vici and he is
still serving in that office. He has proved himself a
capable and wide-minded citizen, equipped in every way
to guide the actions of the city council, and in his
administration of local affairs he has made an excellent
record for himself. The same sturdy qualities that
have spelled success for him in his business career have
entered largely into his work as mayor of. Vici, and the

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1853

results have been creditable to him and invaluable to
the city.

Mr. Bivens is a socialist in the matter of his polities,
and he is a member of the Christian Church. He has
long served the local church as deacon and elder, and
while at Cestos he was superintendent of the Sunday
school for four successive terms. He is a Mason, with
Ancient Free and Accepted Masonic affiliations, and a
member of Cestos Lodge No. 80, Independent Order of
Odd Fellows. Other business connections are with the
Home Investment Company and the Aetna Insurance
Company, in both of which he is a stockholder.

In June, 1904, Mr. Bivens was married to Miss Esther
Gates, daughter of G. W. Gates, now living retired in
Orange, California. They were married in Seiling,
then the home of the Gates family. Three children
have been born to them. Martha Euleta was born
November 26, 1905; Arthur Lewis on September 5,
1907, and Randall Ray on August 5, 1909. All three
attend the Yiei High School, and they are popular and
prominent young people in their circles. The family is
prominent socially in Vici, and have many friends.

Elijah B. Shotwell. A man of marked technical and
practical ability, Mr. Shotwell is now giving most effect-
ive service as county farm demonstrator of Okmulgee
County, and maintains his home at Okmulgee, the judicial
center and metropolis of the county. He may consist-
ently be termed a pioneer of Oklahoma, where he estab-
lished his home in the former Sac and Fox Indian coun-
try soon after it was thrown open to white settlement,
and he has thus been actively identified with the civic
and industrial activities of this favored commonwealth
since 1892. He has been more than ordinarily influential
in connection with the furthering of educational work in
Oklahoma, as he has served as county superintendent of
schools in both Lincoln and Okmulgee counties, in which
fields he achieved splendid results.

Mr. Shotwell was born near St. Thomas, Province of
Ontario, Canada, on the 28th of January, 1857, but was
a lad of •fifteen years at the time of his parents ’ removal
to the State of Kansas, where he was reared to maturity
and maintained his home until his removal to Oklahoma
Territory. He is a son of William and Martha E.
(Taylor) Shotwell, both of whom were born and reared
in the Province of Ontario, the former’s father, Smith
Shotwell, having been a native of the State of New
Jersey, whence he removed to, Ontario, Canada, where he
passed the residue of his life as a substantial farmer.
In 1872 William Shotwell removed with his family to
Kansas and became one of the pioneers of McPherson
County, where he entered claim to land and reclaimed
and improved a productive farm, this homestead having
continued to be his place of residence until his death and
his widow having passed the closing period of her life
in the home of her son W. C. Shotwell, near Cushing,
Payne County, Oklahoma. Of the children six attained
to years of maturity, namely: Samuel, who is now a

resident of Hawards, California; Smith, who resides at
Crescent, Oregon; Emily, who is the wife of Elijah Prior,
of Riverside, California; Elijah B., who is the immediate
subject of this sketch: Whitson, who is a progressive
farmer near Cushing, Oklahoma; and Letitia A., who is
the wife of Jenas G. Scott, of Salem, Texas.

He whose name introduces this article acquired his
earlier education in the schools of his native county in
Ontario and, as before stated, was about fifteen years
old at the time of the family removal to Kansas, where
he was reared to maturity on the pioneer farm in
McPherson County and in the meanwhile supplemented
his education by attending the public schools of the

locality. He continued to be associated with the work of
his father’s farm and teaching school winters until he
had attained to his legal majority, and thereafter he
conducted individual operations as a farmer and teacher
in the Sunflower State until 1892, when he came to Okla-
homa Territory and became one of the pioneer settlers
in what is now Lincoln County. He secured a tract of
land from the Government and developed the same into
one of the productive and valuable farms of Lincoln
County. There he continued to reside until 1901, when
he was elected county superintendent of schools and
removed to Chandler, the county seat, where he continued
as the energetic and efficient incumbent of this position
for a period of four years. Soon after his retirement
from office he removed to Okmulgee, in July, 1905, and
here he engaged in the abstract business, to which he
continued to give his attention until September, 1907,
when he was elected the first county superintendent of
schools of Okmulgee County under the new regime of
state government. With characteristic vigor and circum-
spection he defined and organized the work of the schools
of the county, and in his two terms of service in this
important office he brought the schools up to a specially
lush standard of efficiency, as gauged by the conditions
and influences that obtained at that period in the history
of the county. Since July, 1913, he has given equally
commendable and valuable service in his present office,
that of county farm demonstrator, a position to which
he was appointed by the director of the extension work
conducted in connection with the Oklahoma Agricultural
and Mechanical College and the United States Department
of Agriculture. He has proved himself unmistakably the
right man in the right place, has carefully timed his
visitations in all sections of the county, and both by
instruction along scientific lines and by exemplification
of practical order has done much to raise the standards
of agricultural and live stock industry in Okmulgee
County, where, as a matter of course, he has gained a
very wide acquaintanceship and a host of valued and
appreciative friends.

Mr. Shotwell is aligned as a staunch and effective
supporter of the cause of the democratic party and is a
birthright member of the Society of Friends, but as there
is no church of - this denomination at Okmulgee he attends
and supports the local Methodist Episcopal Church,
South. He is affiliated with the Okmulgee Lodge A. H.
T. A. and also with the lodge of the Knights of Pythias.

In 1878 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Shotwell
to Miss Carrie Pilgrim, who was born in Iowa but who
was reared principally in Kansas, where her parents
established their residence in 1874. She was a daughter
of Philip and Amelia Pilgrim, both of whom were born
in Germany. The supreme loss and bereavement in the
life of Mr. Shotwell came to him when his devoted wife
was summoned to eternal rest, on the 29th of April, 1915,.
and her memory is revered by all who came within the
sphere of her gracious influence. She was active in
church and social life after coming to Oklahoma and for
two years she had charge of the work and instruction of
the Girls’ Canning Clubs of Okmulgee County. In con-
clusion is entered brief record concerning the children of
Mr. and Mrs. Shotwell: James T. is one of the pro-
gressive farmers near Cushing, Payne County; Orlando
has the active supervision and control of the old home-
stead farm upon which his parents established their resi-
dence when they came to Oklahoma, in 1892; Earl is
manager of the cotton-seed oil mill at Chandler, Lincoln
County, Oklahoma.

Thomas C. Shacklett. Coming to Oklahoma Terri-
tory with his parents when a lad of nine years, the

1854

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

present postmaster of Yukon, Canadian County, has here
found ample opportunity for worthy achievement and
has proved himself one of the world ’s productive workers,
the while his present official position vouches for the
estimate placed upon him in the community in which
he maintains his home.

Born in Meade County, Kentucky, on the 5th day of
November, 1880, Mr. Shaeklett is a son of Jesse S. and
Susan M. (Easton) Shaeklett. When he was five years
old, in 1885, his parents removed from the old Bluegrass
state to Southwestern Kansas, and from the latter state
they came to Oklahoma in 1889, thus becoming pioneers
of the new territory when it was thrown open to settle-
ment. The family home was established in the old town
of Friseo, Canadian County, and later removal was made
to Yukon, a new village in the same county, where the
father conducted a hotel for some time, his death having
there occurred in 1910 and his widow still maintaining
her home in this now thriving little city, in which her son
is postmaster. In earlier years Jesse S. Shaeklett devoted
his attention to agricultural pursuits, and thus the boy-
hood days of the postmaster of Yukon were principally
compassed by *the conditions and influences of the farm,
in Kansas and Oklahoma. He made good use of the
advantages afforded him in the public schools of Canadian
County, within whose borders he has been a resident
since he was nine years old, and here he followed various
vocations until his appointment to the office of postmaster
of Yukon, his commission having been given in April,
1914, and his administration, careful and efficient, hav-
ing gained to him the approval of the community. In
politics, as may be inferred, he is a staunch supporter
of the cause of the democratic party, and in a fraternal
way he is affiliated with the Woodmen of the World. The
maiden name of his wife was Orie McComas, and they
have no children.

George A. McDonald. Every progressive city now
has its chamber of commerce, or an organization of
similar purposes though perhaps under a different name.
The chamber of commerce at Shawnee is a particularly
virile and efficient body, and is made up of practically
all the high class and responsible business men and pro-
fessional men of the city. In that one organization are
represented the best resources and the best ideas and
ideals of the city.

It is as secretary of the Shawnee Chamber of Com-
merce, an office he has held for the past five years, that
George A. McDonald has performed his most important
service in that city. Mr. McDonald is himself a business
man and has had a considerable breadth and depth of
experience, though he is still young. He has lived in
Oklahoma ten years, and for a time was connected with
railroading in this state.

The McDonald stock of which he is a representative
came from Scotland to Virginia before the Revolutionary
war. His great-grandfather, William McDonald, was a
Virginia planter. The grandfather, James McDonald,
was born in Virginia and spent his life as a farmer
and planter in that state. Mr. George A. McDonald of
Shawnee was born in Springfield, Ohio, October 21, 1875.

His father, Samuel McDonald, was born at Romney, in
Hampshire County, West Virginia, or Old Virginia as
it was then, in 1842. His birthplace was afterwards the
scene of one of the important battles in the Civil war.
Samuel McDonald was reared in West Virginia, went
in young manhood to Springfield, Ohio, where he mar-
ried, and he lived in that locality the rest of his days,
passing away in 1895. By occupation he was a farmer,'
was a democrat in politics, and took a very active part
in the work of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in

which he served as a steward, trustee and deacon.
During the war between the states his only participa-
tion in military affairs was as a member of the Home
Guard in West Virginia. Samuel McDonald married
Emily Collier. She was born in Springfield, Ohio, and
is now living in Yellow Springs in that state. To
their marriage were born the following children: James
R., a tinsmith living at Purcell, Oklahoma; Edith O.,
wife of D.. E. Hupman, a farmer at Springfield, Ohio;
Harry E., who is in the real estate business but has no
settled location or permanent residence; Thomas F., a
farmer at Urbana, Ohio; George A.; Lewis Clark, a
carpenter and builder at Middletown, Kentucky.

The country schools of Clark County, Ohio, gave
George A. McDonald his first advantages, and he also
had the benefit of some college training, having finished
the sophomore year in Antioch College in 1897. His
early years had been spent on his father’s farm, and he
enjoyed much of the wholesome and rugged discipline
of country life. He taught school in Jefferson County,
Kentucky, as principal of rural schools two years, but
soon found school teaching unsatisfactory. After taking
a course in telegraphy he was employed as telegraph
operator on the L. & N. Railroad at Louisville, and
remained in the service of that railroad company until
January 1, 1906.

That was the date when he became identified with
Shawnee. For the first two years he was a clerk with
the Rock Island Railroad offices in Shawnee. Going into
business for himself, Mr. McDonald was one of the
successful grocery merchants of the city until 1911. In
that year he was elected secretary of the chamber of
commerce, and has since given practically all his time
and attention to the duties of this office. He is also
secretary of the Retail Merchants Association, secretary
of the Provident Association, secretary of the Potta-
watomie County Fair Association, and a stockholder in
the Fidelity Building and Loan Association. His offices
are in the Convention Hall Building.

In politics he is a democrat. Like his father, he takes
much interest in the First Methodist Episcopal Church
of Shawnee and is a steward. He is affiliated with
Shawnee Lodge No. 107, Ancient Free and Accepted
Masons, and with Shawnee Chapter No. 32, Royal Arch
Masons.

In 1903, at Middletown, Kentucky, he married Miss
Lucy E. Mitchell, daughter of Robert S. Mitchell. They
have one son, Samuel Vance, who was born November 5,
1905, and is now a student in the public schools of
Shawnee.

Birt Arthur Wagner. During the past fifteen years
Mr. Wagner has played an important part in the public
affairs of Woodward and Ellis counties. He is now
filling the office of court clerk of Ellis County and has his
home at Arnett. Mr. Wagner is one of the genial and
popular citizens of Ellis County, a man of undoubted
integrity, and exercises both competence and honesty in
all his public and private dealings.

He was born January 8, 1877, on a farm in Nemaha
County, Kansas, a son of Arthur H. and Cynthia
(Peaver) Wagner. The Wagners came originally from
Germany. His paternal grandfather was George Wagner,
a native of Germany. Arthur H. Wagner was
born March 12, 1853, in Putnam County, Ohio, and
has spent all his active career as a farmer and mer-
chant. In 1874 he moved out to Kansas and became an
early settler on a farm in Nemaha County, close to the
northern line of the state. He lived there and cultivated
the soil until 1892, and then went to Kansas City, Kansas,
where he engaged in business eight years. In 1900 he

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1855

came to Oklahoma and set up in business at Woodward,
and in 1901 moved to Shattuck, where he was likewise
one of the first merchants. In 1902 he was appointed
postmaster of Shattuck and held that position seven years.
Arthur H. Wagner was married in Union County, Ohio,
October 8, 1874, to Miss Cynthia Peaver. Her father
was John Peaver, who married a Miss Poling, and both
were born in Virginia. Mrs. Wagner was born May 14,
1854, in Union County, Ohio, and she died at Kansas
City, Kansas, October 21, 1915. She was a very active
member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and was
devoted to church and home and children. She was the
mother of seven, five sons and two daughters, namely:
Harry, born August 27, 1875; Birt A.; John Peaver, born
September 17, 1878; Elsie, born July 9, 1879; Grace,
born August 25, 1881; George, born August 12, 1883;
Roy Poster, born August 12, 1885.

The early training of Birt A. Wagner was acquired in the
public schools of his native county and in Kansas City,
Kansas. After leaving school he served an apprenticeship
at the baker’s trade, and that was his regular work for
five years. Not long after his father came to Oklahoma
he followed on January 1, 1901, and was soon taking an
active part in local affairs in Woodward County. He
served two years as deputy county clerk of that county.
On coming to the state he had taken up a claim in Wood-
ward County near Shattuck, and he is thus to be con-
sidered among those who have helped to develop the land
in this new state. For a few years he also was assistant
postmaster under his father at Shattuck and for one
year carried mail on a rural route.

On the organization of Ellis County he was soon active
in its affairs, and served as deputy county clerk in 1910-
11-12. During 1914-15 he was clerk of the Shattuck
branch of the Ellis County Court at Shattuck. In No-
vember, 1914, he was elected on the republican ticket
eourt clerk of Ellis County and is now giving all his
time and attention to those responsibilities. Fraternally
Mr. Wagner is a Mason.

On January 18, 1908, at Shattuck, Oklahoma, he mar-
ried Miss Kathryn Lee Ewing. She was born March 4,
1881, in Buchanan County, Missouri, a daughter of Wil-
liam J. and Cassie (Patton) Ewing, the former a native
of Virginia and the latter of Missouri. Mrs. Wagner
in addition to the training of the public schools attended
the Synodical College at Fulton, Missouri, graduating
with the class of 1902. She was an active member of the
Presbyterian Church. Her death occurred April 6, 1910,
at Shattuck. She is survived by one child, Charles
Edward, who was born February 11, 1910.

Charles W. Shannon, A. M., is known as a promi-
nent figure in educational and scientific circles in Okla-
homa. He has been an able and popular instructor in
geology at the University of Oklahoma, and is now
director of the Oklahoma Geological Survey, with office
in the library building of the university at Norman,
Cleveland County.

Mr. Shannon is a scion of one of the sterling pio-
neer families of the fine old Hoosier State, of which
he himself is a native son. He was born in Tipton
County. Indiana, on the 3d of August, 1879, and is a
son of Alexander and Elizabeth J. (Foster) Shannon,
both of whom were born and reared in that county.
Alexander Shannon passed virtually his entire active
life as one of the representative agriculturists in the
vicinity of Tipton, the county seat. He was born in
the year 1855, and died at Brazil in 1910. Elizabeth
J. Shannon was born in 1858 and died in 1906. Both
Mr. and Mrs. Shannon were devoted members of the
United Presbyterian Church, in which he served as
deacon and trustee. Of the children, C. W. Shannon
Vol. v— 7

of this review is the eldest; Herbert died in babyhood;
James Vinton wedded Miss Grace Poling of Bloom-
inguon, Indiana, and both are now missionary teach-
ers in a school maintained under the auspices of the
Presbyterian Church on the Island of Hainan, China.

The lineage of the Shannon family traces back to
staunch Scotch-Irish origin and the original American
representatives settled in Virginia in the colonial era
of our national history.

Mr. Shannon acquired his early education in the pub-
Jic schools of his native state, where he was graduated
lr). 1 school at Tipton as a member of the class
ot 1900. During the ensuing spring and summer he was
a student m the University of Indiana at Blooming-
ton. For three years he was retained as teacher in the
Bryan School in Tipton County. During this time he
continued his studies in the university by attending
the spring and summer sessions. He finally completed
a lull academic course in the university, in which he
was graduated as a member of the class of 1906, and
from which he received at that time the degree of Bach-
el„or ®f .Arts • The following year he received the degree
of Master of Arts from his alma mater. He has since
taken effective post-graduate studies in the University
of Indiana, specializing in geology and other branches
of science.

In 1902, at Bloomington, Indiana, was solemnized
the marriage of Mr. Shannon to Miss Mary E. Pinker-
ton, who was born and reared in Indiana, and who is
a daughter of the late Charles Pinkerton, a represen-
tative merchant at Muncie for many years prior to
his death.

From 1907 to 1911 Mr. Shannon was teacher of
science in the high school at Brazil, Indiana. During
this time he was also in the employ of the Indiana
State Geological Survey, in connection with which he
covered and made specific reports from seventeen dif-
ferent counties.

In September, 1911, Mr. Shannon came to Norman,
Oklahoma, and assumed the position of field geologist
for the Oklahoma Geological Survey. He served a few
weeks in this capacity and was then appointed in-
structor in geology at the University of Oklahoma.
After teaching one semester he resumed his position
m connection with the Geological Survey of which he
has been the director since January, 1914. His work
in this office has been carried forward with utmost effi-
ciency and discrimination, and will prove of enduring
value to the state from both a scientific and a utilitarian
standpoint.

Mr. Shannon is a valued and influential member of
the Oklahoma Academy of Science, of which he served
three years as president. He is also a member of the
Indiana Chapter of the Sigma Xi fraternity, a national
scientific organization whose membership is confined to
those college students and graduates who have achieved
independent scientific research work. He is a demo-
crat in his political allegiance, and is a member of the
board of education of Norman. Both he and his wife
are zealous members of the Presbyterian Church, in
which he was a teacher of the Young Woman’s Christian
Association class of the Sunday School until January
1, 1916, when he was elected supervising superintend-
ent of the Sunday School. He also serves as one of
the trustees of the church.

Mr. and Mrs. Shannon are prominent and popular
factors in the leading social activities of Norman, the
principal educational center of the state, and both are
specially appreciative and loyal as citizens of this vig-
orous young commonwealth. They have two children

1856

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Gayle L., who was born May 1, 1906, and Viola Ruth,
who was born November 19, 1914.

Calvin E. Bradley, M. D. The medical profession of
Kiowa County, * Oklahoma, is capably represented at
Mountain View by Dr. Calvin E. Bradley, who although
one of the younger members of the profession has made
a substantial reputation for himself in professional cir-
cles as wel| as in the confidence of the people of his
community. Born in Phelps County, Missouri, April 16,
1885, he comes honestly by his predilection for his calling,
being the son and grandson of physicians and the bearer
of a name which has been honored in medicine and sur-
gery.

On the paternal side, Doctor Bradley is a grandson of
the founder of the family in the United States, Dr.
Calvin Bradley, a native of England, who emigrated to
the United States, first settled in North Carolina and
subsequently moved to Georgia, where he was engaged in
the practice of his profession for many years, and where
his death occurred. Doctor Bradley’s maternal great-
grandfather Burns was the emigrant of the family from
Scotland. Dr. W. A. Bradley, the father of Dr. Calvin
E. Bradley, was born in North Carolina, in 1852, and
from his native state removed to Georgia, subsequently
going, in 1880, to Phelps County, Missouri, where he was
married. He was a graduate of the Southern Medical
College, one of the distinguished institutions of Atlanta,
Georgia, and after eight years of practice in Phelps
County, moved his family in 1888 to Houston, Texas
County, Missouri, where he continued to be engaged in
practice until his death, in 1911. He was an able and
thorough practitioner and held a substantial place in the
ranks of his calling. A democrat in politics, he filled
various local offices within the gift of his fellow towns-
men, while his fraternal connection was with the Inde-
pendent Order of Odd Fellows. Doctor Bradley married
Miss Elizabeth Burns, who was born in 1865, in Missouri,
and died at Houston, that state, in 1888, daughter of
Dr. Edward Burns, who for many years was a physician
and surgeon of Newburg, Missouri, where his death oc-
curred. Two children were, born to Dr. W. A. and
Elizabeth Bradley-: Calvin E., of this review; and Kate,
who became the wife of C. F. Peake, and resides in
Texas County, Missouri, where Mr. Peake is county
superintendent of schools.

Calvin E. Bradley received his early education in the
public schools of Houston, Missouri, where he was grad-
uated from the high school with the class of 1901. He
received his early medical training under the able pre-
ceptorship of his father, and enrolled as a student at
Barnes Medical College, St. Louis, Missouri, where he was
graduated with the class of 1905, receiving the. degree of
Doctor of Medicine. Doctor Bradley began active prac-
tice at Newburg, Phelps County, Missouri, where his
paternal grandfather had been well known as a practi-
tioner for years, but in 1908 removed to Memphis, Ten-
nessee, where he remained during that and the following
year. In 1909 he went to Dewey, Oklahoma, where he
gave up professional work for a time to engage in the oil
and drug business, but in 1912 came to Mountain View
and resumed practice, and has continued to the present
time in a constantly growing general medical and sur-
gical business. He occupies well-appointed offices in
the Reynolds Building on Main Street, where he has
every appliance and instrument for diagnosis and treat-
ment of diseases. Doctor Bradley keeps in close touch
with every advancement made in medical or surgical
work and is a close student of the science, besides holding
membership in the organizations of his calling. He has
been an active democrat, but his only public service has

been that of coroner, an office which he filled while a
resident of Phelps County, Missouri. He is popular in
fraternal circles, and is a member of the local bodies of
the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Knights
of Pythias.

Doctor Bradley was married February 4, 1916, to
Miss Louise Stinson, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. A. E.
Stinson, of Mountain View, Oklahoma.

Patrick J. Kelly. The intellectual alertness, vigor
and circumspection of Mr. Kelly make him a specially
effective and valued executive in the responsible office
of which lie is the popular incumbent, that of cashier
of the Yukon National Bank, in the progressive little
City of Yukon, Canadian County, and his unqualified
hold upon the confidence and good will of the people
of this favored Section of the state is indicated by the
fact that he served six years as county clerk of Canadian
County, his residence in Oklahoma dating from the year
1892, when he came to the newly organized territory
from the State of Iowa.

Mr. Kelly was born in Chariton County, Missouri, on
the 3rd of July, 1863, and is a son of Patrick and Rose
(Barrett) Kelly, both natives of Ireland and both resi-
dents of Iowa for many years prior to their death.
Patrick Kelly was identified with the great basic industry
of agriculture during virtually his entire active career
in America. He was a farmer in Missouri until 1881,
when he removed with his family to Iowa, where he con-
tinued his activities as an agriculturist and stock grower
and achieved a due measure of independence and pros-
perity, both he and his wife having been devout com-
municants of the Catholic Church, and having lived lives
of distinctive usefulness and honor. He whose name
introduces this article is indebted to the public schools
of Missouri for his early educational discipline and was
eighteen years of age at the time of the family removal
to Iowa, in which state he taught several terms of dis-
trict school.

In 1892 Mr. Kelly left the Hawkeye state and came
to Oklahoma Territory, where he filed entry to a claim
of land in Canadian County. He perfected his title to
this property, but eventually disposed of the same. In
1899 he assumed the position of deputy in the office of
the county clerk of Canadian County, and he retained
this post at El Reno, the county seat, until he was elected,
county clerk, in the autumn of 1904, this advancement
having been a well justified reward for his former effec-
tive service. He assumed office in January, 1905, and
after serving six years he retired from office on the 1st
of January, 1911, his long and efficient tenure of this
important position having been terminated only a short
time when, on the 1st of March, 1911, he was chosen
cashier of the First National Bank of El Reno. He
retained this position until July 1, 1912, when he assumed
the duties of his present office, that of cashier of the
Yukon National Bank, his careful and progressive admin-
istration having been a potent force in the developing
of the substantial business of this institution, which
bases its operations on a capital stock of $25,000.

The political views of Mr. Kelly are shown by the
staunch support which he accords to the cause of the
democratic party; he and his wife are communicants
of 'the Catholic Church, and he is affiliated with the
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Knights
of Columbus, and the Modern Woodmen of America.

In the year 1912 was solemnized the marriage of Mr.
Kelly to Miss Agnes Fitzgerald, who likewise was born
and reared in Missouri, and both are popular figures in
the representative social activities of their home com-
munity.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1857

William Marshall Gallaher, M. D. A specialist
in the medical profession at Shawnee since 1909, whose
practice is confined to diseases of the eye, ear, nose and
throat, Doctor Gallaher has not only been a valuable
professional man to this city, but has fitted in with all
departments of civic progress, and has been especially
enthusiastic as a worker in behalf of school improvement.
He is now secretary of the board of education.

Born in Roane County, Tennessee, March 1, 1877,
Doctor Gallaher is a member of a branch of a family
that came originally from Ireland and first settled in
Pennsylvania about Revolutionary times. From Penn-
sylvania one branch of the family moved to Tennessee,
and another to Missouri. Doctor Gallaher ’s father,
D. H. Gallaher, was born in Knox County, Tennessee, in
1836, and died in Roane County in 1904. His entire
active career was spent as a farmer and stock raiser.
For two years he was a soldier on the Southern side of
the Civil war, and was wounded during the Shenandoah
Valley campaign. In politics he was a democrat, was
a member of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and
of the Masonic fraternity. He married Mattie Owen,
who was born in Tennessee and still resides on the old
homestead in Roane County. Their children were :
Lucy, wife of S. R. Stegall, a feed and grain merchant
at Chattanooga, Tennessee; Albert, who died in 1880;
Daisy, who married C. W. Lackey, a physician and
surgeon in Texas, and both are now deceased; R. O.,
who is county engineer of Knox County, with home at
Knoxville, Tennessee; Mayme, who is a music teacher
and makes her home with her mother in Tennesee;
G. H., a farmer and stockman in Roane County; Dr. Wil-
liam Marshall; Sally, wife of R. O. Wheeler, a farmer
and stockman in Ellis County, Oklahoma; and Mattie,
wife of Elmer Sineknecht, a mine operator at Oliver
Springs, Tennessee.

Doctor Gallaher acquired a liberal education. He was
reared on a farm, attended public schools in his native
Roane County, graduated from Roane College in 1897,
and from there entered Chattanooga Medical College,
where he graduated M. D. with the class of 1900. In
the fifteen years of his active practice Doctor Gallaher
has extended his studies both privately and by attend-
ance at some of the leading institutions of the country.
In 1907 and in 1908 he took post-graduate work in the
Polyclinic of Tulane University at New Orleans, special-
izing in eye, ear, nose and throat. He spent portions of
the year 1909 and 1915 in the Chicago Eye, Ear, Nose
and Throat Infirmary.

He did his first practice near Texarkana, Arkansas,
and was engaged in general practice there until 1909.
In March, 1909, he came to Shawnee, and in this larger
field has confined himself entirely to his specialty in the
treatment of eye, ear, nose and throat. His offices are in
the Mammoth Building. He is a member of the State
and County Medical societies and is a Fellow in the
American Medical Association.

Fraternally he is affiliated with Shawnee Lodge No.
107, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons; Shawnee Chap-
ter No. 32, Royal Arch Masons; Shawnee Commandery
No. 36, Knights Templar; Indian Temple of the Nobles
of the Mystic Shrine at Oklahoma City ; and the Shawnee
organization of the Woodmen of the World. He is a
member of the Presbyterian Church, U. S., and is a
member of the Shawnee Chamber of Commerce.

In July, 1902, in Roane County, Tennessee, Doctor
Gallaher married Miss Fannie B. Smith. Her father,
'M. L. Smith, is farmer in Knox County, Tennessee. To
their marriage have been born three children: Clinton,

now in the public schools at Shawnee; Paul Clark and
Mary Lee.

Shawnee Public Schools. In laying the foundation
and building the great State of Oklahoma the citizen-
ship have kept in mind the fact that future growth
would be impossible without establishing good schools.
No man, with or without a family, would want to buy
property and live in any community stripped of schools
and churches. In view of these facts the people of
Oklahoma have spared no means in securing the best
educational opportunities. This condition is especially
true with the City of Shawnee. It is, indeed, fitting
that the fourth city of Oklahoma (not in general
resources, but in school population) , a city located in
one of the richest regions of the state, should have the
best possible school system which can be devised by
human minds and hearts.

Shawnee has not only been generous in the construc-
tion of buildings but the good people of the city have
voted three extra levies for maintenance within the last
six years. In equipment the Shawnee public school
buildings are second to none in the state. Of the nine
buildings, all except one are built of brick and are
equipped 1 with all modern conveniences-, such as lava-
tories, electric lights, etc.

As a matter of information and proof of the steady
growth of Shawnee public schools, a few statistics are
here given. The total enrollment for the past four
years is as follows:

1912- 1913 2,805

1913- 1914 2,947

1914- 1915 2,961

1915- 1916 . 3,400

The total number of teachers employed, including
three substitutes, is 84, of which 15 are men and 69
are women. The total number of employees for the
schools, including the secretary to the superintendent
and clerk of the board of education, is 97. The average
salary of the grade teacher is $57.95 per month; the
minimum salary is $40.00; the maximum salary, $65.00.
The maximum salary for the primary grades is $76.50.
The estimate for maintenance of the schools in 1914-15
was $70,385. The total valuation of Shawnee School
District is $7,772,226.56.

Recesses twice daily were inaugurated in all the schools
in 1914-15. The cultivation of school gardens has
recently been instituted. The study of agriculture has
been added to the course in the elementary grades within
the last year. Four of the war schools have recently
installed $80.00 Victrolas, the moneys being raised
through the efforts of the teachers and children. A
$1,000 Everett Concert Grand piano has been placed in
the high school recently. This will cost the district
nothing. One of the ward schools has been equipped
with modern playground equipment.

The value of the high school building and equipment
is $123,000. Twenty-one teachers are employed. The
high school has experienced a wonderful gain, as indi-
cated in the enrollment below:

1910- 1911 276 '

1911- 1912 332

1912- 1913 374

1913- 1914 425

1914- 1915 480

1915- 1916 547

The increase in the graduating classes for the past four
years is as follows:

1911- 1912 43

1912- 1913 63

1913- 1914 64

1914- 1915 79

1915- 1916 93

1858

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

At the beginning of the 1915-1916 school year the
entire system was reorganized. The length of the daily
recitation was increased from forty-five minutes to
seventy minutes, each period being planned for thirty-five
minutes recitation on the previous day’s lesson and
thirty-five minutes carefully supervised study on the
advanced lesson. One of the primary objects of this
plan is to teach the pupil how to study, and so prevent
a very common waste of time in more or less aimless
groping for a method of study.

Below is given a list of the special department in the
high school showing cost:

Commercial $1,500.00

Domestic Science 1,900.00

Manual Training 2,500.00

Agriculture 600.00

Chemical Department 2,000.00

Physics Department 2,000.00

Biology Department 400.00

Gymnasium 1,500.00

Each of the above departments is being strengthened
every year.

There are organized in the high school: One first

class orchestra; four literary societies — two girls and
two boys; one German Club; one Girls’ Glee Club; a
school paper is published — the Caldron.

With the already high state of improvement and
efficiency and with the support of the progressive citi-
zenship of Shawnee, the school authorities anticipate
wonderful advancement in Shawnee public schools for
the coming years.

Randolph Brooks Forrest. One of the senior
lawyers of Western Oklahoma is Randolph Brooks
Forrest of El Reno, who became identified with the
Oklahoma bar about four years after the opening of the
original Oklahoma Territory, and his prestige and influ-
ence as a lawyer and citizen have been increasing in
proportion to the length of his years of residence. Mr.
Forrest is now serving as county judge of Canadian
County, where he has had his home since coming to
Oklahoma in 1893.

Randolph Brooks Forrest is an Ohio man by birth,
having been born in that interesting section of Southern
Ohio along the Ohio River at Portsmouth October 20,
1850. His parents, Joseph H. and Yancaline (Yance)
Forrest were natives of Ohio, but their respective parents
were Virginians who were among the pioneers in South-
ern Ohio, having located there in 1809. His paternal
great-grandfather, Zachariah Forrest, was an officer in
the Revolutionary army, from Maryland; his grand-
father, Archibald Forrest, was a soldier in the War of
1812, from Ohio; his uncle, Elza Forrest, was killed
in the battle of Beuna Vista in Mexico, and his own
father served in the war of the states for the Union.
In 1851, when Judge Forrest was about a year old,
his parents removed to Illinois, finally locating on a
farm in Logan County. His father was a farmer by
pursuit and reared his family on a farm.

Judge Forrest had his education from Illinois country
schools, followed by a course in the high school at
Atlanta, Illinois, and two years in the Illinois Normal
University at Normal. His early ambition was directed
to the law, and he took up the study of Blackstone while
teaching school, a vocation which held him for three
years. At the age of twenty-three Judge Forrest was
editor of the Logan County Journal, which he published
at Lincoln for one year. He then sold the paper, and
in June, 1876, successfully passed the examination before
the Illinois Supreme Court and was admitted to the

Illinois Bar. Judge Forrest has had a long and interest-
ing experience as a lawyer, both in the Middle West and
in the Northwest and Southwest. He practiced at Lin-
coln, Illinois, for several years, and in 1880 was elected
state ’s attorney of Logan County, an office he held
four years, and which gave him a splendid training as
an advocate. During the winter of 1884-85, Mr. Forrest
removed from Illinois to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and
was successfully identified with the bar of the flour
metropolis of the Northwest until 1893. In the latter
year he came to Oklahoma and located at El Reno. Of
his work as a lawyer it is hardly necessary to speak
except to state that he is regarded as a lawyer of
thorough ability, broad knowledge of jurisprudence, and
with a most successful record in the handling of litiga-
tion. His public and political career is a matter of
interest and reflects some of the interesting political
history of Oklahoma. In the early days he practiced
as an attorney over nearly all of Western Oklahoma
Territory, gained a wide acquaintance, and in 1898 the
democrats of Western Oklahoma favored his candidacy
as territorial delegate to Congress. However, the heavier
vote of the eastern part of Oklahoma gave the nomina-
tion to another candidate. The Western Oklahoma demo-
crats again preferred him as their candidate for Congress
in 1900, but he declined to run because of the fusion of
democrats and populists in the convention. Two years
later he was again an unsuccessful candidate for the
nomination. Judge Forrest is an Oklahoman who
deserves credit for his participation in the statehood
movement in all its phases for more than ten years
before statehood became an actuality. In 1895 he was
chosen a delegate to the statehood convention of that
year. From the first he espoused the cause of “single
statehood, ’ ’ that is one state for the two territories of
Oklahoma and Indian Territory. He sat as a delegate
in the statehood convention of 1901, and for a third
time was a delegate in 1902. In both these conventions
he was chairman of the committee on resolutions. In
1904, because of his convictions in favor of single state-
hood, Mr. Forrest supported for re-election to Congress
Mr. McGuire, a republican and the author of the then
pending single statehood bill in Congress. In the same
campaign Judge Forrest supported the local democratic
ticket, and always before and always since has been a
loyal and vigorous advocate of the man and measures of
the democratic political party. Since his residence in
Oklahoma he has been a delegate to every democratic
county and territorial or state convention. It will be
recalled that there was much division of public senti-
ment with respect to the question whether Oklahoma
and Indian Territory should go into the Union as one
or two states, and Judge Forrest’s attitude on statehood
led to his defeat as a candidate from this county to the
constitutional convention which in 1907 perfected the
first organic law for the new state. In the primary
election of 1912 Mr. Forrest was an unsuccessful candi-
date for nomination to Congress from his district. One
of the chief planks in his platform during that campaign
was the advocacy of the conservation of surface water.

In 1913-14 Mr. Forrest served as assistant county
attorney of Canadian County, and in 1914 was elected
county judge, and is now giving his time and attention
to a capable administration of Canadian County ’s
affairs. His election to the office of county judge is
somewhat of a vindication of his course in political
affairs. Fraternally Judge Forrest is affiliated with
the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and the
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. He was
married in Illinois in 1872 to Miss Mary Randolph.
They are the parents of two daughters and one son.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1859

Judge Forrest is a man of broad intellectual interests,
and is the author of a small book of verse on current
topics, which has been well received.

W. T. Berentz. Bartlesville has one of its most force-
ful business men in the person of W. T. Berentz, who is
president of the Berentz Hardware Company and is also
proprietor of a furniture and undertaking establishment.
A number of years Mr. Berentz saw a crop of wheat cut
from the site of tfie city where he now makes his home
and where his business activities have been concentrated
for nearly fifteen years. He has helped in an important
way in making Bartlesville the center of trade and indus-
try for a large surrounding territory, and has identified
himself in a public-spirited fashion with all local move-
ments for upbuilding and improvements.

A resident of this section of Oklahoma for twenty-five
years, W. T. Berentz was born in Danville, Illinois, Feb-
ruary 21, 1867, a son of Jeremiah and Emma (Olmstead)
Berentz. His father was born in Ohio. From Illinois
the family emigrated to Kansas and took up a homestead
in Labette County in 1869. W. T. Berentz at that time
was about two years of age, and his youthful recollec-
tions concern themselves largely with the pioneer condi-
tions found in Southeastern Kansas during the late ’60s
and ’70s. His father died in October, 1913, at the age
of seventy-one, and the mother passed away May 5, 1905,
at the age of sixty -three. Jeremiah Berentz served for
more than forty-eight months with the Twelfth Illinois
Volunteer Infantry during the Civil war. After his
three-year term had expired he veteranized and con-
tinued until the close of the mighty struggle between the
North and the South. He was a member of the Presby-
terian Church and a republican in politics. W. T.
Berentz was the oldest of four children, and the second,
Myra, died at the age of twelve years, and two daughters,
Maude and Mabel, twins, who were born in 1875, are
now living in Los Angeles, California.

W. T. Berentz grew up in Kansas, received his educa-
tion from country schools, and for the greater part of
the time up to 1897 lived with his parents. In the spring
of 1890 the entire family had moved from Kansas to
Indian Territory, and the son operated a ranch here up
to 1901. In 1897 his parents went back to Kansas, but
Mr. Berentz has lived continuously in Northeastern Okla-
homa for the past twenty-five years. In 1901 he became
a merchant in the new Town of Bartlesville, and at that
time started in the hardware, furniture and undertaking
business associated with B. H. Muzzy under the name
Berentz & Muzzy. In 1907 he bought out his partner’s
interest and in 1914 organized a stock company known
as the Berentz Hardware Company, Incorporated, of
which he is president. In the meantime the furniture
and undertaking had been separated and has been con-
ducted under the individual name of Mr. Berentz. He
owns the building where he first started in business on
Second Street, but his present large store is located on
Johnstone Avenue. He is also interested with J. P.
Goveran in the buggy and implement business. For a
number of years he was also -identified with the manufac-
ture of brick at Bartlesville.

As a citizen Mr. Berentz has served as a member of the
city school board for the past six years, and was re-
elected in the spring of 1915 to the same office. He is
well known in Masonry, being a member of the Lodge,
Chapter, Commandery, the Scottish Rite Consistory and
the Mystic Shrine, and is also affiliated with the Benevo-
lent and Protective Order of Elks. In January, 1903,
Mr. Berentz married Miss Florence Forrester, who was
born in Illinois, a daughter of William Forrester. To
their marriage have been born two sons: Russell and

Robert.

J. W. Stroud. The founder of one of the thriving
towns of Lincoln County is now a wealthy and prominent
citizen of Pawhuska, in Osage County, with which locality
he has been identified practically throughout the period
of its greatest development. J. W. Stroud is an Okla-
homa Eighty-niner, a man who came into the original
territory with capital and business experience, and by
his shrewd judgment, foresight and enterprise has not
only lifted himself above the plane of modern success,
but at the same time has assisted several localities
to grow and prosper. He is one of the men whose names
should be permanently linked with the history of Okla-
homa during the past twenty-five years.

Born at Springfield, Missouri, August 2, 1859, he
is of German parents, L. D. and Priscilla (Schmidt)
Stroud. His father was a natural mechanic, handy
with all manner of tools, and developed his trade
into a business as builder. He helped construct the first
buildings of the normal school at Warrensburg, Mis-
souri. He was also a soldier during the Civil war, hav-
ing served with the Second Missouri Artillery.

The only child of his parents, J. W. Stroud, at the
age of fifteen, started out for himself, and is strictly
a self-made man. He gained a limited education, but
has improved all his opportunities by observation and
experience and by industry and economy finally got
started in the world along the lines for which he has
shown special inclination and ability. He was reared
on a farm, but soon developed his instinct as a trader
and in 1881 established a small store near the City of
Springfield, Missouri, and made that in a few years
an important trading center for a large surrounding
community.

Mr. Stroud came into Oklahoma in 1889 and soon after
the opening was proprietor of a small grocery store on
Main Street in Oklahoma City. With the opening of
the country east and south of Oklahoma City to settle-
ment, he set up a rough frame shack out on the prairie,
put in a stock of goods, and that was the beginning
of a settlement which came to be known as Stroud, the
actual beginning of whose history was on April 6,
1892. He conducted his store in that locality until 1898,
and in the meantime had taken an important part in
securing the construction of the Frisco Railroad through
Lincoln County, and then moved his store over to the
railroad site, and his name was applied to the new Town
of Stroud. He was first in all matters of public enter-
prise there, and that thrifty and prosperous community
is well pleased to have his name identified with it. Mr.
Stroud conducted a lumber yard at Stroud, was also
vice president of the First National Bank, which he helped
to organize, and later organized the City State Bank,
of which he was president. He finally sold out his inter-
ests in both of these institutions, and had also in the
meantime acquired a large amount of real estate, both
in the city and the surrounding country.

Since January, 1907, Mr. Stroud has made his home
and the center of his interests at Pawhuska. Among
other important investments he has four brick buildings
on Ki-hi-Kah and Sixth streets, and he has also built
and occupies a beautiful bungalow home on the hill
which is second to none of the Pawhuska residences of
that class. Mr. Stroud also owns 1,200 acres in Osage
County, and has much of his land under cultivation
and improvement.

In 1909 Mr. Stroud drilled two gas wells on the city
site of Pawhuska and then turned over the plant to
the city at cost. As a result of this public-spirited enter-
prise the price of gas was at once reduced one-half, and
fuel was furnished in abundance to the water and light
plants. This act of public spirit made him a great

1860

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

many friends and admirers, and in turn the people of
Pawhuska made him mayor of the city for two years.

Politically Mr. Stroud is a republican, was reared
in the faith of the German Baptist Church, and in
Masonry has attained the thirty-second degree of the
Scottish Rite, being affiliated with both the Consistory
and the Temple of the Mystic Shrine.

When a poor struggling young man back in Missouri
at the age of nineteen Mr. Stroud married Miss Martha
Gregg, who was born in that state. To their union
were born seven children: Lucas lives in Texas; Priscilla
is the wife of Henry Ward of Fairfax, Oklahoma; Samuel
also lives in Texas ; Alma is the wife of Henry MeMillen
of Osage County ; Charles lives on a farm in Osage
County; Maude is the wife of W. H. Spurr, who is
cashier of the First National Bank at Seminole, Okla-
homa; LeMoyne is now attending law school at Chat-
tanooga, Tennessee. In 1903 Mr. Stroud married for his
present wife Ella Fisher, who was born in Nebraska.

Mention has already been made of Mr. Stroud ’s part in
helping to build the Frisco Eailroad through Lincoln
County. He was one of the active promoters of that
line from Sapulpa to Oklahoma City, and not only lent
all his influence and resources but assisted in making
the survey and in securing the right of way and also
conducted a canvass for funds to pay for the construc-
tion. He also laid out some of the townsites along
the line, and the judgment of railroad builders and civil
engineers has confirmed his excellent judgment in locating
that line of railroad, which was one of the most con-
siderable factors in the early days in establishing the pre-
eminence of Oklahoma City. Since then he has helped in
making the surveys of several other railroad lines in
the state. In addition to his various other investments
Mr. Stroud is president and general manager of the
Acacia Oil & Gas Company of Pawhuska, an Oklahoma
corporation which is composed entirely of home capital-
ists and investors.

William L. Chapman. As part of the political ma-
chinery methods necessary to the establishment of state
government in Oklahoma and as an official of that gov-
ernment after it was established in 1907, William L.
Chapman, the well known lawyer of Shawnee, has con-
tributed much to the welfare of the state. Equipped
with a literary and commercial education he has suc-
cessfully filled the positions of editor and banker, and a
legal training has enabled him to make a success in the
law. For six years prior to and subsequent to statehood
he was secretary of the Territorial and State Demo-
cratic Central committees, serving in that capacity dur-
ing the campaigns for the election of delegates to the
Constitutional Convention, the adoption of the consti-
tution and the election of the first state officials. After
statehood he was he first secretary of the Corporation
Commission and in that position laid the foundation for
a systematic and methodical keeping of the records of
that department of state government.

Born in Wingo, Kentucky, October 12, 1867, a son of
Thomas and Nannie (Hatchell) Chapman, William L.
Chapman having completed the public school course in
his native state entered Marvin College at Clinton, Ken-
tucky, from which he was graduated in 1888 with the
degree Bachelor of Arts. He holds the degree Ph. D.
from Cumberland University at Lebanon, Tennessee,
awarded him in 1895. While in Marvin College he swept
floors and worked in a chair factory at odd times to pay
expenses, and during part of the time helped out his
sister who was in the same college. On leaving school
he was for ten years a successful teacher in Kentucky,
Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma, was at one time super-

intendent of city schools at Stephenville, Texas, and at
another time president of Willie Halsell College at
Vinita, Oklahoma. He is a graduate of Hills Business
College at Waco, Texas, having completed the course
there as preparation for a clerical position that was wait-
ing him in Oklahoma.

On leaving college work at Vinita Mr. Chapman entered
the First National Bank of that city as a clerk and
afterwards became assistant cashier. Later he moved
to Shawnee, was in the banking business and for four
years was editor of the Shawnee Herald. For sixteen
years he was a member of the Democratic Territorial and
State Central committees and was secretary of that
committee during two national campaigns. In these
campaigns he was in charge of special trains that toured
the state with W. J. Bryan as the speaker. Only a brief
summary can be made of his varied public service. At
Vinita he was a member of the board of education that
established one of the first public schools in Indian Ter-
ritory. He was city clerk of Norman, Oklahoma, and
city treasurer of Shawnee. He resided at Norman when
the University of Oklahoma was founded and there be-
came associated with F. S. E. Amos, now of Vinita, who
was then a member of the faculty of the university and
is an advisory editor of the Standard History of Okla-
homa. Mr. Amos accompanied Mr. Chapman to Vinita
and became a teacher with him in the Willie Halsell
College.

At Columbus, Kentucky, June 5, 1895, Mr. Chapman
married Miss Maud Taylor. Mrs. Chapman is a woman
of thorough culture as well as a most capable home
maker. She graduated with high honors from Marvin
College in Kentucky and a year after graduation was
given a chair in the faculty of instruction at that in-
stitution. To their marriage there are three living
children: Merle, aged sixteen, in high school; Marie,
aged thirteen, also in high school; and Vernon, aged
ten. Mr. Chapman has one sister, two half-sisters and
a half-brother: Mrs. Ada Moore, wife of a farmer at
Clinton, Kentucky; Mrs. Charles Crawl, wife of a lum-
ber dealer at Eufaula, Oklahoma; Mrs. Ola Painter,
whose husband is an oil supply man at Wichita Falls,
Texas; and H. M. Myers, who for seven years has been
in the auditing department at Muskogee of the Missouri,
Oklahoma & Gulf Railway Company. Mr. Chapman is
a member of the Masonic and the Knights of Pythias
lodges, and of the Methodist Church.

Charles W. Wilson. Noted for his sound judgment
and keen business sagacity, Charles W. Wilson is re-
garded as one of the safe and sound financiers of Wood-
ward County, and his connection with the Security State
Bank of Mooreland, of which he has been cashier since
1914, has resulted very advantageously to that concern.
Mr. Wilson came to the West in his youth, with little to
aid him save his ambition and energy and after a num-
ber of years spent in Kansas came to Oklahoma in a
business capacity in which he displayed qualities that
led to his introduction to banking circles.

Born July 3, 1863, on a farm in Lenawee County, Mich-
igan, Mr. Wilson is a son of Charles B. and Rosa M.
(Hill) Wilson. His father was born in 1832, at Thomas-
ton, Connecticut, where the family was well and favorably
known and where the grandparents were born, and was
one year old when taken to Lenawee County, Michigan.
There Charles B. Wilson was reared on a pioneer farm,
was given an ordinary education and as a young man
engaged in teaching school, although later he turned his
attention to agricultural pursuits and succeeded to the
ownership of the farm which had been proved up by his
father. An industrious and enterprising man, his life
was passed in the peaceful pursuits of the soil, and his

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1861

death occurred on his Michigan farm April 20, 1900.
In his community he had an excellent reputation in
business circles, while his good citizenship was evidenced
on all occasions. In 1857, in Michigan, Mr. Wilson was
united in marriage with Miss Eosa M. Hill, who was born
in 1837, in Connecticut, daughter of Eollin E. and Milli-
cent (Kasson) Hill, natives of Litchfield County, Con-
necticut. She was taken as a child to Michigan, where
she was reared and educated and prior to her marriage
was, like her husband, a teacher in the public schools.
Her death occurred February 8, 1884, and thirty years
later, in 1914, one of the classrooms of the Methodist
Episcopal Church at Morenci, Michigan, was dedicated
to her as a memorial to her faithful and devoted work in
behalf of that congregation during the early days. Two
sons and one daughter were born to Charles B. and Eosa
M. Hill, namely: Clarence A., Luella Josephine and
Charles W. Clarence A. Wilson of this family was born
August 14, 1859, in Lenawee County, Michigan, and was
given good educational advantages, being graduated from
Valparaiso College, at Valparaiso, Indiana. He took up
banking in 1884, when he was elected cashier of the
Wakefield State Bank of Morenci, Michigan, a position
which he still retains, being one of the best known bank-
ers in that part of the 'state. He was married in 1904
to Miss Marie Beauchamp, a native of Newport, Ken-
tucky, and they are the parents of two daughters :
Charlotte and Millicent. Luella Josephine Wilson was
born in Lenawee County, Michigan, February 20, 1861,
and early displayed literary talent of more than ordinary
order. In addition to being a magazine writer of note,
she was secretary of the Writers’ Club of Toledo, Ohio,
and held that position at the time of her death, April
20, 1912. She married Frank Smith, a native of Ohio, in
1886, and they became the parents of two children:
Herbert W. and Dorothy.

Charles W. Wilson was reared on the home farm in
Michigan and received his education in the public schools
of Lenawee County. At the age of twenty-two years, in
1885, he left home to seek his fortune in the West, his
destination being Harper, Kansas, where he secured a
position in a flouring mill. During the fifteen years that
followed he worked at milling at different points in
Southern Kansas, and in various capacities, and became
well and favorably known to the people of Barber County,
in that state, who, in 1902, elected him to the office of
county clerk. The manner in which he discharged his
duties during his first term resulted in his election to
succeed himself in 1904, and the entire four years of his
incumbency were marked by faithful, capable, energetic
and conscientious performance of duty. In 1907, 1908
and 1909, Mr. Wilson was assistant cashier of the First
National Bank of Kiowa, Kansas, where he gained excel-
lent experience, but in 1911 he transferred his activities
to Oklahoma, coming to Mooreland to accept the manage-
ment of the grain elevator of the Alva Boiler Mills, a
concern which is being capably managed by George A.
Harbaugh, with a large mill at Alva and a chain of
grain elevators in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Mr. Wil-
son soon became known as a business man of unusual
capacity and in 1914 was offered and accepted the cash-
iership of the Security State Bank of Mooreland, of
which office he has since been the incumbent. This is one
of the sound and conservative financial institutions of
Woodward County, established in 1906, whose depositors
come from Woodward and the surrounding counties. He
has maintained his position as a man of substantial busi-
ness qualities and exceptional character, and is rapidly
becoming one of the most prominent and successful citi-
zens of his locality. Fraternally, Mr. Wilson affiliates
with the Masons and the Knights of Pythias, in both of

which he has numerous friends. Since attaining his
majority he has been an unswerving republican.

Mr. Wilson was married October 26, 1892, at Medicine
Lodge, Kansas, to Miss Lizzie C. Clark, who was born
February 14, 1872, at old Osage Mission, Kansas.
Mr. and Mrs. Wilson have had no children. She is a
member of the Presbyterian Church and has taken an
active interest in its work.

William P. Harper. A resident of Oklahoma City
since 1889, Judge Harper has here been engaged in the
practice of law since 1891 and he holds secure vantage-
place as one of the representative members of the
Oklahoma bar. Under the territorial regime he served
as judge of probate of Oklahoma County and of this
office he was the incumbent also at the time when Okla-
homa was admitted to statehood, in 1907. He controls
a large and important law business, has been influen-
tial in public affairs in the territory and state, and is
one of the progressive and liberal citizens of Oklahoma
City, where he maintains his well appointed law offices
at 207-9 Majestic Building.

Judge William Philip Harper was born at Wheeling,
Delaware County, Indiana, on the 18th of February,
1859, and is a son of Charles A. and Mary J. (Wen-
dall) Harper. His father was a lawyer by profession
and for a number of years was engaged in the practice
of his profession at Muncie, the judicial center of Dela-'
ware County, Indiana, and there the subject of this
review initiated the study of law under the effective pre-
ceptorship of his father, after he had duly profited by
the advantages afforded in the public schools of his
native state. From 1876 to 1885 Judge Harper was a
resident of Clinton County, Indiana, and he then came
to the West and passed three years in the State of
Kansas. In December, 1899, the year in which Okla-
homa Territory was organized and opened to settlement
Judge Harper numbered himself among its pioneer set-
tlers, and he has wielded not a little influence in the civic
and material development and progress of both territory
and state. Upon coming to the territory he established
his residence in Oklahoma City, where he resumed the
study of law and where he was admitted to the bar in
1891. He here engaged in the practice of his profes-
sion and in 1894 he was elected, on the republican
ticket, to the office of judge of the Probate Court of
Oklahoma County, of which position he continued the
efficient and valued incumbent for a term of two years,
within which he did much to systematize, solidify and
make authoritative the important business of this ter-
ritorial court of the county. After his retirement from
office the judge again engaged in the general practice
of his profession, and few lawyers have been more
prominently associated with important litigations and
legal interests in the state than has he. He retains
at the present time a large and representative clientage,
is well known to his professional confreres throughout
ithe state, and commands unqualified popular confidence
and esteem. In 1902 he was again elected judge of pro-
bate, and he continued in the effective administration
of the affairs of this office until the admission of Okla-
homa to the Union, in 1907, having retained the post
during the pending agitation and legislation incident to
the creation of the new state. Since that time he has
given virtually his undivided attention to his large and
important law business, and his name merits enduring
place on the roster of the pioneer members of the Okla-
homa bar. The judge has continued a stalwart and ef-
fective advocate of the principles of the republican
party and is one of its influential representatives in
Oklahoma.

1862

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

In the city that has long been his home was solem-
nized the marriage of Judge Harper to Miss Cora B.
Gregory, and she is a popular factor in the representa-
tive social activities of Oklahoma City. Judge and Mrs.
Harper have three children, Annabel, Wendel and Wil-
liam P., Jr., the family home being an attractive resi-
dence owned by the judge at 2204 West Nineteenth
Street.

George A. Johns is member of the well known law
firm of MeCrory & Johns of Okmulgee, and besides a
large general practice he is well and favorably known
over the county as former county judge.

He was born in Pekin, Illinois, June 14, 1880, son of
J. J. and Elizabeth (Weber) Johns. His father was
born in Pekin, Illinois, but his mother was a native of
Germany, and came to Illinois when a child. She is now
living in Chicago. The father died at Quincy, Illinois, in
1896, at the age of forty-six. He was a merchant during
all his active career, and had stores at Pekin and Quincy.

One of five children, George A. Johns, remained in the
home of his mother until 1908. He finished his education
in Northwestern University, where he was graduated in
the law department in Chicago in 1906 with the degree
LL. B. He was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1906 and
practiced law in that state for a year or so.

In 1908 he was admitted to the Oklahoma State Bar,
and since then has had his home in Okmulgee. In 1913
he formed a partnership with C. B. MeCrory under the
firm name of MeCrory & Johns.

It was in 1911 that Mr. Johns was elected county
judge of Okmulgee County and served in that office with
admirable efficiency for two years, one term. In politics
he is a republican and a Knight Templar Mason and
Shriner. In 1910 he married Florence Collins, who was
born in Binghamton, New York, daughter of Daniel
Collins. They have one child, Ellen.

Thomas Love Lillard. An extensive and progres-
sive agriculturist of Osage County, and a prominent
citizen of Pawhuska, Thomas Love Lillard is a man of
worth and stability, and enjoys the fullest confidence and
esteem of the community in which he resides. A native
of Kentucky, he was born, September 20, 1860, in Boyle
County. His father, Thomas Madison Lillard, was for
many years engaged in the cattle business, during his
earlier life buying and selling in Charleston, South Caro-
lina, and in New York City, his operations being largely
confined to those two cities. Subsequently buying land
in Kentucky, he devoted the remainder of his years to the
raising of stock, and to farming, both he and his wife
dying on their Kentucky plantation. To him and his wife,
whose maiden name was Mary Bright, eleven children
were born.

Remaining on the home place until after the death of
his father, Thomas Love Lillard was well trained in
the art and science of agriculture, which he selected as
his occupation in life. Coming to Oklahoma in 1901,
he resided at Ponca five years. In 1906 he located at
Pawhuska, where he has since been profitably engaged
in general farming, making a specialty of stock growing,
in partnership with T. P. Kiger, being widely known as
junior member of the enterprising firm of Kiger & Lillard.
He is a democrat in his political relations, and both
he and his wife are valued members of the Christian
Church. Fraternally he belongs to the Benevolent and
Protective Order of Elks.

Mr. Lillard married September 20, 1893, Miss Alice
Hubble, who was born in Boyle County, Kentucky, March
3, 1865, a daughter of Levi and Martha (Stigall) Hubble,
who reared three children, namely : William, who died at

the age of twenty-four years; Alice, now Mrs. Lillard;
and Laura, wife of George Shelby. Mr. Hubble spent his
entire life in Central Kentucky, his death occurring
there in 1896. His widow survived him many years,
dying in 1915, in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, where she had
been a resident for eight years.

Mrs. Lillard is a woman of rare ability and accom-
plishments, scholarly in her attainments, and possessing
a winning personality. As a young lady she received
excellent educational advantages, being graduated, in
1882, from Hamilton College, in Lexington, Kentucky,
with the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and in 1884 taking
a post-graduate course at the same institution. She then
taught a year in the Miller School, in Cincinnati, taking
charge of the classes in English, after which she estab-
lished a private school in which she prepared pupils for
college. Subsequently she attended to the correspondence
and banking business of her father, who was an extensive
stock grower and breeder of fine saddle horses, and an
able assistant in making Kentucky famous in that line
of industry. The family meeting with financial reverses
after the death of her father, Miss Hubble again assumed
her duties in the school room, and after teaching for a
time in Ponca, Oklahoma, accepted a position in the Paw-
huska High School, with which she continued two years.

Interested in everything pertaining to the advancement
of the educational status of Oklahoma, Mrs. Lillard
assisted in the organization of schools, and since Okla-
homa assumed the garb of statehood she has been a
member of the examining board for teachers in Osage
County, a position for which she is amply qualified. In
October, 1912, she was appointed county superintendent of
the Osage County schools to fill a vacancy caused by
the resignation of W. E. Gill, and in November of that
year was elected to the same responsible position. Giving
such eminent satisfaction in the discharge of her duties
during the next two years, Mrs. Lillard was honored with
a re-election to the same high office in 1914 for a term
that will not expire until July 1, 1917. In the perform-
ance of her duties Mrs. Lillard covers an area of 2,300
square miles, some of the schools of which she has the
supervision being widely separated. She was elected to
her present office on the democratic ticket, and has the
distinction of being the first woman to fill the position
in Osage County.

Mrs. Lillard is an active worker in the church, and is
prominent in club affairs, belonging to both the mother’s
department and the art department of the Pawhuska
Woman’s Club.

Mr. and Mrs. Lillard have a fine family of children,
three in number, namely: William H., Alice, and Mary
Bright, and they have also reared a nephew, William
Lillard. Mr. Lillard has in his possession a complete
genealogy of the Lillard family, compiled and published
in 1890 by his brother, John T. Lillard, an attorney in
Bloomington, Illinois.

Prof. Hugh Graham Faust. To a rapidly increas-
ing number of Oklahoma school men Professor Faust of
Shawnee is becoming known for the ability with which
he is administering the fine public school system at
Shawnee and also for the influential work which he is
doing in professional organization. Ever since graduat-
ing from college Mr. Faust has been in school work. He
has spent about fifteen years in the profession, and is a
man of ripe scholarship, of dignified manner, and of
splendid character. He is just the man for the heavy
responsibilities which he now carries as city superin-
tendent of Shawnee schools.

A Tennesseean by birth, he is a native of New-

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1863

market, Tennessee, where he was born, January 28, 1879.
His parents were M. L. and Belle (Parrott) Faust. The
Fausts came originally from Germany, but at a very
early time in colonial history, having located in Vir-
ginia and going across the mountains into Tennessee
about the time of the American Revolution. Another
branch of ancestors was the Sawyer family and repre-
sentatives of that name fought on the American side in
the war for independence. Some of the Fausts were
soldiers in the Federal army during the war between the
states, while Mr. Faust’s maternal ancestors were found
in the Confederate army.

M. L. Faust was ITorn at Newmarket, Tennessee, in
1850, and has spent practically all his life in that com-
munity being a substantial farmer and stock raiser. He
is also a good citizen and for a considerable term of
years has served as a member of the board of educa-
tion in his home locality. He has taken an especially
active part in the affairs of the Presbyterian Church, and
served many years on the official board. The mother,
whose maiden name was Belle Parrott, was born in
Granger County, Tennessee, in 1847. She became the
mother of seven children, briefly noted as follows :
Edna, wife of Beecher Coxe, a merchant at Newmarket,
Tennessee; L. C. Faust, who lives at Newmarket and
is engaged in the raising of blooded stock; Professor
Hugh Graham; Professor C. J. Faust, who was superin-
tendent of schools in Knox County, Tennessee, and died
at Knoxville in 1903; Lynn E., who is an automobile
dealer in Hood River, Oregon; Leon, engaged in mercan-
tile business at Hood «River, Oregon; and Dr. G. T.
Faust, who was graduated from the Louisville Medical
College in 1914 and is now practicing medicine at Dor-
chester, Virginia.

Hugh Graham Faust had the average opportunities and
advantages of the country boy. He had an ambition for
things beyond the horizon of the farmer’s son, and was
not satisfied with the education which the public schools
in the vicinity of Newmarket could afford him. He
afterwards entered one of the oldest and best small col-
leges in Tennessee, the Carson & Newman College at
Jefferson, where he was graduated A. B. with the class
of 1906. At different times he has interrupted his work
or has accepted the leisure afforded by vacation periods
in order to continue his studies in higher institutions.
Much of his post-graduate work has been done at the
University of Chicago.

It was in 1900 that Mr. Faust did his first practical
work as a teacher in the public schools of Jefferson
County, Tennessee. He remained there two years, and
in 1902 became principal of the Bearden High School in
Knox County, Tennessee, remaining there also two years.
This was followed by a position as teacher in Jaeks-
boro, Tennessee, where he was principal of the Camp-
bell County High School three years.

On coming to Oklahoma Mr. Faust was superintendent
of the city schools at Weatherford for two years, spent
another three years as superintendent of schools at Fred-
erick, and in 1914 was called to the heavy responsibilities
connected with the superintendeney at Shawnee. In 1915
he was re-elected on the basis of his first year’s record
and for a term of three years.

Other activities should be referred to in this article.
During the scholastic year of 1905-06 he was instructor
at Greeneville and Tusculum College at Greeneville, Ten-
nessee. After coming to Oklahoma he served one year
as president of the Tillman County Teachers Association.
During the summers of 1903 and 1904 he took post-
graduate work in the University of Tennessee. He is
an active member of the Pottawatomie County Teachers
Association and in the Oklahoma Educational Association

is chairman of the City Superintendents Division, of
which Supt. H. L. Nicholas of Holdenville is secretary.
In politics he worked with the democratic party. He is
a deacon in the Presbyterian Church, and fraternally is
identified with Shawnee Lodge No. 106, Ancient Free
and Accepted Masons; Shawnee Chapter No. 32, Royal
Arch Masons; Shawnee Commandery No. 36, Knights
Templar; and with the Weatherford Lodge of Knights
of Pythias, in which he is past chancellor commander.
He is a member of the Shawnee Commercial Club, of the
Provident Club of Shawnee and belongs to the Fidelity
Building & Loan Association. He was a member of the
Avis Society of the University of Chicago.

At Chicago in 1909 Professor Faust married Miss
Bertha Weiman. Her father was the late Judge Weiman
of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Miss Weiman graduated
with the degree Bachelor of Arts from the University
of Chicago and for several years before her marriage
was a successful teacher, being an instructor in one of
the high schools in Chicago and in the public schools of
Evanston, Illinois.

T. M. Burrow. Among the well known officials of
Dewey County, one who has won standing because of
ability and faithful service, and popularity by reason of
courtesy and fidelity, is T. M. Burrow, clerk of the courts.
Prior to his election to his present office, Mr. Burrow
was engaged in a variety of pursuits, although his
energies were principally devoted to educational work,
and the ability which he displayed in this direction was
chiefly responsible for bringing him forward as a desir-
able candidate for public service. During the three years
that he has served he has established an excellent record.

Mr. Burrow was born at Bardwell, Carlisle County,
Kentucky, January 6, 1882, on a farm, and is a son of
T. W. and Melinda (Shelbourne) Burrow. On the pa-
ternal side he belongs to a family which settled in North
Carolina during colonial days, having come from Scot-
land, while on the maternal side he is also descended
from Scotch ancestors, who settled in New York before
the Revolution. His father was born at Lovelaceville,
Ballard County, Kentucky, in 1847, and was reared, edu-
cated and married there, following which he moved across
the line into Carlisle County and settled on a farm eight
miles east of Bardwell. There he continued to be en-
gaged in farming and stock-raising during the remain-
ing years of his active life, passing away December 22,
1908. A democrat in his political views, he took a keen,
active and intelligent interest in public affairs, and for
six years was supervisor of Carlisle County, being the in-
cumbent of that office at the time of his death. He was
a strong supporter of the movements of the Baptist
Church, held a place on the official board for many years,
and led a consistent Christian life. His fraternal con-
nections were with the local lodges of the Masons and the
Odd Fellows. Mr. Burrow married Melinda Shelbourne,
who was born in the State of New York, in 1843, and
who still survives her husband in comfortable old age,
being a resident of Paducah, Kentucky, at her home lo-
cated at No. 821 Adams Street. T. W. and Melinda
Burrow were the parents of nine children, as follows:
Wilmoth, who is the wife of C. W. Black, a farmer and
shipper of stock at Kevil, Kentucky; James, who is an
Illinois Central Railway engineer and resides at Paducah,
Kentucky; Cora, who is the wife of J. H. Peck, a rail-
road contractor of Hickman, Kentucky; E. R., who died
at Bardwell, Kentucky, aged thirty-six years, as a sales-
man; Ira O., a farmer residing at Mayfield, Kentucky;
Ada, deceased, who married A. D. Lynn, a farmer of
Dewey County, Okahoma; T. M., of this notice; Euphy,
who is the wife of N. A. Mabry, a rural mail carrier of

1864

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Paducah, Kentucky; and A. W., who died at Bardwell,
Kentucky, at the age of sixteen years.

T. M. Burrow was reared on his father’s farm until
he was fourteen years of age, and during his early boy-
hood he attended the district schools of Carlisle County.
In 1896 the family moved to Bardwell, where he became
a pupil in the public schools, and this training was fur-
thered by attendance at the state normal school, Bowling
Green, Kentucky, where he remained for two years, or
until 1901. In that year he began his business experi-
ence as clerk in a clothing store at Fulton, Kentucky, but
at the end of eight months became a fireman in the em-
ploy of the Illinois Central Railroad. Mr. Burrow
remained in that position for about one year, when,
acting upon his belief that the West offered better oppor-
tunities for the display of his abilities, he came to Rhea,
Dewey County, Oklahoma, where he entered upon his
career as an educator. During the next nine years he
held positions in various parts of the county as prin-
cipal of schools, and was thus brought favorably before
the people. In 1912 he was elected clerk of the district
court, holding that office for two years, and November 6,
1914, was elected clerk of the courts for a period of two
years, the name of the office having been changed. His
offices are in the court house, Taloga. Mr. Burrow has
always been a stalwart democrat and since coming to
Oklahoma has become influential in the ranks of his
party in Dewey County. He has been also an enthusias-
tic fraternalist, and now belongs to Aledo Lodge No. 415,
A. F. & A. M. ; Taloga Chapter No. 54, R. A. M., and
Taloga Camp, Modern Woodmen of America.

Mr. Burrow was married February 14, 1909, to Miss
Ada Vandervort, daughter of Rev. W. S. Vandervort, a
preacher .of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who is re-
tired and resides at Aledo. They have two children:
Myrle, born January 11, and Adele, born October 11,
1913.

Michael H. Lyons. All honor is due to Sergeant
Lyons for his loyal and efficient service of thirty years
as a member of the United States army, in which he
attained to the rank of ordnance sergeant. He gained
wide experience in connection with military operations
at the various military posts of the West and Southwest,
took part in a number of engagements with hostile
Indians, was with the reinforcements that arrived on
the scene of the historic massacre of General Custer
and his gallant soldiers within two days after that dis-
astrous engagement, and otherwise grew familiar with
life on the frontier. His service extended into the
original Indian Territory, and while still in the army
he was one of the pioneers in entering claim to land
within the borders of Oklahoma Territory when it was
thrown open to settlement, more than a quarter of a
century ago, and here he had become a successful agri-
culturist and stock grower long before his retirement
from the military service that so long engrossed his
attention and in which he won distinction as a faithful,
efficient and valiant soldier and officer. Sergeant Lyons
is now an honored and influential citizen of El Reno,
the judicial center of Canadian County, and through his
distinctive business acumen and well ordered enterprise
he has accumulated a substantial competency, so that he
may well feel that, with troops of friends about him,
his lines are indeed “cast in pleasant places.”

Michael H. Lyons was born in Montgomery County,
Pennsylvania, on December 25, 1856, and is a son of
Patrick and Elizabeth (Hicky) Lyons, both natives of
Ireland. The sergeant passed the period of his child-
hood and early youth at Fort Washington, Pennsylvania,
where he acquired his rudimentary education in the paro-
chial and public schools, and he was fifteen years old

at the time of the family removal to the City of Phila-
delphia, where he continued to reside until he had at-
tained to adult age.

In 1876, in Philadelphia, which city was then a point
of national interest by reason of being the stage of the
great Centennial Exposition, Sergeant Lyons, as a youth
of twenty years, enlisted as a private in the United
States Army. After a service of about two years he
was promoted corporal and later a sergeant, and in 1885
he was advanced to the rank of first sergeant, an office
in which he continued to serve eleven years, after which
ho held the office of ordnance sergeant until the date of
his retirement from the army, in. January, 1907. The
initial military service of Sergeant Lyons was in Dakota
Territory, and thence he proceeded with his command
into Wyoming, where these forces arrived on the Custer
battlefield the second day after the historic massacre.
Thereafter he was with his command in Texas and his
final service was in what is now the State of Oklahoma.
He participated in a number of spirited engagements with
hostile Indians, and concerning his admirable record as
a member of Troop K, Fifth United States Cavalry, the
following statements are self-explanatory and signifi-
cant, the same having been written as a testimonial at
the time '-when the subject of this review was appointed
ordnance sergeant, in 1894, and the author of the com-
mendatory words having been Capt. A. E. Woodson,
who later rose to the rank of brigadier general. In
recommending Sergeant Lyons for promotion, Captain
Woodson wrote as follows: “He was at all times, in

the garrison and in the field, a 5. excellent soldier, ever
ready when called, quick to respond, a leader of men,
cheerful in disposition, and an exemplar to the men of
his command. ’ ’

Though a stickler for discipline and always found at
the post of duty, the buoyant and genial nature of Ser-
geant Lyons won him the high regard of his comrades
and superior officers, and to-day he has many friends of
high standing in the United States Army, in public life
anij in business circles, — in fact, it may consistently be
said that his circle of friends is limited only by that of
his acquaintances. Though he has had no ambition to
enter the arena of practical politics and has had no
desire for public office, the sergeant has given loyal sup-
port to the cause of the republican party and has aided
in the election of its candidates, both national and local.
Both he and his wife are communicants of the Catholic
Church.

In 1885 Sergeant Lyons came with his cavalry com-
mand for the first time to old Fort Reno, Indian Terri-
tory, a military post near the present thriving City of
El Reno, Oklahoma, and while here stationed he was
promoted first sergeant. Later he was with his troop in
Texas, where they were stationed in turn at Fort Brown
and Fort San Antonio, and in 1896 he was sent back
to Fort Reno, as ordnance sergeant at this post. Here
he continued until the expiration of his service in the
army, and since his retirement he has maintained his
residence principally in the city of El Reno. While at
Fort Reno he was sent by the commander of that garrison
to lay off the grounds for the railway station of the
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad at Oklahoma City,
and this duty he discharged with characteristic efficiency
and fidelity.

Within a short time after Oklahoma Territory had been
opened for settlement, Sergeant Lyons filed claim to a
homestead of 160 acres in Canadian County, and this
property he developed into , a fine ranch. For twenty-
five years, while still in active service a portion of the
period in the army, he here devoted attention to the
breeding and raising of registered short-horn cattle,

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1865

and in this field of enterprise he had met with gratify-
ing success long before he disposed of his interests in the
same. His excellent judgment and business sagacity have
conspired to bring to him a comfortable fortune since
his days of active military service, and he is one of the
best known and most popular citizens of Canadian
County, with a wide acquaintanceship also in other parts
of the state.

In 1885 was solemnized the marriage of Sergeant
Lyons to Miss Maggie Cambric, who was born in the City
of Toledo, and she has proved a devoted companion and
helpmeet during their long years of wedded life, the
while she is a popular chatelaine of their attractive home
in El Reno, where they delight to welcome their many
friends. They have no children. They reside in the
Lyons apartment building, a modern building which was
erected and is owned by Sergeant Lyons, who has also
other valuable city real estate in El Reno.

James J. Caviness; M. D. Among the younger gen-
eration of professional men of Jackson County, one who
is rapidly winning success and position is Dr. James J.
Caviness, physician and surgeon, who since 1912 has been
engaged in practice at Headrick. During this time his
skill in diagnosis and his successful treatment of compli-
cated and long standing cases have created a gratifying
demand for his services and laid the foundation of what
promises to be a career of exceptional breadth and use-
fulness.

Doctor Caviness was born at Danville, Yell County,
Arkansas, July 13, 1889, and is a son of R. S. and
Margaret (Costen) Caviness. The Caviness family is of
Seotch-Irish extraction and its members have been pio-
neers of several states in the Union, notably those of
Oklahoma and Texas. R. S. Caviness was born at Paris,
the county seat of Lamar County, Texas, in 1860, and
was there reared and educated. When still a young man
he went to Danville, Arkansas, where he embarked in
business as a merchant, and continued to be so occupied
successfully until 1904, in which year he returned to
Texas and settled at Memphis, where he followed stock
raising for four years. Mr. Caviness came to Oklahoma
in 1908, when he took up his residence at Eldorado, and
since that time has been proprietor of a pharmacy. Mr.
Caviness has shown versatility in his business ventures,
and in each has won a satisfying measure of success
through the exertion of energy and enterprise, good
management and foresight. In political matters he is a
stanch democrat, and in each of the communities in
which he has resided has taken an active part in political
and civic matters, although rather as an influence than
as a seeker for the honors and emoluments of public
office. Throughout his life he has been a member of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, in the work of which he
has taken a helpful part, and at the present time is a
member of the official board of the church at Eldorado.
He is well known in Masonry, belonging to Eldorado
Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons; Eldorado
, Chapter., Royal Arch Masons ; Eldorado Commandery,
Knights Templar, and Consistory No. 1, Valley of Guth-
rie, of the thirty-second degree. While residing at Dan-
ville, Arkansas, Mr. Caviness was united in marriage
with Miss Margaret Costen, who, was born in 1870, in
Georgia, and they have been the parents of five children,
as follows: C. A., who resides at Eldorado, and is asso-
ciated with his father in the conduct of the drug busi-
ness; Dr. James J., of this review; Ruth, who is the wife
of C. A. Hatch, a practicing attorney at Eldorado ;
Naomi, who is the wife of Earl Messersmith, proprietor
of a general merchandise store at Eldorado ; and Baxter,

who resides with his parents and is a student in the
Eldorado High School.

James J. Caviness received the early part of his edu-
cation in the public schools of Danville, Arkansas, and
when fifteen years of age went with the family to
Memphis, Texas, where he completed the studies of the
primary grades. He was graduated from the Memphis
High School in the class of 1907, and following this
began preparing for the medical profession which he had
chosen in his youth as his life work. He eventually
entered Vanderbilt University, of Nashville, Tennessee,
where he pursued a full course of study and was duly
graduated from the medical department with the class
of 1912, and with his newly acquired degree of Doctor
of Medicine settled down to practice at Eldorado, whence
the family had moved. After three months of practice
at that place, Doctor Caviness decided better opportuni-
ties awaited him at Headrick, where he settled September
18, 1912, and where he has since remained in practice,
having offices in the Headrick Drug Store. Doctor
Caviness is thoroughly at home in all branches of his
calling, and carries on a general practice in both medi-
cine and surgery. To a thorough professional equipment,
he adds a kindly and sympathetic manner, a genuine
liking for his calling and a ready adaptation to its multi-
tudinous and exacting demands. He has never ceased to
be a student, passing much of his time in personal
research and investigation, and maintaining membership
in the Jackson County Medical Society, the Oklahoma
State Medical Society and the American Medical Asso-
ciation. While he is a stanch democrat in politics, he has
confined his activities in that direction to casting his
vote, although always eager to add his name to the list
of supporters of any good and progressive movement.
Fraternally, the Doctor is affiliated with Headrick Lodge
No. 311, Free and Accepted Masons, and Headrick Camp
No. 128, Woodmen of the World.

On June 17, 1913, at Nashville, Tennessee, Doctor
Caviness was married to Miss Mary Moore, daughter of
J. T. Moore, who resides at College Grove, Tennessee, and
is a prosperous farmer and stockraiser. One child has
been born to this union : James J., Jr. Doctor and Mrs.
Caviness are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church
and are general favorites in social circles of their home
community. Doctor Caviness expects to locate in Altus
about July 1, 1916.

Millard T. Kirk. Since coming to Oklahoma, in
1906, Millard T. Kirk has taken an active and purpose-
ful participation in the affairs of his adopted community,
where his influence has always been exerted in behalf of
advancement and progress in business and civic life.
For a time he was connected with various mercantile
concerns, and also served acceptably in the capacity of
postmaster of Bartlesville, but since his retirement from
that position has been engaged in general and dairy
farming three miles northwest of the city. He is now
the owner of a valuable and well-improved property, and
is making a decided success of his new venture.

Mr. Kirk is a native son of Kentucky, born at Inez,
the county seat of Martin County, July 6, 1876, a son
of James D. and Mahala (Canfield )Kirk. His father
was born at Wayne, West Virginia, July 31, 1845, and
his mother in Greenup County, Kentucky. James D.
Kirk moved from his West Virginia home to Kentucky
in young manhood, and at the outbreak of the Civil
war enlisted in the Thirty-ninth Kentucky Regiment,
with which he served with valor and bravery for three
years. On his return at the close of hostilities, he
became one of the foremost men of the community of
Inez, and served as county clerk of Martin County for

1866

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

twenty-six years and as county judge for eight years.
He is now living in quiet retirement after a long and
useful career. Mr. Kirk is a republican. Mrs. Kirk
died in 1880, leaving four children, namely: Willa, who
is the wife of Capt. A. Allen, and a resident of Bartles-
ville; Laura, who is the wife of J. P. H. Tinkaus, of
Knoxville, Tennessee; Millard T., of this review; and
Jennie, who is the wife of John P. Algeo, of Bartles-
ville, a merchant.

Millard T., Kirk received his early education in the
public schools of Inez, following which he became a
student in the University of Kentucky, but left that
institution during his junior year, because of poor health.
He soon secured a position with the Triple State Natural
Gas and Oil Company, of Inez, being connected with that
firm for five years, and then established himself in a
general merchandise business at Inez, in which he had
three years of experience. Subsequently he went to West
Virginia in charge of a large mercantile establishment
and remained there three years, and in 1906 came to
Bartlesville, Oklahoma, with John P. Algeo. He remained
with Mr. Algeo as bookkeeper for a short period and then
accepted the position of assistant postmaster under Wil-
liam Higgins, retaining that office for five months and
then resigning to take a position with H. M. Preston,
who is now a resident of Tulsa. Mr. Kirk was appointed
postmaster of Bartlesville, January 27, 1911, and served
very ably in that office until March 15, 1915, when the
change of administration made itself felt by his being
succeeded by a democrat. When he left official life, Mr.
Kirk established himself on his present farm, located on
Butter Creek, three miles north of Bartlesville. Here
he has since carried on general farming and dairying,
lines in which he has already been so successful that his
future prosperity may be safely prophesied. As a busi-
ness man he has always merited the high esteem in which
he has been held by his associates, and his public life
has been above reproach. Since attaining his majority
Mr. Kirk has been a warm supporter of the principles
of the republican party, and he still retains member-
ship in the Methodist Episcopal Church, in the faith
of which he was reared. His fraternal connections are
with the Blue Lodge, Chapter and Commandery of the
Masonic order at Bartlesville, the Shrine at Tulsa, Lodge
No. 1060 of the Benevolent and Protective Order of
Elks, at Bartlesville, of which he is past exalted ruler,
and the Knights of Pythias, in which he is a charter mem-
ber of Bartlesville Lodge.

Mr. Kirk was married December 5, 1906, to Miss
Sarah Cassady, who was born at Inez, Kentucky, a
daughter of Philip Cassady, a merchant and cattleman
of the Bluegrass State. To this union there have been
born five children, namely : Dorothy, Darwin, Eliza-
beth, Rae and Joseph P.

Prank R. Noe came to Eastern Oklahoma some
months after statehood, and by his activity as a mer-
chant and citizen made himself a very popular and
useful factor in Seminole County. Governor Cruce
selected him for a local appointment, and he is now
filling the office of county treasurer, and is giving the
people a systematic and thorough administration of the
fiscal affairs of the county government.

Ancestrally Mr. Noe descends from a French line, but
they have been identified with America for many genera-
tions. Frank R. Noe was born at Pineville, Arkansas,
October 19, 1880, a son of Rev. Frank R. and Serena
(Matthews) Noe. His father was a native of Spring-
field, Missouri, and his mother of Arkansas. Rev. Frank
R. Noe served all through the Civil war as a corporal in
the Confederate Army. After that his active career

was spent as a minister of the Methodist Episcopal
Church South and he was connected with the White River
Conference in Arkansas. He died in 1906, at the age of
sixty, highly honored and respected. The mother of
Frank R. Noe died when he was two years of age at the
age of thirty-five, and he was one of four sons and two
daughters. The father married again and had three
sons and one daughter by the second marriage.

Frank R. Noe lived with his father until he was twenty
years of age, and spent most of his early youth in
school. At the age of twenty he went to Memphis, Ten-
nessee, kept a set of books for the William R. Moore
wholesale dry goods house for eight years, and in 1907
went out to California, participating in the activities of
the mining district for a time, and spending one year in
Los Angeles. From there he came to Seminole County,
Oklahoma, and for some time was associated in general
merchandising business with his brother T. D. Noe, under
the firm name of Noe Brothers. He is still a mer-
chant and one of the prospering men of this section.

In 1912 Governor Cruce appointed him county assessor
of Seminole County, and he was elected to that' office in
1913. In 1914 he was chosen county treasurer, and most
of his time is now given to the duties of that office.

He has been a democrat since casting his first vote,
is affiliated with the Woodmen of the World and the
Modern Woodmen of America, and is loyal to the church
of his father, the Methodist Episcopal South.

On January 1, 1906, Mr. Noe married Miss Cecil Price
of Beebe, Arkansas. She died in 1912, and of her two
children Carroll, seven years old, is with his Grandmother
Price at Little Rock, Arkansas, while Mildred died in
infancy. In December, 1914, at Springfield, Missouri,
Mr. Noe married Phyllis Duncan.

Allen J. Jeter, M. D. Engaged in active general
practice as a physician and surgeon, Doctor Jeter now
holds precedence and priority as the dean of his pro-
fession in the thriving town of Foss, Washita County,
where he established his residence in 1902, no other
physician who was his contemporary in the early years
of practice here being now a citizen of this village, so
that he is the veritable pioneer of his profession here,
his practice being extensive and of representative order —
implying due recognition of his high attainments, effec-
tive ministrations and personal popularity.

The original American progenitors of the Jeter family
were two brothers who emigrated from Denmark in the
colonial era of our national history, one settling in either
North or South Carolina and the other in Virginia, the
one who figures as the ancestor of Doctor Jeter having
been the Carolinian. James Jeter, grandfather of the
Doctor, was a soldier in the War of 1812 and participated
in the battle of New Orleans, under General Andrew
Jackson. He became one of the prominent planters and
slaveholders of Louisiana, and in 1862, after the initial
activities of the Civil war, he sought refuge in Texas, his
death having occurred in Hopkins County, that state,
after he had reached venerable age.

Doctor Jeter was born in Union Parish, Louisiana, on
the 14th of February, 1862, and, his father being at the
time a soldier in the Confederate ranks, the Doctor was
taken by 'his mother and paternal grandfather to the
Lone Star State, the removal to Texas having been made
to escape the perils and ravages incident to the war.
He is a son of Allen W. and Susan (Seale) Jeter, whose
marriage was solemnized in Texas, from which state he
and his wife returned to Union Parish, Louisiana. He
was born at Columbus, Georgia, in 1832, but when he was
very small moved with his parents to the State of
Louisiana, and was reared and educated in that state,
whence, as a young man, he removed to Texas. He was

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1867

a resident of Louisiana at the inception of the Civil war
and promptly tendered his service in defense of the cause
of the Confederate States, his service as a soldier having
continued four years — virtually the entire period of the
great conflict between the South and the North. In 1865,
soon after the close of the war, he established his resi-
dence in Van Zandt County, Texas, where he became a
prosperous agriculturist and stock-grower. He was pre-
paring to establish his home in New Mexico many years
later, and while making a preliminary visit to that
state, which was then a territory, his death there occurred,
in 1907, after he had passed the psalmist’s alotted span
of three score years and ten. His widow, who was born
in 1840, still maintains her home in Van Zandt County,
Texas, she being a devoted member of the Missionary
Baptist Church, of which her husband was an. active mem-
ber for many years prior to his demise. Mr. Jeter par-
ticipated in many engagements during the Civil war, was
wounded and taken prisoner, but after his exchange had
been effected he resumed his service with his old regi-
ment, his interest in his former comrades being per-
petuated in later years through his affiliation with the
United Confederate Veterans. He was for many years
actively affiliated with the Masonic fraternity.

Of the children of Allen W. and Susan (Seale) Jeter
the firstborn is he whose name introduces this article;
Sarah Jane is the wife of Thomas G. Hayden, a pros-
perous farmer and stock-grower of Van Zandt County,
Texas; Mary Elizabeth died at the age of one year;
Rev. Elias D., a clergyman of the Missionary Baptist
Church, is now a resident of Lawton, Oklahoma; Dr.
Thomas M., who was graduated in the Fort Worth
Medical College, is now engaged in the practice of his
profession in the City of Fort Worth, Texas; Minnie is
the wife of James M. Gillian, a farmer of Denton County,
Texas; Ella and her husband, Wm. Comford, are mis-
sionaries in China; Joseph J. is engaged in the drug busi-
ness at Maybank, Texas; and Dr. Drayton, likewise
a physician and surgeon, is engaged in practice at
Murkison, Texas. James and William Jeter, son of the
first marriage of Allen W. Jeter, are representative
agriculturists of Western Texas.

As previously stated, Dr. Allen J. Jeter was an infant
when he was taken by his paternal grandfather to Texas,
where he attended the public schools of Van Zandt Coun-
ty until he had been graduated in the high school. In
consonance with his ambition and well formulated plans
for a future career, he finally entered the Memphis Hos-
pital Medical College, in the City of Memphis, Tennessee,
and in this institution he was graduated as a member of
the class of 1893, with the well earned degree of Doctor
of Medicine. His progressiveness in the line of his pro-
fession has been manifested in the insistent care he has
taken to keep at all times in touch with the advances
made in medical and surgical science, and in this con-
nection it should be noted that in 1895 he completed a
post-graduate course in the New Orleans Polyclinic, and
that in 1904 and 1907 he took effective post-graduate
courses in the Illinois Post Graduate Medical School, in
the City of Chicago.

From 1893 until 1897 Doctpr Jeter was engaged in the
practice of his profession in Ellis County, Texas, and
from the latter year until 1902 he practiced successfully
at Plano, Collin County, that state. In April, 1902, he
established his residence at Foss, Oklahoma, where he has
since continued his able and unremitting service as a
physician and surgeon, with well appointed offices in the
Temple Building. He has been one of the loyal and
progressive citizens who have contributed to the develop-
ment and upbuilding of the village along both civic and
material lines and he is known and honered as one of the
pioneer representatives of his profession in Washita

County, his circle of friends being coincident with that
of his acquaintances. He has served as village health
officer, and he is actively identified with the Washita
County Medical Society, the Oklahoma State Medical
Society and the Southwestern Medical Society. The
Doctor is affiliated with Foss Lodge No. 204, Ancient
Free and Accepted Masons, and also with the local lodge
of the Knights of Pythias. At Clinton, Custer County,
he is the owner of a modern business building, known as
the Jeter Building, and in addition to the ownership of
his attractive residence property in the western part of
Foss he has in his possession a small tract of valuable
land near the village. His political allegiance is given
unreservedly to the democratic party, and both he and
his wife hold membership in the Missionary Baptist
Church.

At Allen, Texas, in 1901, was solemnized the marriage
of Doctor J eter to Miss Anna Spradley, daughter of
James R. Spradley, who still maintains his home at that
place and who is a retired farmer and stockman. Doctor
and Mrs. Jeter have one.child, James Rolater, born July
3, 1908.

J. S. Maytubby. Few men of the Chickasaw coun-
try have had a more picturesque career than J. S. May-
tubby, now a farmer-stockman at Wapanucka, but a
lawyer by profession, long closely identified with the
affairs of the old Chickasaw Nation. Common sense was
a usual trait among members of the old Chickasaw Leg-
islature, and oratory is an attribute of the Indian tribe
that has been manifested in nearly every family that
rose to distinction. But as a rule the leading men were
lacking in an English education and many of them
were unable to correctly frame bills introduced into the
Legislature. It became necessary therefore that the
governor select a draftsman for that important duty of
framing bills. During an administration of Governor
Johnston, Mr. Maytubby was selected for this important
post. He was especially qualified for the work, having
been educated in the Rock Academy at Wapanucka,
Trinity College at Durham, North Carolina, and com-
pleted a course in law at the University of Texas. He
was assisted by a law committee of the Legislature in
the preparation of bills and all measures before intro-
duction had to pass through his hands and the hands
of the law committee. This, however, was not the first
official distinction of Mr. Maytubby in the Chickasaw
Nation, since he filled it after the fortunes of politics
has caused his resignation from the office of superin-
tendent of public instruction, which he filled under the
administration of Governor S. H. Harris, and after he
had served under Governor D. H. Johnston, the succes-
sor of Governor Harris, as auditor of public accounts
of the Chickasaw Nation.

Mr. Maytubby was born of a fullblood father, Tony
Maytubby, and a white mother, Mary Lamb, in what
was then Kiamichi County of the Choctaw Nation, in
the Village of Goodland on the site of which the pres-
ent Town of Hugo stands. Both parents died when he
was a small child, and he has no recollection of them,
neither does he know the year of his birth, but esti-
mates his age as about forty-five. Cast out into the
world an orphan, he was taken in charge by officials of
the Chickasaw Nation and sent to school at Caddo, In-
dian Territory, in an educational institution owned and
controlled by the Chickasaw Nation. Later he attended
Rock Academy, subsequently known as Wapanucka In-
stitute, and while there was a student under Cicero A.
Skeen, who is now superintendent of the State Boys
Training School at Pauls Valley. In 1892 Mr. May-
tubby entered the Trinity College of Durham, North

1868

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Carolina, where he was graduated Ph. B. in 1896. In
the same fall he entered the University of Texas, and
completed his law education there. His career as a
practicing lawyer covers less than ten years. In 1897
he began practice at Tishomingo in partnership with
S. L. Garrett. Mr. Garrett, who was a first cousin of
United States Senator Charles A. Culberson of Texas,
was United States Commissioner at Tishomingo during
the administration of President Cleveland. Later he be-
came a member of the firm of Wolf, Bleakmore & May-
tubby, his partners being Nick Wolf and Willard Bleak-
more, the latter now a member of the Oklahoma Supreme
Court Commission. In 1905 Mr. Maytubby retired from
the practice of law and moved to liis farm near Wa-
panucka, where he has since enjoyed the various inter-
ests of country life and has been very successful in the
raising of fine horses and in the intensive cultivation
of his land.

Mr. Maytubby is a nephew of the noted Peter May-
tubby who was a captain in the Confederate army, and
who during the days of the Dawes Commission repre-
sented the Chickasaw Nation before that body, and sub-
sequently served as an interpreter before the commis-
sion. Peter Maytubby was one of the best informed
men of the Chickasaw country, and assisted the United
States Government in keeping out fraudulent claimants
when the first annuity was paid to these Indians. The
instruction of Peter Maytubby was a means of giving
his nephew a knowledge of many things regarding the
history and traditions of the Indians, but the latter
owing to the fact that his education was obtained in
schools where only English was spoken never learned
to speak the tongue of his father.

In 1903 Mr. Maytubby married Miss Theocjoshia
Kemp of Tishomingo. They have one son, Joel Kemp,
now five years of age. Mr. Maytubby has also one sis-
ter, Mrs. Mary Correll, wife of a farmer-stockman at
Ada, Oklahoma. Mr. Maytubby is a member of the
Methodist Church, belongs to the Johnston County Bar
Association, is a republican in politics, and has been
a leader in public affairs. He has the distinction of
having been elected to first mayor of Tishomingo, and
his election is the more interesting on account of the
fact that he defeated William H. Murray, who was his
rival for the office. Mr. Murray is now a member of
Congress from Oklahoma. Mr. Maytubby has served as
precinct committeeman, as a member of the finance
committee of the state organization, and also as a mem-
ber of the Congressional Committee.

Peter B. France. Twenty years or more ago Peter
B. France was driving over the sparsely settled country
of Eastern Oklahoma selling shoes to the retail mer-
chants. For many years prior to that lie had been a
successful merchant and business man in Missouri. After
a time he and James C. Menifee established the second
mercantile house in Sapulpa.

His many friends and business associates credit Mr.
France with a great deal of the constructive enterprise
which has made Sapulpa one of the leading towns of
Eastern Oklahoma. It is said that he has erected more
buildings and owned more real estate than any other one
individual in the city, and in fact has always been a
leader in everything that affects the welfare of the
community. Few men arrive at the age of three score
and ten with so much constructive accomplishment to
their credit as Mr. France. ,

He was born at Sodus in Wayne County, New York,
April 5, 1844, a son of John and Elizabeth (Bayze)
France. His father was born in Yorkshire, England, and
his mother in Lincolnshire, where both were reared and

married. His father was a mechanic in the cotton mills
in England until he came to the United States, and he
also worked at his trade in Wayne County, New York,
but finally bought a farm and followed agriculture until
he retired. After the death of his wife and after some
of his children had gone to Missouri he joined them
there, and died there at the age of fifty-nine. He was
first a whig and afterwards a republican, but was more
interested in church affairs than in politics, being a
member of the Methodist denomination. His wife died
in New York at the age of forty-t.wo, and she was also
a Methodist. There were six children. Thomas B., a
Methodist minister, is now living retired at Long Beach,
California. John H., who died at Grant City, Missouri,
at the age of forty-two, was a Union soldier in the One
Hundred and Sixtieth New York Volunteers, was
wounded at Port Hudson and was an officer in the Vet-
eran Reserve until the close of the war. In 1866 he
established his business enterprise at Grant City, Mis-
souri, was in the furniture trade, and six months later
was joined by his younger brother Peter, and after a few
years they established a partnership in the merchandise
business, and also in the buying and shipping of stock.
The third child in the family is Peter B. France. The
daughter Mary, who married Dr. J. H. Housser, died at
the age of twenty-two. Fannie after her sister’s death
married Dr. J. H. Housser and she died at the age of
thirty-two. Anna C. married J. T. Rothwell, and she is
now living at Long Beach, California.

Peter B. France grew up on the old farm in Wayne
County, New York, and gained a public school education.
In 1866, at the age of twenty-two, he moved out to Grant
City, Missouri, and joined his brother John. Grant City
at that time was sixty-five miles from the nearest rail-
road point at St. Joseph. For about two years he was
associated with a physician in the drug business and
then opened a stock of general merchandise. After about
four years his brother John joined him as a partner, and
the latter exercised his energies in buying and shipping
live stock, while Peter France managed the store. In
that comparatively early day there were no banks, and
the patrons of their store not only bought goods there
but left all their surplus currency for safe keeping. Both
brothers were men of absolute integrity and thorough
business men in every respect. Consequently their enter-
prise prospered and was expanded by the addition of four
other stores, two located in Iowa and three in Missouri.
Mr. Peter France had active supervision of all the stores,
and the partners also bought and shipped stock on an
extensive scale. After the death of his brother Peter
France abandoned the live stock business and in 1888
sold out his mercantile interests in Northwest Missouri,
realizing over $50,000. He had loaned money extensively
and had done much to build up that section of the
country.

In 1888 he moved to Southern Missouri and engaged
in merchandising, mining and the reduction of lead and
zinc, with headquarters at Aurora. Closing out his busi-
ness affairs in 1893, he went on the road selling shoes in
Missouri, Oklahoma and Indian Territory. It was then
that he drove so extensively over Oklahoma and became
acquainted with the country. He had a wagon and team
and a driver, and sometimes they camped out under the
wagon at night. He was very successful as a salesman,
and finally established a permanent business at Clare-
more, but a year later moved his stock to Sapulpa and
formed the partnership already mentioned with J. C.
Menifee. They conducted this second store for about
three years. Mr. France then bought ten acres in what
is now the residence part of Sapulpa, dissolved partner-
ship with Mr. Menifee, and began the development, buy-

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1869

ing and trading of real estate. He has been the chief
factor in building up the real estate interests of Sapulpa,
and at the present time is reputed to own property worth
fully $100,000. He also built the France Hotel at
Sapulpa.

In 1872 Mr. France married Anna V. Lucas, a daugh-
ter of Judge B. F. Lucas, a prominent attorney of Pitts-
burg, Pennsylvania, where Mrs. France was reared and
educated and where she lived until- her marriage. Mrs.
France was a woman of many domestic virtues and much
social talent, and founded the chapter of the Eastern
Star at Sapulpa, and was also active in church affairs.
Her death occurred December 2, 1912. There were three
children: Bessie, Alberta and Fannie. The daughter

Bessie married V. R. Bryan, and left four children
named Curtis, France, Hazel and Vaughn, Jr. Alberta,
who died when about twenty-live years of age, as the wife
of John Gregory, left one daughter Margaret. Fannie E.
is the wife of W. J. Briscoe, a Sapulpa merchant, and
has one son named Jackson France Briscoe.

Mr. France has always voted the republican ticket but
has had no aspirations for public office, though in his
private capacity and as a business man has done a great
deal for the public welfare. While living in Grant City,
Missouri, he took his degrees in Odd Fellowship and
helped organize the lodge of Odd Fellows at Sapulpa.
He is active in the Methodist Episcopal Church, as was
his wife.

Rufus R. Seat. The present editor and proprietor
of the Oklahoma Ledger at Sterling has had a long and
varied career in the states of Oklahoma and Texas, was
one of the early settlers in Pottawatomie County, Okla-
homa, more than twenty years ago, and has at different
times been a farmer, rancher, preacher and editor. He
is one of the strong men of his community, and conducts
his paper for the . enlightenment of the community.

Born in Van Zandt County, Texas, November 25, 1857,
lie comes of an old North Carolina family, which was
transplanted from Ireland in the early days by his
great-grandfather, Austin Seay, who spent the rest of his
days in North Carolina. Richard Anderson Seay, father
of Rufus R., was born in North Carolina in 1823, went
to Georgia in 1827, and in 1849 became one of the
pioneers in Anderson County, Texas. In 1851 he removed
to Van Zandt County, where he owned an extensive
farm, partly in that county and partly across the line
in Henderson County, and in 1866 in removing his home
from one part of the farm to the other, became a resi-
dent of Henderson County. He finally removed to Kauf-
man County, Texas, in 1897, and died there in 1898. He
was a fine type of the early farmer and stock man who
developed the resources of those East-central Texas
counties. He was a member of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, of the Masonic fraternity, and during the war
between the states gave several years of service to the
Confederate side, serving first in the Sixth Texas Cavalry
arid later being transferred to other commands.-- Richard
A. Seay married Moisey Ellen Delaney, who was born
in Georgia in 1826 and died in Comanche County, Texas,
in 1907. The first four of their children, John, Mary,
James and Frances, are now deceased; Ann Eliza first
married James Cavitt, a farmer, now deceased, and her
present husband is John Steele, and they live in Western
Texas on a farm ; the sixth in age is Rufus R. ; Richard
Jefferson is a farmer and stockman in Motley County,
Texas; Vernon Virginia has been lost track of by his
family; Ida is the wife of Leslie Stallings, a grocer at
Childress, Texas; Robert is a hotel proprietor in Cali-
fornia; Thomas is a civil engineer with home near

Marfa, Texas ; and George W., the twelfth of the family,
is a rancher in New Mexico.

Rufus R. Seay attained his early education in the
country schools of Henderson County, Texas. The first
eighteen years of his life were spent on his father ’s farm,
following which he was employed at farming and ranch-
ing in Erath County, Texas, for a period of eighteen
years, which brings his career down to 1893. In that
year he moved to Oklahoma and became a resident of
Pottawatomie County soon after it was opened to settle-
riient. While there he was a farmer, and was also a
minister of the Missionary Baptist Church, with which
denomination he has long been identified, and in its
ministry has performed a great amount of valuable
service. In 1904 Mr. Seay removed to Cement in Caddo
County, Oklahoma, and continued farming and preaching
there and in that vicinity until August, 1913. At that
date he acquired complete ownership of the Oklahoma
Ledger at Sterling, the former proprietor having been
W. R. Key. The Ledger was established in 1905, is con-
ducted independent in politics, has a circulation in
Comanche, Caddo, Grady and neighboring counties, and
Mr. Seay has continued it as a wholesome and attractive
journal furnishing a good news and advertising service
to its patronage and locality. He has also recently
purchased the Cement Courier, at Cement, Caddo County,
Oklahoma, which he is publishing on the same principle
as the Ledger, and which was established in 1902.

Mr. Seay is a democrat in politics, and while living
in Pottawatomie County served as a member of the
school board. He takes much interest in fraternal affairs
and is a past master by service of Cement Lodge No.
297, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons; past grand
chaplain of Oklahoma Ancient Free and Accepted
Masons; a member of Chickasaw Chapter, Royal Arch
Masons; is past grand of Cement Lodge No. 272, Inde-
pendent Order of Odd Fellows; a member of Purity
Lodge No. 113 of the Order of Rebekahs at Sterling; and
Cement Camp No. 129 of the Woodmen of the World.

While living in Erath County, Texas, in 1874, Mr.
Seay married Miss Dona Smith, who died in that county
in 1883. There were three children by this marriage:
John Anderson, who is a farmer in Bryan County, Okla-
homa; Thomas Newton, a farmer near Gorman, Comanche
County, Texas; and Henry Harrison, who died in infancy.
In 1884 Mr. Seay was married in Erath County to Nancy
Henderson, whose father was the late James Henderson,
an Erath County farmer. The home of Mr. and Mrs.
Seay has been blessed with the birth of ten children:
Nancy Ellen, wife of George S. Bradley, a farmer in
Seminole County, Oklahoma ; James Richard, who is con-
nected with a cement plant in Grady County, Okla-
homa; Oscar Reagan, who lives in Cement; Effie, at
home; Ethel, who performs the typing service for her
father in the newspaper office ; Alice, living at Cement ;
Lena, at home; Lea, a twin sister of Lena, died in
infancy; William Arvel and George, who are still in the
public schools at Sterling.

Walter F. Leard. Thirty years ago the Choctaw
Indians enjoyed a leisure that was not enforced or re-
strained. It was of the same nature as that which
had been the portion of their forefathers and which they
believed they had been sent to the Indian Territory to
enjoy continuously. It was not a perpetual leisure, for
the Indians were fairly prosperous with their herds and
with their little patches of maize and vegetables. They
had not been contaminated by money, nor was the desire
for money a hindrance to their social life. Mission-
aries had been among them and taught them the Chris-
tian religion, with the result that their communal inter-

1870

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

ests advanced to a stage that their forebears had not
known. Their idleness was an innate attribute and
extravagances were unknown among them. Among their
chief pastimes was Indian ball, a game peculiar to the
Choctaws and Chickasaws. It was within this period that
Walter Fitzgerald was born in the Indian Village of
Pocola, County of Skulliville, Choctaw Nation, and his
early recollections touch no happier scenes than those
pertaining to witnessing and participating in the Indian
ball games. He recalls one that took place between
teams representing Skulliville and San Boise counties
and which was one of the last of the great games between
Choctaw counties. The game was played within a few
hundred yards of the Leard home and it was attended
by several hundred persons, some of whom came from
points from forty to fifty miles distant. Elias Thomas,
of a well known Choctaw family, was captain of the
San Boise team, and Eobert Chubby, a Methodist ex-
horter, was captain of the Skulliville team. J. W. Le-
Elore, a deputy United States marshal, of Choctaw blood,
led the parade in which the Skulliville team indulged
before the game began, but this advance exhibition,
while it may have excited inspiration, was not sufficient
to win the game, for the San Boise team carried away
the honors. For a good many years there existed among
the people of San Boise County an interesting and inno-
cent feeling of superiority over their neighbors of Skulli-
ville County.

While this incident illustrates, as forcibly as anything
can, the pleasures of Choctaw life in that period, its
recalling also brings to mind that it was about that
time that the Indians experienced their first money con-
tamination. Each member of the tribe was paid the
sum of $103 out of the Choctaw funds in the hands of
the United States Government. So large an amount of
money had never before been in circulation in the
Choctaw Nation. Unfortunately for the Indians, this dis-
tribution brought into their domain many white men
of questionable character and motives. Some of these
men brought spirituous and intoxicating liquors, knowing
the weakness of the Indian for strong drink, and others
came for the purpose of getting hold of as much as
possible of the large sums of money which the Indians
had received. There are men in the Choctaw Nation
who have lived there forty to fifty years and who
declare that the retrogression of the Choctaws began
with that period. Young bucks bought ponies and sad-
dles, bright blankets, hickory-bark bridles, Winchester
rifles and other types of firearms. They decorated their
horses and saddles with vividly colored ribbons and rode
promiscuously over the wide ranges. They imbibed
freely of ‘ ‘ bootleg ’ ’ liquors and many of them became
intoxicated for the first time. Their sprees lasted for
several days and made beasts of them for the time being.

That these two extremes of life among his people
should come within the early recollections of Walter F.
Leard is a striking point in Choctaw annals, for he is
only of thirty-second degree Choctaw blood and has
an unprejudiced comprehension of Indian affairs. His
father, James Thomas Leard, had settled in Skulliville
County when a youth and had there married Cora
McCarty, of the Choctaw tribe. Mrs. Leard is a daughter
of Eobert S. McCarty, who was a native of Georgia and
a pioneer in Texas. At the time of the Mexican troubles
in Texas Mr. McCarty came into the Indian Territory,
where for several months he was quartered with the
United States soldiers at old Fort Towson, one of the
early frontier posts. Continuing his residence in the
Choctaw Nation for many years, Mr. McCarty was for
twenty-seven consecutive years a Sunday school superin-

tendent at Kavanaugh, across the line in the State of
Arkansas.

Walter F. Leard was born in the year 1882, and his
rudimentary educational training was received in the
Pine Log School, on Owl Creek, where his first teacher
was Mr. Sinclair, who later became a physician and
engaged in the practice of his profession in the Choctaw
Nation. Mr. Leard continued to attend the local schools
until he had attained to the age of eighteen years, after
which he was for one year a student in Spencer Acad-
emy. He then entered Jones Academy, under the ad-
ministration of Superintendent W. B. Butts, who had
previously been his instructor in Spencer Academy,
though the principal teacher had been Spencer Gabe
Parker, who is now commissioner to the Five Civilized
Tribes. In Jones Academy Mr. Leard was a schoolmate
of W. F. Semple, now an Indian probate attorney under
the Department of the Interior, with headquarters at
Durant, Bryan County; W. E. McIntosh, now of McAles-
ter, who was mining trustee of the Choctaw Nation
under the administration of Principal Chief V. M.
Locke, Jr. ; and others who have become representative
men in business and professional life. After leaving
Jones Academy Mr. Leard assumed a position in the
office of John D. Benedict, superintendent of education
for the Five Civilized Tribes, and there he remained
three years. In 1908 he engaged in farming near Durant,
where he continued operations one year. In 1909 he
entered the employ of the Caylor Lumber Company, and
in 1913 he was transferred to the new and thriving Town
of Fort Towson, where he has since continued his
effective service as manager of the company’s extensive
business in this section of Choctaw County and where
he is a popular and representative factor in business
circles and known as a loyal and progressive citizen.
He is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity and the
Woodmen of the World, and both he and his wife hold
membership in the Baptist Church. Mr. Leard ’s parents
are still living and their other children are: Joseph N.,

who is engaged in the lumber business at San Jose,
Texas; Andrew J., who is a prosperous agriculturist and
stock grower at McCurtain, Haskell County, Oklahoma;
Eobert E. and Terry T., who are representative farmers
near Hugo, Choctaw County; Mrs. Helen Davis, whose
husband is a prominent business man at Stigler, Haskell
County; and Miss Laura and Wheeler E. Leard, who
remain at the parental home, in Hugo, the judicial center
of Choctaw County.

In May, 1907, was solemnized the marriage of Walter
F. Leard to Miss Winena Eoss, of Durant, her father
having been one of the early missionaries among the
Choctaw Indians; Mr. and Mrs. Leard are popular fac-
tors in the social activities of their home community and
are the parents of one son, Eoss, who was born in the
year 1908.

Elmer Harold Dodd. The receiving and disbursing
of all the public moneys and revenues of a county entails
the possession of executive ability of more than ordinary
character by the incumbent of the office, but, further
than this, he must possess also the absolute confidence of
the public, the faith in his integrity and character that
may be built up only through a life of probity and
honorable dealing. Elmer Harold Dodd, treasurer of
Dewey County, has gained his office through the pos-
session of the qualities named. It has been his fortune
to have succeeded in public life as he has in business
affairs; in each avenue of endeavors his name has been
synonymous with straightforward transactions with his
fellow men and energetic and well-directed effort.

Mr. Dodd is a Kansan by nativity, born at Burrton,

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1871

Harvey County, August 7, 1883, a son of Charles D. and
Lucy E. (Lancett) Dodd. His family is an old and
honored one, of Seotch-Irish descent, which was founded
in America in colonial times and subsequently moved to
Indiana, where the great-grandfather of Elmer H. Dodd
was a pioneer settler and for many years a farmer.
Joseph Dodd, his grandfather, was born in 1826, in
Indiana, and there grew to manhood, receiving a com-
mon school education and early learning the trade of
carpenter. He followed this vocation, in connection with
farming, until the opening of the Civil war, when he en-
listed in an Indiana volunteer infantry regiment and
served therewith four years as a private in the Union
army. Returning to Indiana, he continued to be occupied
in the same way for several years, when he decided to
try his fortunes in the West and accordingly moved
to Harvey County, Kansas. He located there on a farm,
to the cultivation of which he devoted his attention,
although he was engaged also at times as a carpenter,
erecting a number of the early structures of that com-
munity. His death occurred there in 1914.

Charles D. Dodd was born in Indiana in 1858 and was
still a youth when he accompanied his parents to
Harvey County, Kansas, where he completed his edu-
cation, grew up as a farmer boy, and was married. At
the time of his marriage, he turned his attention to
mercantile lines, establishing himself in the retail fur-
niture business, as a merchant at Burrton. In 1890 he
removed to Hutchinson, Kansas, where he became fore-
man in the salt works, and in 1895 became a pioneer of
Dewey County, Oklahoma, where he took up a homestead
of 160 acres in Sickle township, a beautiful tract of land
which he still owns. When he came to Oklahoma he had
practically nothing, his business ventures not having
met with a very gratifying success up to that time,
but in the field of agriculture he soon began to accumu-
late a handsome property, and at this time is the owner
of 700 acres of land in Dewey and Roger Mills counties.
This land is practically all under a state of cultivation
and is improved with substantial buildings and modern
equipment of all kinds. In 1903 Mr. Dodd again entered
the mercantile business, starting a furniture establish-
ment at Thomas, Oklahoma. This he conducted until
1914, when he sold out and came to Roll, his present
home. Mr. Dodd bears an excellent reputation in busi-
ness circles and as a citizen has shown himself capable,
energetic and public-spirited. He maintains an inde-
pendent position in regard to politics, is a devout mem-
ber of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and is fraternally
connected with the Masons. Mr. Dodd was married in
Harvey County, Kansas, to Miss Lucy E. Lancett, who
was born in 1863, in Indiana, and who is also a member
of the Methodist Episcopal Church and active in its
work. They have been the parents of six children, as
follows: William C., who is engaged in the life insurance
business at Thomas, Oklahoma; Elmer Harold, of this
notice; Roy, who resides at Oakwood, Oklahoma, and
is the proprietor of a hardware business; Ray, twin
to Roy, who is a chiropraetitioner of Elk City, Okla-
homa; Charles, Jr., who resides at Canton, Oklahoma,
and is a general merchant ; and Bertha, who is the wife
of G. W. Eord and resides on the old family homestead
farm in Dewey County.

Elmer Harold Dodd attended the public schools of
Hutchinson, Kansas, and went to school at Burrton,
Kansas, in 1895-6, in April of the latter year coming to
his parents’ homestead in Dewey County, Oklahoma.
There he continued to pursue his studies in the little log
school house until he was sixteen years of age, and then,
until he was nineteen, devoted his energies to assisting
his father in the cultivation and development of the
home place. Mr. Dodd was married in 1903, at King-
voi. y— 8

fisher, Oklahoma, to Miss Grace M. Thrush, daughter of
Charles B. Thrush, a pioneer homesteader of Dewey
County, Oklahoma, who now resides on his farm near
Putnam. Three children have been born to Mr. and
Mrs. Dodd: Cecil, born November 16, 1903; Vera, born
August 16, 1905; and Carroll, born in November, 1907,
all attending the Taloga public schools.

For one year after his marriage, Mr. Dodd continued
to be engaged in farming, then turning his attention to
railroading. Nine months, in 1905 and 1906, convinced
him that he did not care for a career as a railroad man,
and he accordingly resigned his position and accepted a
clerkship in the grocery store of Ogden Brothers, at
Thomas. Later he went to Oakwood, Oklahoma, where
he -was employed in the general store of E. L. Porter,
former county treasurer of Dewey, and in 1908 became
manager of Burt Groves’ general store. 'After two years
he was made head salesman for Mr. Groves, in the store
at Canton, but after one year, in 1911, returned to the
pursuits of the soil, being engaged in farming in Harri-
son Township, Dewey County, for one year. He then
resumed his connection with mercantile affairs, being
with Keller’s Hardware Store at Oakwood for a short
time and then again with E. L. Porter, at Oakwood, and
in August, 1912, purchased Mr. Porter’s interest in the
establishment and continued to be engaged in the mer-
cantile business on his own account until selling out in
June, 1914. In the fall of that year he was elected
county treasurer and assumed charge of the duties of
that office July 1, 1915, for a period of two years.
A republican in his political views, for a number of
years he has been interested in public affairs, having
served both on the school board and as a member of
the council at Oakwood. With his family he belongs to
the Christian Church, where he is a chorister. Mr. Dodd
is possessed of much musical talent, and was a member
of the first band ever organized in Dewey County, at
Butte, Oklahoma, playing at the various county fair
in the early days under the leadership of his uncle,
Andrew Lancett of Chicago, who now resides at Clinton,
Oklahoma, and is a grain buyer. He belongs ot the
A. H. T. A., and is fraternally affiliated with Oakwood
Lodge No. 386, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and
Putnam Lodge No. 89, Independent Order of Odd Fel-
lows, of which he is past vice grand.

Alva Ltjm McDonald. Among the men who have
lent practical encouragement to agricultural interests,
and who have also taken an active part in business
affairs and the struggles of the political arena, Alva
Lum McDonald has been numbered since 1901. Coming
here a stranger, he soon won the esteem and respect of
all with whom his business brought him into contact,
and from that time to the present his popularity has
steadily increased. In addition to farming and stock-
raising, Mr. McDonald is extensively engaged in the real
estate business at El Reno, and has been entrusted with
important positions as one of the foremost members of
the progressive party in Oklahoma.

A. L. McDonald was born at Curdsville, Daviess
County, Kentucky, September 16, 1876, and is a son of
Hiram C. and Sarah Catherine (Brogan) McDonald, the
former a native of Curdsville, Kentucky, and the latter
of the State of Tennessee. The great-grandfather of
Mr. McDonald was the founder of the family in Amer-
ica, coming, as the name would suggest, from Scotland,
and settling in Virginia. From this source this branch
of the family scattered throughout Virginia and Ken-
tucky, in which state the name is still well known. All
of Mr. McDonald’s male relatives, including his father,
served as Confederate soldiers during the Civil war,

1872

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

some of them fighting throughout that struggle with
Gen. Joe Wheeler.

The public schools of his native locality on Panther
Creek furnished Alva L. McDonald with his early edu-
cation, and this was subsequently supplemented by at-
tendance at Hartford (Kentucky) College, from which
he was graduated in the class of 1894. He no doubt in-
herited the military spirit which sent his father and
others into battle, for when the Spanish-Ameriean war
came on he offered his services to the volunteer army
and was accepted. When that struggle was finished he
took part in putting down the Filipino rebellion, and
while thus engaged was under the brave General Wheeler,
with whom members of the family had fought in the
Civil war. He had at first been a member of the
Seventh California Volunteers, but after a few months
was transferred to the Thirty -first United States Volun-
teer Infantry, serving in Luzon and Mindanao Islands
altogether for thirty-seven months. During the time he
was at Mindanao he served ten months as military
postmaster.

On his return from the Philippine Islands Mr. McDon-
ald located at El Reno, Oklahoma, where he had drawn
a farm at the opening of the Kiowa and Comanche
drawing at El Reno in 1901. He resided on this prop-
erty for two years, and then moved to the city of El
Reno and entered actively into the real estate business,
buying and selling farm lands principally on his own
account.

In 1905 Mr. McDonald was elected a member of the
El Reno City Council, and during his two years served
as president of that body. During the administration
of President Roosevelt, Mr. McDonald was clerk of the
Third District Federal Court of Alaska, stationed at
Fairbanks, for two years, under Judge Silas H. Reed.
From the time that he had come to Oklahoma Mr.
McDonald had always been an active republican and a
dutiful worker for his party. In 1912 he was a delegate
from this state to the Chicago convention, and when the
break came, he joined the Roosevelt forces and returned
home to do untiring work for the cause of the new
progressive party. He was elected chairman of the
state committee of the new organization, and prosecuted
a vigorous campaign for his ideal candidate, the indomi-
table Colonel. He served as chairman of the state
committee of the progressive party for two years, hand-
ing over to his successor the party organization in the
state in the best possible shape attainable under the
adverse circumstances under which he was compelled to
work. These services cost Mr. McDonald many hundred
hard-earned dollars.

At El Reno, Oklahoma, November 27 (Thanksgiving
Day), 1903, Mr. McDonald was united in marriage with
Miss Scottie Belle Barker, daughter of Beverly R. and
Eliza (Eaton) Barker, both natives of Virginia. Mrs.
McDonald’s father and practically all her male relatives
were Confederate soldiers during the Civil war. To Mr.
and Mrs. McDonald there have been born two children:
Vinita Mary, born February 16, 1905; and Alva Fergu-
son, born December 9, 1906. Mr. McDonald is a member
of the local lodge of the Benevolent and Protective
Order of Elks, in which he has numerous friends, as he
has also in business and public life. Mr. and Mrs.
McDonald are consistent members of and active workers
in the First Christian Church of El Reno.

Ora O. Dawson, M. D. Oklahoma is one of the young-
est of the commonwealths of the Union and yet its age
is sufficient to have enabled it to claim as representative
figures in its business and professional ranks not a few
ambitious young men who have been reared and educated

within its borders. Such au one is Doctor Dawson, who
is the only physician and surgeon engaged in practice at
Wayne, McClain County, and who has gained secure
prestige as one of the able and successful representatives
of his profession in this section of the state.

Doctor Dawson is a scion of staunch Scotch ancestry
and the family was founded in America in the colonial
era of our national history. His grandfather, Thomas
Benoni Dawson, was born in Virginia, in 1804, was a
gallant soldier in the Mexican war, became one of the
pioneer farmers and stock-growers of the State of Iowa,
and passed the closing period of his life at Long Beach,
California, where he died in 1905, at the remarkable age
of somewhat more than 100 years. His ancestors settled
in Virginia in an early day, upon their immigration from
Scotland, and the name has been worthily linked with the
annals of American history during the long intervening
years, as one generation has followed another on to the
stage of life’s activities.

Doctor Dawson was born near Sherman, Texas, on the
26th of March, 1884, and has been a resident of Okla-
homa since he was a lad of about eight years. He is a
son of William and Lucretia (Moorman) Dawson, the
former of whom was born in Iowa, in 1840, and the latter
in Ohio, in 1845. William Dawson was reared to man-
hood in the Hawkeye State, where his early experiences
were those gained under the conditions and influences of
the early pioneer days. After his marriage he removed
to Nebraska, later resided for a time in Kansas, and in
1881 he removed with his family to Grayson County,
Texas, near Sherman, where he remained until 1892,
when he came to Oklahoma Territory and established his
residence at Guthrie. Since 1906 he has maintained his
home in the vicinity of Wanette, Pottawatomie County,
where he is a prosperous agriculturist and stock raiser.
He is a republican in politics and is a veteran of the
Civil war, in which he gave valiant service as a member
of an Iowa regiment of volunteer infantry. He and his
wife have an attractive home in the state of their adop-
tion and are numbered among the sterling pioneer citi-
zens of Oklahoma. Of their children Doctor Dawson of
this review is the youngest; Thomas B. is a progressive
farmer near Wanette; Ollie, who is deceased, was the
wife of John Williams, who is still engaged in farming
near Wanette; William W. is a successful agriculturist
of the same locality ; Charles T. is engaged in the lumber
business at Luther, Oklahoma County ; LeRoy is a farmer
near Wanette; Lucy is the wife of William Van Meter,
a farmer near the City of Guthrie; and John is another
of the progressive agriculturists of Pottawatomie
County.

The rudimentary education of Doctor Dawson was ac-
quired in Texas and, as already noted, he was about eight
years of age at the time of the family removal, to .Okla-
homa, where he was enabled to continue his studies in the
public schools of the City of Guthrie until he had com-
pleted a course in the high school, in which he was grad-
uated in 1906. For a year thereafter he gave his atten-
tion to the buying of cotton and he finally entered the
medical department of the University of Oklahoma, in
which he was graduated as a member of the class of
1912 and from which he received his degree of Doctor of
Medicine. He soon afterward established his residence
at Wayne, where he has since continued in active general
practice and where he has gained distinctive success,
besides holding secure place in the confidence and esteem
of the community and standing forth as a progressive
and public-spirited citizen. The doctor is a member of
the Oklahoma State Medical Society and the McClain
County Medical Society and of two Greek letter fraterni-
ties, Beta Theta Pi and Phi Beta Pi. He is also a mem-

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1873

ber of Wayne Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd
Fellows. His political allegiance is given to the republi-
can party, but he has no desire to enter the arena of prac-
tical politics, as he deems his profession worthy of his
undivided attention. The doctor is still a bachelor.

Dr. P. G. Murray. Six years ago Dr. P. G. Murray
came to Thomas, Oklahoma, and engaged in medical
practice. He has been here occupied in a professional
way since that time. He came as a young physician,
with some more than four years of actual practice behind
him, but his record here has been highly creditable to
him and to the medical fraternity. He is well established
in Thomas and enjoys a pleasing popularity. Doctor
Murray was born in Sedgewiekville, Missouri, on March
9, 1880, and he is a son of H. J. Murray, born in Bollinger
County, Missouri, in 1845. The senior Murray is now a
resident of Thomas, having come here in the year 1913,
after his retirement from his lifelong business as a
farmer and stockman in his native county.

The Murray family is one that has long been established
on American soil. It is of Scottish origin, and three
brothers, Bennett, William and James, came together
to these shores in early Colonial days, settling in North
Carolina, where many of the name will be found today.
The ancestor of the subject was Bennett Murray, and
Doctor Murray has a brother named in his honor.

H. J. Murray was born and reared in Bollinger County,
Missouri, and when the war broke out in 1861 he enlisted
from his county, serving two years in the Union army.
He was taken prisoner, but was exchanged after several
months of prison life, and returned to his home to
recuperate from the effects of that unfortunate experi-
ence. He married Sarah Dunlap, who was born in Perry
County, Missouri, in 1849, and they became the parents
of a large family of fourteen children, named as fol-
lows: Morris, now deceased; Bennett, a merchant, living
in Independence, Oklahoma; James, a farmer and teacher,
living near Thomas, Oklahoma; Charles, a farmer and
teacher, living near Marquard, Missouri; the fifth child
died in infancy; Anna married Bobert Vance, and they
live in Thomas, Oklahoma; Dr. P. G. was the seventh
born; Travis lives in Pittsburg, Kansas; Bay, a farmer,
lives in Thomas, Oklahoma; John died in infancy; Levi
lives in Waurika, Oklahoma, and is a graduate of Barnes
Medical College, now in practice in Waurika; Mary
married Emil Mabuce, a farmer of Marquard, Missouri;
David, a teacher, lives in Thomas with his father; Lew
also lives at home.

Doctor Murray attended the public schools in Sedge-
wiekville, Missouri, and he was graduated from the high
school there in 1896. He then entered the Marvin Colle-
giate Institute, in Fredericktown, Missouri, and continued
there for two years, after which he engaged in teaching,
and for three years thereafter he was employed in the
public schools in Bollinger County. In the spring .of
1899 he went to Custer County, Oklahoma, where he
taught school for a year, and in 1901 he entered Barnes
Medical College in St. Louis, from which he was gradu-
ated in 1905 with the degree M. D. Since that time
Doctor Murray has returned on several occasions for
clinics and post-graduate work, supplementary to a very
complete medical training, so that he is well equipped
for the work he has chosen. Doctor Murray first began
practice in Patton, Missouri, and he continued there in
practice until April 4, 1909, when he took up his residence
in Thomas, Oklahoma, and has here been located ever
since, with offices in the B. & H. drug store.

Doctor Murray is a member of the county, state and
American Medical societies, and aside from his regular
practice he is examining physician for the Pacific Mutual,

the Bankers Beserve, the Midland, the Oklahoma National,
the Mid-Continent a'nd the Merchants Life Insurance
companies. He is also serving in the same capacity
the Modern Woodmen of America, the Boyal Neighbors
and the Brotherhood of American Yeomen. He served
the City of Patton in the office of health physician while
practicing there, and has given the same service to
Thomas. He is a republican. A member of the Methodist
Church, Doctor Murray is serving that body as a steward
and trustee. His fraternal affiliations are with the
Modern Woodmen and the Yeomen, and he is an alumnus
of Barnes Medical College. He is a member of the
Thomas Chamber of Commerce, and has taken an active
part in municipal affairs since identifying himself with
the community.

On July 27, 1905, Doctor Murray was married in
Yount, Missouri, to Miss Ellen Heitman, daughter of
William Heitman, a prominent miller and farmer of
Yount. They have two children: David William, born
May 3, 1906, and Mary Jane, born August 24, 1907.

Thomas J. Palmer. Of those who pioneered into the
Strip country of Oklahoma in 1893, it is doubtful if
there has been a more energetic and influential and
useful citizen than Thomas J. Palmer, whose local work
has identified him particularly with the Town of Med-
ford in Grant County, but whose influence in polities,
in the prohibition movement, and in all movements for
uplift and betterment, has helped to make the texture
of Oklahoma life what it is today.

It will be recalled that the famous run at the opening
of the Cherokee Strip was made on Saturday. On the
following Tuesday, September 19th, Thomas J. Palmer
arrived from Hutchinson, Kansas. He had since 1887
lived in Kansas, chiefly at Meade. He has had a long
and versatile career. For a number of years he lived in
Iowa, and went from Mason City in that state to Kansas.
During the twenty-two years of his Iowa residence he
was a school teacher for six years and the rest of his
time an active newspaper man. While it would be
impossible to classify Mr. Palmer by any one vocation
or line of activity in Medford, he has longest been
identified with the newspaper profession in this and
other states.

Thomas J. Palmer was born at Port Perry, Canada,
February 6, 1847. While both he and his father were
natives of Canada, earlier ancestors were from the
United States. His great-grandfather was Ebenezer
Palmer, said to be a direct descendant of one of the
Mayflower Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony. Ebenezer
Palmer seems to have been a frontiersman, and spent
much of his life in the then Far West. Stephen Palmer,
grandfather of the Oklahoma citizen, was a native of
Pennsylvania and went from that state to Canada, where
he did some pioneering on his own account in the
Canadian woods. Stephen Palmer married Abigail Jones,
who was of German descent. Their children were David,
Thomas, Henry, Joseph, Elizabeth and Amanda.

Thomas Palmer, father of Thomas J., was also a
native of Canada, was a shoemaker by trade, spent his
life in that vocation and in the cooperage business. He
alone among all the children of Stephen Palmer came to
the United States. He located in Iowa, where he farmed
and conducted a store, and his death occurred at What-
cheer, Iowa. It was in 1865 that he brought his family
to the United States. He was an Adventist in religion
and a member of the sect known as ‘ ‘ Millerites. ’ ’
Thomas Palmer married Catherine McVay. She also
died and is buried at Whatcheer, Iowa. She was a
native of Canada, and had in her veins the blood of
Irish, German and Scotch, while her husband was both

1874

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

English and German, so that their children possessed
an unusual mingling of those substantial ancestral stocks
which have had most to do with the settlement and
development of the New World. Thomas and Catherine
Palmer were the parents of the following children :
Daniel D., who is noted as the founder and originator of
the science of chiropractic, and he founded a school for
the propagation of the art at Davenport, Iowa, though
he died in Los Angeles, California, October 20, 1914,
leaving a family of three children: Thomas J. Palmer

is the second in age; Lucinda is married and lives at
Plattsmouth, Nebraska; Jennie is the wife of H. G.
Palmer of Tacoma, Washington ; Bartlett D. died at
Whatcheer, Iowa; Mrs. Katie Wiles lives in Platts-
mouth, Nebraska.

Thomas J. Palmer at the age of five years started
to attend school in Canada, and until nearly nine years
his only teacher was a man named John Black. He made
rapid advance in his studies, and before he was ten
years of age was carrying high school work, including
the sciences. The health of his father and other causes
then kept him out of school for several years, but he
finally had another nine months of instruction just before
he became a teacher. He was eighteen when he took the
Goose Creek School in his home county in Iowa. He
had been promised the school by a board of directors
before he interviewed them, his qualifications having
been introduced to the board by a lawyer friend. He
was promised the school on condition that he secured
a third grade certificate. He agreed to try for the
certificate and rode horseback to the county seat and
passed the ordeal of examination in four hours. So well
did he acquit himself that he was almost granted a first
grade, certificate. His clothes were ragged, his trouser
linings showed at the knees and coat linings at the
elbows, and he might well have been an object of curios-
ity to all eyes. His exceedingly creditable showing in
the examination was the surprise of the superintendent
in charge as well as of the board where he taught. He
was accepted as the new teacher after an overnight
session with one of the board, who ‘ ‘ tried him out ’ ’ and
advanced him ten dollars for a new suit of clothes. To
put himself in the good graces of the larger boys of
the school he spent a week before the opening attending
spelling schools and literary societies, and took the
lead in all matters in which the senior boys would be
interested. In consequence he was “passed” by these
larger scholars and endorsed by them in a public motion
while on the road home from one of the spelling bees.
The fact that Mr. Palmer entered so earnestly and en-
thusiastically into his task make it hardly necessary to
state that he was a very successful teacher. He had the
aid of his influential pupils and the patrons of the dis-
trict, and showed much originality as a teacher. He
attracted more than local attention to the various new
methods he instituted for arousing interest in the pupils
in the various subjects studied. For six years he was a
teacher in Iowa and for a similar period in Mercer
County, Illinois. While in the latter state he was for
three years president of the Mercer County Teachers’
Association. While there he explained his plan of teach-
ing spelling to the advanced pupils, and his demonstra-
tion so interested President Edwards of the Illinois State
University that the latter subsequently prepared and
published upon the lines suggested by Mr. Palmer the
school text book known as Edwards’ Analytical Speller.
Mr. Palmer did his last work in the school room in
Hardin County, Iowa, just before entering the news-
paper field.

Soon after coming from Canada to the United States
Mr. Palmer took out his naturalization papers. His

first political attitude was that of the independent.
Subsequently he became a granger, when that move-
ment was at its height and from that took up the cause
of the greenback party. When the republican party
adopted the principal planks of the greenback party he
united with the older and larger organization. He
became a republican also for the reason that the Iowa
republicans took up the prohibition movement in the
state and directed its influence to the suppression of the
liquor traffic. The main policies of the old greenback
party were the remonetization of silver, the reissue of
greenbacks and the adoption of prohibition. All these
principles Mr. Palmer espoused, and when they were
adopted by the republican organization he found no
difficulty in effecting a partisan change. Mr. Palmer
was a personal friend of the late General J. B. Weaver,
the eminent Iowa statesman, and has been a close student
and observer of political progress in the Middle West
for fully forty years.

A number of years ago while living in Iowa Mr.
Palmer, in order to express his convictions on some of
the burning questions of the hour, prepared an article
on some phase of the financial problems and asked a
local newspaper to publish it. The request was refused,
and Mr. Palmer then determined to have the article
expressing his views given to the public if he had to
found a newspaper himself. Thus it was that he entered
the field where his abilities have given him much promi-
nence in later years. He first took up newspaper work
in Greenfield, Iowa, where he founded the Greenback
Patriot. His capital when he entered this business was
sixty cents, and he walked from the railroad station to
Greenfield, which was then without a railroad, because
he did not have enough money to hire a conveyance. He
had ordered a plant and equipment costing fourteen
hundred dollars from the Illinois Type Foundry Com-
pany of Chicago, and secured the services of a practical
printer to install the new plant. He soon afterwards
became the sole proprietor and for some time made his
paper a noted organ for greenback doctrines. Later he
moved his paper to Muscatine, where he renamed it the
Muscatine Patriot and subsequently it was taken to
Whatcheer and there was called the Whatcheer Patriot.
The policy of the Whatcheer Patriot was largely inde-
pendent in political matters, but proved a strenuous
advocate for the suppression of the liquor traffic. In
the face of violent contrary public sentiment, the Patriot
led the way and was one of the chief factors in abolish-
ing the thirty-two saloons of Whatcheer. Some of the
doctrines which Mr. Palmer espoused in earlier days
have already been worked into the general political and
social policy of the country, and for others there have
been substituted different policies. But prohibition is
still a vital question, perhaps more so taking the nation
at large than ever before, and hardly anyone could claim
to have worked more devotedly for its success during the
last thirty years than this Oklahoma man. He early saw
that the success of prohibition would be most definitely
advanced whenever either of the two larger political
parties should endorse the policy. When the republicans
in his section of Iowa wrote a prohibition plank into
the platform he joined that party, and he made his aid
count for a great deal in the results which subsequently
brought about the adoption of a local option amendment
to the state constitution.

In 1886, having sold his paper and other interests at
Whatcheer Mr. Palmer went to Mason City, bought the
Republican there, consolidated it with the Express, sold
a half interest, and after making considerable profit in
the enterprise disposed of his business and went to
Meade Center, Kansas. He arrived in that town during

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1875

the midst of its boom, and left it when the financial crisis
came on in 1892. While at Meade Center he conducted
the Meade Republican, which he founded and which he
published for six years as a republican organ. In 1893
he moved the plant to Hutchinson and for a few months
published a daily paper espousing the policies of the
republican party and showing an unmitigated enmity to
the saloons.

When in September, 1893, the Cherokee Strip was
opened for settlement, Mr. Palmer moved his newspaper
plant to Medford, and there founded the Medford Pa-
triot. Medford at that time was a town only in name.
The depot and small grocery were the meager nucleus
of business. He at once erected a building, and soon
published the first copy of the oldest paper now in Grant
County. Grant County was then called ‘ ‘ L ” County.
He had hardly been here a week before he was using
his influence in behalf of political organization and for
the extension of his policies in line with the republican
party and as a prohibitionist. He soon met some of his
old acquaintances from Iowa and Kansas, and he was
one of the leaders in moulding republican sentiment and
shaping the affairs of the locality. In a county republi-
can convention he suggested the name of Grant for the
new county. Up to that time some of the letters of the
alphabet had been used to designate the civil divisions
in the Cherokee Country. In February, 1898, Mr. Palmer
was made postmaster of the Town of Medford. He filled
that office for more thap eleven years, having succeeded
D. L. Cline in the office. While postmaster he was ap-
pointed by Judge Burford as United States Court Com-
missioner. He performed the duties of that office without
a bond for five years, and in that time thousands of
dollars of public money passed through his hands, and
there was never a flaw in his records.

At the incorporation of Medford he was inspector and
turned the town to the first officers chosen by ballot
without a dollar of indebtedness. For four years he was
president of the Board of Education, from the time of
the organization of the district. While he was in that
office there was not a warrant presented to the school
treasurer and endorsed “not paid for want of funds.”
In every line of advancement in Medford he and his
paper, The Patriot, were always in the front leading the
way. In a material way he has contributed substantially
to the town in the Opera House and a brick store build-
ing. For several years he was postmaster, court com-
missioner, manager of the Opera House and editor of
the Patriot all at one time, and probably the busiest
and hardest working citizen of Medford.

Soon after coming to Oklahoma Mr. Palmer began
attending the state republican conventions and has done
much to direct that party in its state campaign. He is
personally acquainted with all the men who have served
Oklahoma in the time of its greatest development, and
from the first issue of his paper to the last he was an
unswerving and determined enemy and opponent of the
liquor traffic. On March 1, 1910, he sold the Patriot
and has since been in the ranks as a private citizen,
though his interest in public affairs is in no wise abated.
He hopes to live to see national prohibition, but in any
case he realizes that such a condition cannot be many
years away. Considering the opportunities that sur-
rounded his own early youth Mr. Palmer has had a
really remarkable career. From the first he had high
moral standards and ideals, and in following them he
has probably accomplished work of greatest benefit. As
a boy he spent his money for books instead of for tobacco
and other pleasures, although at a later date he tried
tobacco for three months, only to his disgust.

On April 4, 1871, at Port Perry, Canada, he married

Miss Sarah Lazier, daughter of James B. and Hannah
(Orser) Lazier. Mrs. Palmer was one of a family of
seven children. Three children have been born to their
union: May is the wife of George E. Honey, local agent
for the Santa Fe Railway at Kingman, Kansas. Clyde
N. is a printer at LaGrande, Oregon, and married Miss
Rena Aikens. Cora is now Mrs. F. C. Wright of Wakita,
Oklahoma. Mrs. Wright was educated in music, gradu-
ating from the famous musical college at Lindsborg,
Kansas, took private instruction for six years with Ella
Baehus Behr of Kansas City, spent two years abroad in
Berlin, and another year in New York City. She also
taught a year in Wichita College of Music, while pursu-
ing her studies, and after her education was finished she
continued as an instructor and leader in musical affairs
until her marriage.

Mont Z. Spahr. In both the paternal and maternal
lines Mont Zartman Spahr is a scion of families that
were founded in America prior to the war of the
Revolution, the lineage- of the Spahr family tracing
back to sterling Holland Dutch origin and the pro-
genitors of the American branch having left Holland at
the time of the religious reformatory movement in that
country in the seventeenth century and upon coming
to America having settled in the Virginia colony, the
maternal ancestors of Mr. Spahr having settled in
Pennsylvania about the same time. Edward Spahr,
grandfather of him whose name introduces this para-
graph, was born in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of
Virginia, in 1778, and he became one of the pioneer
settlers in Greene County, Ohio, where he reclaimed and
developed a farm and where he continued to reside until
his death, which occurred in 1861.

Since 1908 Mr. Spahr has been one of the successful
and popular representatives of the pedagogic profession
in Oklahoma, and his zeal and ambition are based on
thorough academic or literary training, the while his
marked ability as an executive has tended greatly to
conserve his success in the vocation which he has fol-
lowed for virtually a quarter of a century. He is now the
incumbent of the position of superintendent of the public
schools of the village of Foss, Washita County, and has
brought the same up to high standard, the' while he
has personally gained secure vantage-ground as one of
the representative figures in educational circles in this
section of the state.

Mr. Spahr was born in Greene County, Ohio, on the
5th of November, 1866, and is a son of John E. and
Adelia (Zartman) Spahr, the former of whom was
likewise a native of Greene County, Ohio, where he
was born in 1832, and the latter of whom was born
in Pennsylvania, in 1834. Both passed the closing years
of their lives in Wayne County, Nebraska, where the
mother passed to eternal rest in 1904 and the father in
1909. Of their children the eldest is Frank, who is a
prosperous farmer in Wayne County, Nebraska; Annie
died in that county, at the age of twenty-^x years, she
having been the wife of Ora Newton, who ‘is now a
merchant in the City of Pasadena, California; Charles
is engaged in the live-stock business in Phillips County,
Kansas; Mont Z„ of this review, was the next child;
Wilbur is a retired farmer residing in Wayne County,
Nebraska, where Harvey, the next in order of birth, is a
progressive and successful agriculturist; and Maude is
the wife of Henry W. Perkins, a successful contractor
residing at Loveland, California.

John E. Spahr was reared and educated in Greene
County, Ohio, where his early experiences were those
gained in connection with the work of the home farm.
After his marriage he continued his activities as a
farmer in his native county until 1876, when he removed1

1876

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

with his family to Shelby County, Iowa, in which sec-
tion of the Hawkeye State he remained until 1881,
when he removed to Wayne County, Nebraska, where he
purchased a tract of land and where he became a pros-
perous agriculturist and stock-grower, both he and his
wife having there passed the residue of their lives and
both having been zealous members of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, in which he served for a long period
in the office of steward. At the time of the Civil war
Mr. Spahr was enrolled as a member of the state militia,
or home guard, of Ohio, circumstances having inade
it impossible for him to go to the front in defense of
the cause of the Union, though he did all in his power
to further and uphold that cause and to aid the needy
families of soldiers. He was a stalwart advocate of the
principles of the republican party and his mature judg-
ment and well fortified opinions were such as to equip
him well for the prominent part which he took in politi-
cal and other public affairs in the various communities
in which he lived at different stages in his active and
useful life.

Mont Z. Spahr was a lad of about ten years at the
time of the family removal to Iowa, and the rudimentary
education he had gained in the schools of his native
county in the old Buckeye State was supplemented by
his attending the schools of Iowa, the while he assisted
materially in the work and management of the home
farm. He remained at the parental home until he had
attained to the age of nineteen years, and thereafter he
provided the means through which he acquired his higher
education and fitted himself for the profession in which
he has achieved such distinctive success. In 1891
Mr. Spahr was graduated in the Western Iowa Normal
College, at Shenandoah, from which he _ received the
degree of Bachelor of Didactics, at the completion of a
two years’ course. In the following year he was gradu-
ated also in the Nebraska State Normal School at
Wayne, and for the four ensuing years he held the
office of superintendent or principal of various public
schools in Wayne County, that state. In 1896, counting
as satisfactory naught but the best possible fortification
for his exacting and responsible vocation, Mr. Spahr
attended the Central Normal College in the City of
Indianapolis, Indiana, and from this admirable insti-
tution he received the degrees of Bachelor of Science and
Bachelor of Pedagogy. Prior to this Mr. Spahr had
served as principal of public schools in the Gulf coast
section of Texas, his services in this capacity having
been rendered, in turn, at Alvin, Hallettsville and Edna.
After his course in the college at Indianapolis he became
principal of the public schools of Portales, New Mexico,
where he remained thus engaged until 1911, in July of
which year he came to Oklahoma and assumed his pres-
ent position, that of superintendent of the schools at
Eoss, Washita County. Under his supervision is a corps
of five specially competent teachers, who give to him
most earnest and effective co-operation, and the enroll-
ment of pupils in the village schools numbers 175.

Mr. Spahr has made himself one of the vigorous and
influential factors in the general community life and is
enthusiastic in all that pertains to the work of the
schools, so that his administration has proved altogether
effective and worthy of popular approval. His political
allegiance is given to the republican party, he is affiliated
with the Foss Lodge No. 204, Ancient Free and Accepted
Masons, he is identified with the Oklahoma State
Teachers’ Association and the National Teachers’ Asso-
ciation, and both he and his wife hold membership in the
Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

At Alvin, Texas, on the 28th of June, 1899, was
solemnized the marriage of Mr. Spahr to Miss Zona
Kimmans, who was born in the City of Wheeling, West
Virginia, on the 2d of August, 1867, who was educated

in Southern Ohio, and who was a successful and popular
teacher prior to her marriage, of which no children have
been born. William B. Kimmans, father of Mrs. Spahr,
was a representative business man at Alvin, Texas, at
the time of his death, and his wife also is deceased.

David W. Vann. Among the well known merchants
and farmers of Marshall County, one who for fifteen
years has assisted in maintaining a high standard in
both commercial and agricultural affairs is David W.
Vann, of Woodville, a citizen universally respected in
his community by reason of his strict business integrity
and high order of citizenship. He belongs to a family
around which romance and history entwine in the Chero-
kees and Chickasaws. Gen. Stand Watie, the noted
Cherokee general, who displayed such gallant courage in
behalf of the Southern Confederacy during the Civil
war, and who was known as Degatugo in the Cherokee
tongue, was the commander under whom William Vann,
the father of David W. Vann, served during the war
between the states. At Cabin Creek William Vann
helped to take 600 wagons and teams from the Union
troops ; at Pea Bidge he marched away in defeat with-
out the lead of General McCullough, who was killed.
Belle Starr, the noted woman outlaw and desperado
was captured and her gang broken up on the Canadian
B'iver through the efforts of William Vann, who was
at that time sheriff of the Canadian District of the
Cherokee Nation. Dick Triplett, another noted Chero-
kee outlaw, who had escaped the clutches of the law,
was captured by Deputy Sheriff Vann after Sheriff
Stand Gray had refused to make the arrest because of
fear. William Vann replaced Sheriff Gray and the
older residents of that section still remember the bravery
and absolute fearlessness of this officer who operated
in the desperate days following the close of the Civil
war.

The Vann family, preceding the war between the
North and the South, had been considered wealthy
Indians; they had about seventy-five negroes as slaves
and cattle whose increase was enough to bring in a
splendid yearly income. After the war, their home
destroyed, their property gone and their nation devas-
tated, William Vann and his family went South into
the land of the Chickasaws. Here he found among
the people of his adoption a faithful helpmate in Miss
Lottie Willis, sister of Holmes and Britt Willis, and
daughter of J. Hamp Willis, who with his brother, Britt,
left their Tennessee home to marry among the Indians,
Britt uniting with a Choctaw girl and J. Hamp with a
Chickasaw girl. Thus the two families of Willis: one
Choctaw and one Chickasaw. Gabe E. Parker, of Mus-
kogee, superintendent of Indian Affairs, is the grand-
son of Britt Willis.

In the spring of 1868, William Vann moved with his
Chickasaw wife back to the Cherokee Nation, and it
was after this removal that he became sheriff and suc-
ceeded in breaking up the many bands of outlaws that
infested the Cherokee country. After his service as
sheriff, he served for ten years as a member of the
Cherokee Council, and when finally defeated in election
again returned to the Chickasaw Nation. Here he
died March 15, 1911, and his widow died November 21,
1915. Six children were born to William and Lottie
(Willis) Vann, all of whom are living: David W., of

this review; Ellen, who married a Mr. Graves, a farmer
near Wilkinson, Oklahoma (Cherokee Nation) ; James,
who is associated with his brother David W. in the
mercantile business at Woodville; Mrs. Georgia Lynch,
who is one of the popular and efficient school teachers
f Marshall County; Lulu and William reside at home.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1877

David W. Vann was born at Willis, Oklahoma, then
the old Chickasaw Nation of the Indian Territory,
January 8, 1868. He was educated in the common
schools which existed at the time of his boyhood and
youth, but the important part of the requirements of
that day did not consist of book learning so much as
it did of the ability to maintain life. In August, 1891,
Mr. Vann was married to Miss Dannie Doyle, of Web-
ber’s Falls, Cherokee Nation, and to this union there
have been born five children, as follows: Lolo, now de-
ceased; Louis, also deceased; Arthur, who is attending
school at Muskogee; Jennie, who is attending school at
Denison, Texas; and David P., who lives at home with
his parents.

Mr. Vann came to Woodville in 1900, and embarked
in the mercantile business, in association with farming.
He has been successful in both lines of endeavor, being
an energetic, enterprising and industrious man, with
modern ideas and methods, who does not neglect his
duties as a citizen. His only fraternal connection is
with the local camp of the Woodmen of the World.

J. H. Vann. A native son of the Old Cherokee Na-
tion, and a prominent farmer and stock raiser in the
community of Woodville in Marshall County, J. H.
Vann is one of the solid and substantial citizens of
that section of Oklahoma.

He was born at Webber Falls in Canadian District,
Cherokee Nation, a son of William and Lottie Vann.
As a boy he attended the old Cherokee Male Seminary
at Tahlequah, leaving school in his sophomore year,
and afterwards took a business course at Muskogee.
While there have been some minor experiences of his
life, he has spent his years most profitably in farming
and stock raising, and he also conducts a general store
at Woodville and is one of the principal merchants in
that county. He has prospered and has accumulated
means that can be translated into sufficient comfort
and satisfaction to provide liberally for himself and
family.

Mr. Vann is a democrat, is affiliated with the Wood-
men of the World and is a member of the Presbyterian
Church. At Preston, Texas, near the Red River, on
December 6, 1902, he married Miss Laula Gresham.
They have a daughter and two sons. The daughter is
Cloy Vann, and the sons are John Henry and James
Edward Vann.

J. N. McCallister. The history of the people and
country around Bartlesville is an open book of recollec-
tions to J. N. McCallister, who has lived in that locality
nearly twenty years, and has been not only a. close
observer but has been drawn into close participation in
the events and affairs of a growing city. For -the past
ten years Mr. McCallister has been the leading under-
taker of Washington County and with the aid of his
children now conducts an establishment both at Bar-
tlesville and at Dewey.

Born in Cass County, Missouri, August 18, 1871, he is
a son of J. N. and M. F. (McKinney) McCallister. His
parents were also natives of Missouri, and lived there
for several years after their marriage, when they moved
to Montgomery County, Kansas, in 1873, and in 1881
went to Greenwood County, Kansas, where they are still
living. His father is a retired merchant. He was a
farmer up to 1881, and then engaged in merchandising,
which was the basis of a successful career until he retired
with a competence in 1903. The Bartlesville citizen is
■one of four children. His sister Maude is the wife of
John A. Gill of Selma, Kansas; Bertha is the wife of
Garl A. Dixon of Kansas; and Lela is now deceased.

Mr. McCallister grew up in Kansas and lived at home
with his parents until he removed to the Cherokee Nation
of Indian Territory ou February 8, 1897, and this has
been his home ever since. In the first spring of his
arrival only twenty votes were cast in this community,
and there was only a handful of white residents at that
time. Up to the age of eighteen Mr. McCallister had
attended school and worked for his father, then became
a barber, and followed that trade fifteen years. For the
past ten years he has given his time to his business as
undertaker. Mr. McCallister was elected the first coroner
of Washington County under statehood rule, and has the
distinction of having performed the first inquest in the
new state. He took the oath of office at 3 o'clock in
the afternoon and was called upon to hold the inquest
at 8 in the evening of the same day. At that inquest
he secured the two bullets which had killed the first two
men in Washington County after statehood, and has these
as relics of that historic occasion. Mr. McCallister held
the office of coroner for two years, and was the only one
ever to hold that official ’position in Washington County,
since in the meantime the courts had ruled that the con-
stitution had not provided for such an office, and it has
consequently not been a distinct subdivision of county
functions since that time.

For the past ten years Mr. McCallister has given his
entire time to undertaking, although he owns a farm in
Washington County and one in Kansas. Since starting
at Bartlesville he has established a branch of his business
at Dewey. On first engaging in business at Bartlesville
he erected a building on Third Street and then traded
that for the one he now occupies at the corner of Second
and Dewey Avenue. He is also interested in the oil
industry.

Mr. McCallister is well known in fraternal circles,
having affiliations with the Knights of Pythias, with the
Uniform Rank of that order, with the Fraternal Order of
Eagles, the Order of Owls, the Modern Woodmen of
America, the Woodmen of the World, the W. C., with
the Dramatic Order of Khorassan and with the LoyM
Order of Moose and several other benevolent and mutual
benefit organizations.

In 1891 Mr. McCallister married Miss Maggie Pedigo,
who died in May, 1908. Two children survive her. Ernest
lives at home and is associated with his father in busi-
ness at Bartlesville. Daisy is the wife of C. H. Burt, and
they manage the Dewey branch of the undertaking firm.
Mr! McCallister has made his two children equal partners
in the McCallister Undertaking Company. The son re-
ceived a license as an embalmer when he was sixteen
years of age, and that is the youngest age on record for
such a distinction. Mr. and Mrs. Burt have one child,
Bonita, and when she was born she made the fifth living
generation in the family, her two great-great-grand-
mothers being living at that time.

When Mr. McCallister came to the vicinity of Bartles-
ville a wheat field covered a portion of the site now
occupied by the flourishing city, and all the country
south of Third Street was an open range. Among his
interesting relies of the past is a photograph taken
fifteen years ago showing himself and a party of friends
with more than 500 pounds of catfish hauled out of the
Caney River at one catch. One of the fish weighed more
than sixty-five pounds. These fish were taken out at the
dam in the river.

Plumer W. Lutman. . Maintaining his residence in
the thriving little City of Edmond, Oklahoma County,
and prominently concerned in its development and
upbuilding, Mr. Lutman has been a resident of this
county since 1898, and that he has an impregnable place
in popular confidence and esteem needs no further voucher

1878

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

than the statement that he has served consecutively since
1910 as a member of the board of county commissioners
of Oklahoma County, — a body whose functions are of the
most important order, and involve the expenditure of
many thousands of dollars of public funds in the county
in which is situated the metropolis and capital city of .
the state. Mr. Lutman has been closely and successfully
concerned with the agricultural and livestock industries
during the entire period of his residence in Oklahoma,
has been vigorous and progressive as a dealer in real
estate, and his influence and co-operation are invariably
given in the furtherance of judicious policies of local
government and in support of measures and enterprises
projected for the general good of the community.

Plumer Wartes Lutman was born in Perry County,
Pennsylvania, on the 14th of February, 1866, and is a
son of John Miller Lutman and Margaret E. (Comp)
Lutman, both of whom were born and reared in the old
Keystone State. Mrs. Comp was the daughter of Eev.
Andrew Comp. Mr. John M. Lutman removed with his
family to Morgan County, Missouri, in 1867, both he
and his wife having passed the residue of their lives in
that, state.

He whose name introduces this article was about one
year old at the time of the family immigration to
Missouri, and he was reared to adult age in Morgan
County, that state, where he continued to attend the
public schools until he had completed a course in the
high school at Versailles, the county seat. That he made
good use of the advantages thus afforded him is evidenced
by the fact that after leaving the high school he was
for three years a successful and popular teacher in the
public schools of Pettis County, Missouri. He then turned
his attention to agricultural pursuits, and during the
long intervening years he has never severed his allegiance -
to this great basic industry. He is at the present time
the owner of valuable property in Oklahoma, where he
has maintained his home from the time of coming to
the territory, in 1898. He established his residence that
year in the little village of Edmond, and he has been
one of the prominent figures in the development of the
town into one of the most attractive and prosperous
cities of the state, besides having contributed much to
the general industrial and civic progress of Oklahoma
County. From 1900 until 1909 he served as assistant
postmaster at Edmond and in the meanwhile controlled
a large and prosperous business in the handling of real
estate. In 1910 Mr. Lutman was elected, as a republican,
a member of the board of county commissioners, and
of this office he has since continued the loyal, circumspect
and valued incumbent, through re-election in 1912. Con-
cerning his association with this service for his county
the following estimate has been given: “As a member
of this important board, Mr. Lutman has distinguished
himself as a most proficient and capable official, and his
counsel has frequently resulted in saving to the tax-
payers of the county large sums of money, through his
having prevailed upon his associate members to coincide
with his conservative and judicious policies. A successful
business man and one of utmost civic loyalty, he has
naturally brought to bear in the discharge of his public
duties marked efficiency and safe business methods. ’ ’

Mr. Lutman is known as a zealous and effective advo-
cate of the principles and policies of the republican party,
has attained to the thirty-second degree in the Ancient
Accepted Scottish Eite of the time-honored Masonic
fraternity, besides which both he and his wife are affili-
ated with the adjunct organization, the Order of the
Eastern Star. In the Independent Order of Odd Fellows
he has filled all official chairs in both the subordinate

lodge and the encampment. Both he and his wife hold
membership in the Presbyterian Church.

At Billings, Noble County, Oklahoma, on the 15th of
August, 1900, Mr. Lutman wedded Miss Beulah M.
Sears, a daughter of Wiggins W. and Mary (Cushing-
berry) Sears, both natives of Kentucky, in which state
Mrs. Lutman ’s paternal grandfather was a slaveholder
and an extensive breeder of fine horses and mules prior
to the Civil war, he having been said to have had the
largest number of mules in the Bluegrass State, long
famous as a center for the breeding and raising of high-
grade stock. Mr. and Mrs. Lutman have no children.

Charles G. Vannest. One of the best known educa-
tors in the old Cherokee Strip country of Oklahoma is
Charles G. Vannest, now superintendent of the Medford
schools, and formerly identified for a number of years
with the office of eoiinty superintendent of Noble County.
He came to this state in 1906, a year before statehood.
He is an educator with high ideals and with a keen
understanding of conditions and requirements. Much of
his work in Oklahoma has been as an organizer and de-
veloper. He has laid the foundation for sound and
wholesome educational work in Noble County and his
name is known among educators all over the state.

A native of Vermilion County, Indiana, Charles G.
Vannest was born June 7, 1880. He belongs to what was
really the first white family of Vermilion County, a
county that lies along the Wabash Eiver in Western
Indiana. His great-grandfather was John Vannest,
who is given the distinction of having been the first
permanent white settler in Vermilion County. He came
out to Indiana from Virginia about 1816, and secured
a tract of Government land on which the City of Clinton
in Vermilion County now stands. He lived there and
devoted the rest of his years to farming. His family
comprised several sons, one of whom was Samuel Vannest.
Samuel Vannest married Amanda Potter, and their lives
were spent as farmers in Vermilion County. They have
three daughters and three sons: Samuel, Polk, Taylor,
Jane, Mary and Serena. The daughter Serena is the
wife of J. F. Eaine and lives in Kansas.

Taylor Vannest, father of the Oklahoma educator,
was also a Vermilion County farmer, where he spent all
his life. He died in Clinton in that county in 1913 at
the age of seventy-nine. He was. a soldier in the Union
Army during the Civil war, having gone out with Com-
pany D of the Eighty-fifth Indiana Infantry as a private.
He was in Sherman’s army and after the fall of Atlanta
went with that great commander on the march to the
sea. The earlier part of the war he was in the western
campaign and was wounded in the battle of Pea Eidge,
Arkansas. After the war he gave his time with character-
istic industry to his work as a farmer, and though an
intelligent voter and a republican, he never held an
office. He was a member of the Methodist Church.
Taylor Vannest married Catherine Henry, who was one
of the five children of James and Mary (Tolle) Henry
who came from Kentucky. Catherine Henry’s brothers
served in the Union Army from Kentucky. Mrs. Taylor
Vannest died in April, 1915. Her children were: Harry,
of Clinton; Claud, of Clinton; Maud, wife of Clint
Bennett of Sidel, Illinois; and Charles G. Mrs. Taylor
Vannest by a former marriage to William Mitchell had
one son, Samuel Mitchell, who died in Indiana.

The boyhood of Charles G. Vannest was spent in the
Town of Clinton on the banks of the Wabash Eiver. He
attended the local schools, graduating from high school,
and then entered the Terre Haute Normal School, where
he was graduated in 1900. His first work as a teacher
was done in the rural schools of his native county, and

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1879

afterwards lie became one of the instructors in the schools
at Clinton. After five years as a teacher he turned his
attention to newspaper work and for a year was editor
of the Clintonian, a weekly paper at Clinton.

Giving up his connections in his native county, Mr.
Vannest came to the Southwest for the purpose of look-
ing up a newspaper location. Instead he was attracted
into school work, a turn which has been very beneficial
to the country, though perhaps not as remunerative as
some other occupations would have been. He was first
located at Morrison as principal of the schools. Morri-
son is in Noble County, and after about two years as
principal he was elected county superintendent. Alto-
gether he spent four and a half years in that office. His
chief aim in work as superintendent was to secure the
proper consolidation of local districts and the correla-
tion of subjects in the curriculum of instruction in the
rural schools. His work in that office attracted much
attention, and his recognized qualifications caused his
nomination by the republicans of the state for the
office of state superintendent of public instruction. This
was in the campaign of 1912, when the republican party
was itself divided, and though Mr. Vannest made a very
vigorous campaign there was hardly any chance from the
beginning that he would be elected. In July, 1913, Mr.
Vannest took his present position as superintendent of
schools at Medford, becoming the successor of J. O.
Allen. He has always given his active support to the
teachers association in Noble County, and while county
superintendent he was a member of the State Teachers’
Association and of the County Superintendents’ Organ-
ization. Mr. Vannest has accumulated a great fund of
experience as a school man, and he is now engaged in
compiling a United States history and a work on civics
for use in the common schools.

He cast his first presidential vote in Indiana in 1904
for Roosevelt. While in his native county he took a
considerable part in politics and was a member of the
county committee and its secretary. He was elected
mayor of Perry in April, 1915. Fraternally he is affili-
ated with the lodge and chapter of Masons and with
both the subordinate and encampment branches of the
Independent Order of Odd Fellows. His church is the
Methodist.

In Indiana on April 13, 1901, Mr. Vannest married
Miss Maud Carmichael. Mr. and Mrs. Vannest are not
people who take much account of superstitious belief.
They were married on Friday the 13th. Mrs. Van-
nest is a daughter of C. A. and Ruth (Moss) Carmichael,
her father having been born in Greene County, Indiana,
and was a farmer in Vermilion County, Illinios. Mrs.
Vannest is the oldest of six children, and was a success-
ful teacher before her marriage.

Charles Edgar Hill, proprietor and editor of the
Granite Enterprise, assumed his present position in
1909. Today no man in Granite is better known' or
more highly esteemed than he.

Mr. Hill was born in Jackson County, North Carolina,
on May 24, 1869, and is a son of Charles D. Hill,
born in South Carolina in 1844. The Hills are an Irish
family, and they came to Virginia from Ireland among
the first emigrants to that state. One of them, a brother
of the paternal great-grandfather of the subject, was a
colonel in the Revolutionary war, and was killed in action
at Kings Mountain.

Charles D. Hill moved to Jackson County, North Caro-
lina, from his native state, South Carolina, in company
with his parents when he was a boy in 1852, and in
1870 he went to Macon County, North Carolina, where
he lived until 1894, when he went to Grayson County,

Texas. In 1906 he moved to Pawnee, Oklahoma, where
he remained three years and in 1909 took up his resi-
dence in Davenport, Oklahoma, where he now resides
and is engaged in the nursery and poultry business. All
his previous years had been spent in mining in his
various locations, but he is how content with the quiet
life he leads in Davenport. Mr. Hill served three years
in the Confederate army, enlisting from South Carolina
in the First South Carolina Heavy Artillery. He is a
member of the Methodist Church and a steward therein.
His polities are those of a democrat and he is a member
of the Odd Fellows.

Mr. Hill married Miss Jane Crenshaw, who was born
in South Carolina in 1847, and eleven children were born
to them. Charles Edgar Hill of this review was the first
born. Thomas Edward lives in Blackburn, where he is
a prosperous farmer. Frank Clifford is a pressman in
Marshall, Texas. Jane married W. F. Coombs, of Deni-
son, Texas, where they have a fine farm. Herbert Clinton
is a farmer in Daverport, Oklahoma. Walter died at the
-age of twenty-one years. Sallie married Roy Youwell,
and they live on a farm in Whitewright, Texas. Daisey
married Charles Barker, a farmer of Iowa. Annie is
the wife of Carl Whitman, a druggist at Henryetta, Okla-
homa. Christine married H. Isbell, a Blackburn farmer.
Felix Grundy is a farmer of Blackburn, and Georgia, the
youngest, lives with her parents.

Charles Edgar Hill was reared on his father’s farm
until he reached the age of eighteen. During that time
he entered the printing office of the Highland Enter-
prise, in North Carolina, and there served a printer’s
apprenticeship. In 1887 he went to Knox, Tennessee,
traveling two years as a salesman, and in 1890 went to
Dallas, where he was employed in various printing
establishments. He continued there until 1896 when he
went to Fort Worth and there assisted in the establish-
ment of the Fort Worth Register, now called the Fort
Worth Record, and one of the leading newspapers of the
state. Mr. Hill remained there for a year, and in
1907-8-9 was engaged in the job printing business in
Fort Worth. In 1909 he came to Granite, Oklahoma, in
search of a new field, and he promptly bought out the
Granite Enterprise, which he has since owned and
operated.

The Enterprise was established in May, 1900, by
James Scarborough, and is a democratic paper in politi-
cal sentiment. The plant is situated on Fourth Street,
just off Main Street, and under Mr. Hill’s management
the equipment has been brought up to a high standard.
The Enterprise circulates in Greer and other counties in
Oklahoma, as well as in Texas, and has a large certified
circulation outside its home state.

Mr. Hill, who is a democrat, was elected by acclamation
to the office of mayor of Granite in 1915, for a term of
two years. He is a member of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, and his fraternal affiliations are with the
Masons, Granite Lodge No. 134, Ancient Free and Ac-
cepted Masons, and Granite Lodge No. 127, Independent
Order of Odd Fellows, of which he is secretary. He is a
member of the State Press Association and the Typo-
graphical Union.

In 1891 Mr. Hill was married in Arcadia, Louisiana,
to Miss Mattie Owen, daughter of Rev. W. D. Owen, a
Presbyterian minister, now deceased. She died in Fort
Worth, Texas, in 1898, leaving him two children, Cecil
and Earl, both employed by the Dallas News, in Dallas,
Texas.

Mr. Hill married a second time, when in 1901 Miss
Lena Van Vark became his wife in Fort Worth. She is
a daughter of Peter Van Vark, a farmer, now deceased.

Five children have been born to them. Ethel is now
attending the Oklahoma College for Women, in Chickasha.

1880

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Charles and Irene are attending the Granite High School,
and the two youngest, Ernest and Albert, are yet in the
home.

The Hills own a nice home on West Third Street, and
they have a wide circle of friends and acquaintances in
the city.

Daisy M. Pratt. Oklahoma is a vigorous young
commonwealth of large things, and in nothing has its
bigness been more effectively manifested than the meri-
ted recognition it has given to its womenfolk in con-
nection with governmental and educational affairs in
its various counties. The intellectual attainments and
executive ability of Miss Daisy Maud Pratt have thus
brought her prominently forward in the domain of prac-
tical educational work and have given her the distinc-
tion of being chosen to her present office, that of county
superintendent of schools for Blaine County, an exalting
position in which she is giving a most able and progres-
sive administration.

Miss Pratt is a representative of a sterling pioneer
family of the fine old Hoosier State, which she claims
as the place of her nativity. On her father’s farm in
Ripley County, Indiana, she was born on the 19th of
May, 1885, and that she has imbibed fully the inspiration
and progressive spirit of the great West is not to be
held a matter of wonderment, for in the year succeeding
that of her birth her parents removed to Kansas, a few
years later finding them numbered among the pioneer
settlers in what is now the State of Oklahoma. Miss
Pratt is a daughter of John Diah and Almira C. (Shel-
don) Pratt, the former of whom was born in Prattsburg,
Ripley County, Indiana, and the latter in Iowa. Pratts-
burg was named in honor of the Pratt family. The
paternal grandfather of Miss Pratt was a native of
Maine and a scion of a sterling colonial family of New
England, where the original American progenitors set-
tled upon their emigration from England. The grand-
father of Miss Pratt, who was born in Maine March 12,
1808, became a pioneer in Ripley County, Indiana, where
he was owner of some large sawmills. He died while a
passenger on a Mississippi River packet-boat, which was
near the City of New Orleans at the time, he having
been about fifty years old at the time of his demise.
He was buried at Prattsburg, Indiana. His wife,
Nancy Hunter Pratt, survived him by a number of
years, and died at Rago, Kingman County, Kansas. His
father, Jonathan Pratt, served as a messenger for
General Washington in the War of the Revolution.

Miss Pratt ’s father ’s grandfather on his mother ’s
side was John Hunter, of Strong, Massachusetts. On April
15, 1805, he was appointed under Caleb Strong, governor
of Massachusetts, as ‘ ‘ captain of a company in the Fifth
Regiment of the Second Brigade, Eighth Division of the
Militia of this commonwealth.” This paper is signed
by John Strong, secretary. This same John Hunter
was appointed by Christopher Gore, governor of Massa-
chusetts, as justice of the peace of the County of
Somerset, Massachusetts. This appointment was made
February 19, 1810. Signed by William Tudor, secre-
tary commonwealth.

The authentic record of this patriotic service makes
Miss Pratt eligible for membership in the Society of the
Daughters of the American Revolution. The founders
of the Pratt family in America were three brothers of
the name who came from England in the colonial era
of our national history and who became pioneer settlers
of Maine, the historic Pine Tree State.

On the maternal side Miss Pratt is a descendant of
George Niles Sheldon who came from Canada to York

State in 1812. He was a Methodist preacher. His son,
Robert Palmer Sheldon, was born in Canada in 1806, and
in 1824 he was married to Lucy Amy Marsh. He was
also a Methodist preacher, and worked as a missionary
among the Indians in Michigan in an early day. In the
magnificent new Methodist Episcopal Church at Mount
Pleasant, Michigan, one whole window is inscribed to
the memory of Rev. Robert P. Sheldon.

The grandfather of Miss Pratt, Ancile Lorenzo Shel-
don, was born in Courtland County, New York, Janu-
ary 21, 1826, and lived in Ohio, indiana, Iowa, Okla-
homa and Nebraska. He was married in 1848 to Mary
Jane Richardson and they had three children: Harmon

Palmer, Almira C. and Wilber Clarence. Mrs. Sheldon
died in 1865 and several years after her death Mr.
Sheldon was married to Mary R. Sutton. To them two
' daughters were born, Maud S. and Clara. Mrs. Mary
Sutton Sheldon died of typhoid fever, and in 1877
Ancile L. Sheldon married Georgia Edwards of Page
County, Iowa, who survived him and is now living in
Omaha, Nebraska. Mr. Sheldon was a devout Chris-
tian and a devout member of the Methodist Episcopal
Church. His early life was spent in farming and in after
years he owned and kept a large hotel, and later owned
and operated grain elevators. His last days were spent
with his daughter, Mrs. Almira Pratt of Darrow, Okla-
homa.

John D. Pratt, father of the popular superintendent
of schools in Blaine County, Oklahoma, was born in
Ripley County, Indiana, in the year 1852. In 1886 he
disposed of his farm property in his native state and
removed with his family to Kingman County, Kansas, in
the second tier of counties above the Oklahoma State
line. There he continued his operations as an agricultur-
ist and stock-grower until 1891, when he came to the
newly organized Territory of Oklahoma, took part in
the ‘ ‘ run ’ ’ made by ambitious settlers at the opening
of the territory to settlement and obtained a tract of
land in Kingfisher County, as at present constituted.
He did not, however, perfect his title to this government
claim, but in April, 1892, at the Cheyenne and Arapahoe
opening, he “made the run” into this new district and
entered claim to a homestead of 160 acres in the north-
ern part of what is now Blaine County. He improved
this property, developed the same into a productive and
valuable farm and it is still owned by the family,
the place being eligibly situated three miles west of the
town of Homestead. He subsequently rented the farm and
moved to Homestead. At the time of the platting and
upbuilding of the new town of Darow Mr. Pratt removed
to the new town, and there he continued to maintain his
home until his death, which occured August 7, 1914, his
widow still residing in the attractive homestead which he
there provided.

Mr. Pratt was a man of strong mentality, broad
information and well fortified convictions, the while his
life. was guided and governed by the highest principles
of integrity and honor. He manifested a specially lively
interest in public affairs and, after his removal to Okla-
homa, did all in his power to further the development
and progress of both the territory and the state, was
unswerving in his allegiance to the republican party,
and was influential in political and other civic affairs.
He served many years as a member of the school board
and held also the offices of justice of the peace and
notary public. He was a republican committeeman for
yyears and delegate to many conventions.

She whose name initiates this review was the fourth
in order of birth in a family of seven children, and
concerning the others the following brief data are
available. Nella, a young woman of gracious person-

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1881

ality and high attainments, died on the 13th of June,
1906, at the age of thirty-two years, she having been
the wife of Clifford Drum Thaxton and having served as
county superintendent of schools of Blaine County for
some time prior to her death. Mr. Thaxton is now
superintendent of the schools of Port Hill, Idaho. Lola
W., the second daughter, is principal of the Central
School of Watonga, the judicial center of Blaine County.
Diah Sheldon resides at Duncan, Stephens County, and
is one of the representative farmers of that section of
Oklahoma. Florence Mabel is the wife of Earl A.
Sehreffler, a blacksmith at Homestead, Blaine County.
Cary A. remains with his widowed mother at Darrow and
has the supervision of the old homestead farm. Delphine
Almira, a graduate of the Oklahoma State Normal School
at Alva, is the wife of Rolla T. Hoberecht, who holds an
executive position in the First National Bank at Watonga.

Miss Daisy M. Pratt was about six years of age at
the time of the family removal to Oklahoma Territory,
and she was reared to adult age in Blaine County, to
whose public schools she is indebted for her early educa-
tional discipline. Later she attended the Southwestern
Oklahoma State Normal School, at Weatherford, and
she has continued an ambitious student, has made marked
advancement in the higher planes of academic learning,
and has proved also a most successful and popular
teacher, as well as a strong executive in the directing
of educational affairs of important order. In 1901
Miss Pratt served her pedagogic novitiate by serving
as teacher in the rural school of District No. 74, Blaine
County, and here she brought, through consideration of
kindliness, combined with insistent discipline, the best
of order and most efficient work in a school that had
previously been known for its unruliness. After teach-
ing two terms in this district Miss Pratt taught one
year, 1903, in the primary department of the village
schools of Homestead, and during the following year she
held the position of principal. In 1905-6 she was a
valued and popular teacher in the public schools of Wa-
tonga, the county seat of Blaine County, where, in her
official and private capacity, she now maintains her
home. In 1907 she became principal of the schools at
Darrow, where she continued her effective labors until
1910, when there came a most gratifying popular recog-
nition of her ability and successful achievement, in that
she was elected to her present responsible office of
superintendent of schools of Blaine County, — this prefer-
ment, in view of her having maintained her home in the
county since her childhood, setting at naught the appli-
cation of the conditions implied in the scriptural aphor-
ism that ‘ ‘ a prophet is not without honor save in his
own country. ’ ’

Miss Pratt assumed her official duties as county
superintendent of schools in January, 1911, and the
best voucher for the admirable way in which she has
administered the affairs of the office is that offered by
her re-election in November, 1912, and again in No-
vember, 1914, so that she is now serving her third
consecutive term. Within her jurisdiction are 111
schools; 158 teachers are employed; and the enrollment
of pupils shows a total of 5,006. Miss Pratt has made
an excellent record as one of the admirably qualified and
specially successful county superintendents of Oklahoma
and is enthusiastic and active in all matters pertaining
to educational work in the state. She holds membership
in the Methodist Episcopal Church and is a popular
teacher in the Sunday School. In a fraternal way she
is affiliated with the Royal Neighbors and the Daughters
of Rebekah. She is a popular factor in the social life
of her home county, throughout which her circle of

friends is virtually coincident with that of her acquaint-
ances.

J. M. Hanna, M. D. In the picturesque and fertile
Valley of the Washita in the eastern part of Grady
County blossomed the attractive Town of Alex. The
community abounds in evidences of prosperity, and one
of the chief of these is a public school building that cost
$20,000. Matching the rich natural resources has been
the character of the men who have been chiefly instru-
mental in creating these evidences of prosperity, and
one who is accounted a leader among them all is Dr.
J. M. Hanna, who as a member of the board of education
helped to direct the destinies of the community’s public
education. Doctor Hanna has also been mayor of Alex
and president of its live Commercial Club, the activities
of which have been instrumental in building excellent
highways and attracting men of means to develop the
agricultural and industrial resources around the town.
It has been well said that there has never been an enter-
prise in behalf of the community’s welfare which Doctor
Hanna has not done his best to help along, and partic-
ular credit is given him above all other local citizens for
the successful basis upon which the public schools of the
village now rest. Doctor Hanna has been with the Town
of Alex since its beginning, and has given largely of his
time, energy and money to make it a wholesome place
for good people to live and prosper.

Doctor Hanna was a poor but ambitious lad during the
’70s. He completed a common school and academy
education at Saltillo, Tennessee, and then worked for
the modest salary of $10 a month, out of which he saved
enough for a start in medical education. By going to
college a while and practicing for a while he completed
his medical course, graduating with the degree M. D.
from the Memphis Hospital Medical College at Memphis,
Tennessee. His first regular schooling in medicine was
acquired at the Fort Worth Texas Medical College. After
graduating he completed a post-graduate course in the
New Orleans Polyclinic., His practice as a regular
physician began at Lebanon, Indian Territory, in 1895,
and that was his home for twelve years. He moved to
Alex in 1907, and there has been a pioneer not only in
his profession but in many broad civic activities. His
reputation is of the best of a physician, and his practice
is among the best of a thrifty class of town and country
people.

Dr. J. M. Hanna was born in Tennessee in 1866, a son
of Madison C. and Elizabeth (Hawkins) Hanna. His
father was a pioneer in the profession of dentistry in
that state, but also for many years was well known as a
local Methodist preacher and a skilled mechanic. Evi-
dences of his talent in the latter line are indicated in
the fact that he perfected some of the types of thresh-
ing machines then in use. Doctor Hanna’s grandfather
was Capt. James Hanna, also a native of Tennessee and
a well known figure in his time and generation. Two
brothers of Doctor Hanna, Thomas W. and William A.,
are car builders in the employ of the Iron Mountain
Railway Company at Little Rock, Arkansas. Two
brothers are deceased: Dr. J. B., who was a practicing

physician at Coalgate, Oklahoma, and C. N., who was a
merchant at Dallas, Texas. A deceased sister was Miss
Leora Beatrice, who- died while attending school.

Doctor Hanna was married at Beebe, Arkansas, to Miss
Isabel Virginia Scrape. Her grandfather was serving
in the English navy at the time of the War of 1812 and
being then temporarily a resident of United States, went
into hiding in Mexico and changed his name to avoid
fighting against the people of this country. Doctor and
Mrs. Hanna have five children: Ralph M., who is now

1882

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

twenty-one years of age and is employed by the Ford
Motor Car Company at Chickasha; Orin Virginia, Mary
Lewis, James O’Neill and Carthell Mott, all at home and
attending school.

Doctor Hanna is a member of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, South, and fraternally has affiliations with the
Masons, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the
Woodmen of the World. He is a member of the Alex
Commercial Club and the Alex Board of Education, is
chairman of the Grady County Election Board and is city
physician of Alex.

Bev. L. W. Marks. In the little City of Edmond L.
W. Marks is distinguished for his work as minister,
and also for his successful administration of the
municipality in the office of mayor up to April, 1915.
Perhaps the most important work by which Mr. Marks
will deserve the gratitude of ' future generations has
been that of historical secretary of the State Baptist
Convention. The religious activities of the old Indian
Territory cannot be passed over without robbing the
history of that country of much of the romance that
has made it inviting. The minister, of many denom-
inations, was closely identified with the annals of the
Five Civilized Tribes. Probably no man of recent years
has done more toward revealing the lives of minister-
missionaries in that region than Mr. Marks. In his
position already named he has for the past eleven years
delved into the lives of many early missionaries of the
Baptist Church in Oklahoma. From what he brought out
he has produced “L. L. Smith of Oklahoma, a Man of
God on the Frontier,” a little book that has been gen-
erally circulated over the state. He has also written,
down to 1880, the most complete account of the Baptist
Church in Oklahoma. His source of inspiration for the
data of this manuscript was Dr. J. S. Murrow of Atoka,
one of the editors of the “Standard History of Okla-
homa,” who is the dean of living missionaries in Okla-
homa. Doctor Murrow furnished the ‘ ‘ key ’ ’ to many an
Indian home and many an Indian story and legend in the
land of the Five Tribes. Mr. Marks has written of the
remarkable careers of Doctor Murrow, Dr. H. F. Bucker
and Jesse Bushy head, a Cherokee leader and preacher,
and of John Brown, for thirty years governor of the Sem-
inole Nation. He learned that Bushyhead made settle-
ment at a place called Baptist, near Tahlequah, and that
there W. P. Upham of Boston, early in the ’40s,
published the first newspaper in Indian Territory.

L. W. Marks was born at Canton, Missouri, February
1, 1862, a son of George Edward and Mary J. (Henton)
Marks. He has one sister, Mrs. John L. Highbee, wife
of a farmer in Lewis County, Missouri. The mother, now
at the venerable age of eighty-one years, lives with
this daughter. The father of Mr. Marks was a captain
in the Confederate army under General Price. A great-
uncle, General Martin E. Green, was killed at Vicksburg.
The maternal grandparents were among the first settlers
on Upper Sugar Creek in Northeast Missouri during
the early ’30s.

Bev. Mr. Marks was educated in the public schools
at Lewis County, Missouri, the LaGrange College at
LaGrange, Missouri, the William Jewell College at
Liberty, Missouri, and the Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary at Louisville, Kentucky, from which he was
graduated with the degree Master of Theology. He had
entered the Baptist ministry in 1888, and finished his
collegiate education after taking up active work as a
pastor. For 2% years he served as pastor of the Bap-
tist Church at Lamar, Missouri, two years at Shelby-
ville, Missouri, two years at Meadville, Missouri,
and for five years had charge of the church at Edmond,

Oklahoma. For eleven years he was on the editorial staff
of Word and Way of Kansas City, one of the leading
Baptist publications in the country, and for ten years
has represented that publication in Oklahoma. Besides
being historical secretary of the Baptist State Con-
vention, he has held the office of recording secretary
and has been president of the board of trustees of the
Baptist College at Blackwell, Oklahoma.

In whatever he undertakes Mr. Marks is known as a
man of accomplishment, of great energy, and one who
worked steadily and vigorously for the upholding of
moral principles. Those characteristics followed him
during his administration as mayor of Edmond, to which
office he was elected on the democratic ticket in 1913.
Fraternally he is affiliated with Edmond Lodge No.
37, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons. Mr. Marks was
married at Memphis, Missouri, February 19, 1895, to
Miss Sadie Freeman. Their ten children are: Zula,
Paul Eaton, L. W., Jr., Frances, Nona, Walter, Joy,
Marcus Marion, Ferrell and Bertie Lee.

Tiernay & Walker. One of the thoroughly reliable,
enterprising, progressive and energetic newspapers of
Kingfisher County, and one that is wielding a distinct
and forceful influence in assisting the wheels of progress
and in securing for the people a greater degree of
prosperity, is the Hennessey Clipper, which is pub-
lished at Hennessey by the firm of Tiernay & Walker.
This concern, founded in 1913 by Frank G. Tiernay and
Miss Mabel Walker, has met with a satisfying degree
of success from the start, and in 1914 removed all oppo-
sition by purchasing the only other newspaper published
at that place.

Frank G. Tiernay, the senior member of the concern,
has passed his entire life, with the exception of three
years, in connection with printing and journalistic work
from the time when, as a lad, he received his introduction
to stick and case. He was born April 26, 1874, at
Fredonia, Louisa County, Iowa, and is a son of Patrick
J. and Julia (Fahey) Tiernay. Patrick J. Tiernay was
a native of New York, born in 1824, and was a farmer
and mechanic all his life. He lived at various points
during the course of a somewhat diversified career, and
died in 1898, at Quincy, Illinois. Mr. Tiernay was
married in 1859 to Miss Julia Fahey, also a native of
New York, born in 1830, who died in 1884. They were
the parents of four sons and three daughters: John
J., Helen, Mary, William, Anna, Frank G. and Henry,
all of whom are still living.

Frank G. Tiernay received his early education in the
public schools of Burlington, Iowa, to which city his
parents removed when he was a small lad. When he
was fifteen years of age he expressed a desire to enter
the printing business, and accordingly was taught the
trade. From that time forward he worked as a journey-
man at various places and with numerous newspapers
until 1900, in which year he became editor and part
owner of the Herald, at Belle Plaine, Iowa. In 1908 he
came to Oklahoma, where he purchased the Press-Demo-
crat, at Hennessey, of which he continued as editor and
owner until 1910, that year marking his entrance upon
the real estate field. However, the constant call of
the craft was not to be denied, and after an experience
of three years in realty affairs he returned to journal-
ism in 1913 when he purchased a half -interest in the
Hennessey Clipper, in partnership with Miss Mabel
Walker, under the firm style of Tiernay & Walker. Mr.
Tiernay is personally a democrat, but the paper main-
tains independent policies, and seeks to give to its
readers a fair and unbiased presentation of all matters
of interest and importance. Under wise management
both subscription and advertising departments a r-

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1883

flourishing, and the Clipper is rapidly assuming the
proportions of a necessary adjunct. Mr. Tiernay is
unmarried.

j Like her partner, Miss Mabel Walker, junior member
of the firm, learned the printing business when but a
' child and has been its active devotee throughout the
course of her active career. She is also an Iowan by
nativity, having been born on a farm in Grundy County,
February 14, 1876, a daughter of Rigdon B. and Rachel
(Dew) Walker. Rigdon B. Walker was born December
5, 1842, at Rock Island, Illinois, a son of Atnos and
Mary (Abbott) Walker, natives of Kentucky. Mr.
Walker went in young manhood from Illinois to Iowa,
where he engaged in farming in Grundy County, later
went to Reno County, Kansas, in 1882, and in 1895 came
to Oklahoma and bought land seven miles north of Enid,
where he continued to farm and raise stock until his
death in 1901. When the Civil war came on Mr. Walker
was a resident of Illinois, and enlisted in Company C,
One Hundred and Second Regiment, Illinois Volunteer
Infantry, with which he served two years. He was
seriously wounded at the battle of Resaca. After the
close of the war, in 1865, he was married at Monmouth,
Illinois, to Miss Rachel Dew, who was born in 1840, at
j Zanesville, Ohio, daughter of Hiram and Bettie (Weston)
Dew, natives of the Buckeye State. Six children were
born to Mr. and Mrs. Walker: Ransom, Robert, Maude,

; Mabel, Oliver and Julia, of whom Robert is deceased.

Miss Mabel Walker received the foundation for her
education in the public schools of Reno County, Kansas,
and was but fourteen years of age when she entered
the office of the Sylvia Banner, at Sylvia, Kansas, to
learn the printing trade. In 1895 she removed with
her parents to Enid, Oklahoma, where she worked as a
I printer, as she did also later at Chiekasha, on news-
papers. In 1911 she became editor and manager of
the Hennessey Clipper, in 1913 purchasing it with Mr.
Tiernay. In the year following all opposition was
removed when the Clipper absorbed the Press-Democrat..
Miss Walker is a newspaper woman of marked talent,
and, while pre-eminently a business woman, has her full
share of the feminine graces, attractions and accomplish-
ments.

James W. Newton, M. D. Among the successful pro-
fessional men of Stephens County, Oklahoma, there is
probably no one more perfectly in sympathy with that
public spirit which has contributed to the progress of the
various communities than Dr. James W. Newton, of Loco.
Persevering and energetic in whatever direction his
efforts have been turned, material success is not the
greatest of his achievements, for he has fairly gained
and steadfastly maintained the unqualified esteem and
confidence of the people. He was born at Holly Springs,
Marshall County, Minnesota, April 10, 1866, and is a
son of Dr. James A. and Phoebe (Riggs) Newton.

The Newton family was founded in the United States
by the grandfather of Doctor Newton, who brought his
wife and children from London, England, to Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, in 1823, and spent the remaining years of
his life in that city. James A. Newton was born in
the City of London, in 1817, and was six years of age
when brought to the United States, his boyhood and
youth being passed in Philadelphia. He enjoyed good
educational advantages, and when ready to enter upon a
career of his own chose medicine as his field of effort
and was duly graduated from the Philadelphia Medical
College, with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. In the
early ’60s, Doctor Newton removed with his family to
Marshall County, Mississippi, where he practiced for
several years at Holly Springs, and in 1863 went to
Phelps County, Missouri. For a short time during the

Civil war he served in the Confederate army as a regi-
mental surgeon, but was discharged because of dis-
ability, and it is probably that his army experiences were
the cause of his early death, in 1865. Doctor Newton
married Miss Phoebe Riggs, who was born in Tennessee,
in 1823, and died in Missouri, in 1907, and of their
children, four are still living: A. C., who is a farmer and
resides in Northern Arkansas; Dr. James W. ; Mary,
who married John Clark, a merchant of Missouri; and
Ulysses, a farmer, residing in Arkansas.

After attending the graded public school of Phelps
County, Missouri, James W. Newton was sent to the
academy at Vienna, Missouri, and there pursued a course
of study which fitted him for labors in the field of edu-
cation. Accordingly, he took a teacher’s license and
during six years was principal of schools in Missouri,
Arkansas and Kansas. During this time he had decided
to engage in the practice of medicine. In 1900 he came
to Oklahoma and located at Duncan, where he passed two
months, then coming the first time to Loco, where he
remained three and one-half years. During his resi-
dence here he pursued a course of study at Barnes
Medical College, St. Louis, Missouri, and was graduated
in 1903, with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. His
first field of practice was the State of Missouri, where
he passed two years, and in 1905 went to Fort Smith,
Arkansas, and later to Benton County in that state.
He took up his permanent residence at Loco, Oklahoma, in
1906, and this city has continued to be his home and
field of practice. During the years of his practice,
Doctor Newton has made his profession remunerative
financially and has won a warm place in the esteem of his
patients. He belongs to the Stephens County Medical
Society and other organizations of his calling, and is
fraternally affiliated with the Royal Arch Chapter of the
Masonic Order in Benton County, Arkansas, and the
Independent Order of Odd Fellows at Ozark, Missouri.
He is a socialist in his political views.

Doctor Newton was married in Benton County, Ark-
ansas; to Miss Mary Johnson, who died in 1888, the
mother of one child, William A., who is cashier of the
Bank of Rush Springs, Oklahoma. In 1891 Doctor
Newton was married a second time, in Benton County,
Arkansas, to Miss Loui V. Stanley, daughter of the late
George P. Stanley, who was a farmer in the Cherokee
Nation, now Oklahoma. Six children have been born
to this union: Maude, who is the wife of Jesse Rader,
who is engaged in the automobile business at Loco;
Percy, who is cashier of the Bank of Loco; Opal, who is
a teacher in the public schools of Stephens County and
resides with her parents; Nell, who is the wife of Ivan
Heath, an oil man of Stephens County; and Lucille and
Stanley, who are attending the public schools of Loco.

Ben F. Williams. Among the present generation
of Oklahoma lawyers it is perhaps needless to say that
Ben F. Williams of Norman has a record that places
him among the leading criminal attorneys of the state.
He has served as attorney for the defense in some of
the most noted criminal trials held since the admission
of Oklahoma to the Union. It was on the strength of
his well known qualifications as a lawyer that he was
appointed by the Supreme Court as a member of the
Bar Commission of Oklahoma. There are eleven mem-
bers of this commission, two from each Supreme Court
District, and one member at large. It is this commis-
sion which examines all applicants for admission to the
bar, and it sits twice a year in June and December.

Ben F. Williams, who is a son of the late Judge
B. F'. Williams, who was a prominent lawyer and well
known both in Texas and Oklahoma, was born at Gran-
bury, Hood County, Texas, March 21, 1877. His an-

1884

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

cestors were of Welsh stock and were colonial pioneers
in South Carolina. Judge B. F. Williams was born in
Giles County, Tennessee, in 1826, and died at Clinton,
Oklahoma, in March, 1912. Beared in Tennessee he
went to Mississippi, where he married Miss H. E.
Bucker, who was born in that state in 1837 and is still
living in venerable years at Clinton, Oklahoma. Not
long after his marriage Judge Williams moved to Falls
County, Texas, and from there to Hood County. In
1878 he located at Graham City in Young County, which
was then on the northwestern frontier of Texas. In
1886 he removed to Henrietta, Texas, and in 1890
identified himself with the early bar of Oklahoma City,
and from 1896 until his death was a resident -of Norman.
He died while on a visit at Clinton, Oklahoma. In the
various localities mentioned he enjoyed a large civil
practice as a lawyer, and at one time was judge of the
District Court of Wichita Falls and Henrietta, Texas.
In politics he was a democrat, and his only secret order
was the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. In the
Methodist Episcopal Church he found opportunities for
much service, and held every lay office in the church.
He and his wife had the following children : Annie,
wife of W. I. Brannon, a merchant at Clinton, Okla-
homa; Clara, wife of Bev. Mr. Cameron, a Baptist min-
ister at Clarence, Oklahoma; Mattie, wife of W. M.
Newell, an attorney at Norman; Jean, wife of W. E.
Forgy, an attorney at Archer City, Texas; Ben F. ;
Etta, wife of W. B. Barksdale, a merchant at Memphis,
Tennessee; Johnnie, wife of H. L. Quiet, who is cashier
of the First State Bank of Clinton, Oklahoma; Charlie,
twin sister of Johnnie, and wife of William Milter-
berger, a miller and grain buyer at Clinton, Oklahoma;
Lee, who married Doctor Baugaus, a physician and
surgeon at Temple, Texas; Kate, twin sister of Lee,
who is unmarried and is a teacher now living at Archer
City, Texas. Judge Williams by his first marriage had
two children : Mrs. Mary Carnahan, wife of a retired
farmer at B'ogers, Arkansas; and Bobert L. H., who
was an attorney at Goldthwaite, Texas, but died' in a
hospital at Temple, Texas.

Ben F. Williams had a public school education in
Texas, finishing in a high school at Henrietta, and for
three years was a student in the Polytechnic College
at Fort Worth. His home has been at Norman since
1897, and in the meantime he had studied law in his
father’s office and was admitted to the bar in 1899.
His offices are in the Hullum Building on East Main
Street, and for fifteen years he has given all his time
to his large civil and criminal practice.

His services as a criminal lawyer have taken him to
all parts of the state. Only a few of the more note-
worthy cases in which he has been engaged can be
mentioned. He assisted in the defense of James Stev-
enson, who was charged with the murder of City Mar-
shal Cathey of Pauls Valley; this ease was tried in
1908 and resulted in an acquittal of the defendant.
He assisted in the defense of Loreno Mathews, _ who was
charged with the murder of her husband, and she was
acquitted when tried at Guthrie in 1913. He was chief
counsel for John D. Lindsay, former treasurer of Mur-
ray County, Oklahoma, who was charged with the mur-
der of Editor Schenk at Sulphur; this case, tried at
Norman under a change of venue in 1914, resulted in
acquittal. He was chief counsel in the case of State
v. Dr. J. H. Colby and Wade Stovall, who were charged
with the murder of two school directors in McClain
County in 1911. The case was tried at Norman in No-
vember, 1913, resulted in acquittal.

Mr. Williams has been a democrat ever since casting
his first ballot. He is an active member of the County

and State Bar associations, and fraternally is affiliated
with Norman Lodge No. 7, Independent Order of Odd
Fellows, Norman Camp No. 154, Woodmen of the World,
with the Ancient Order of United Workmen at Norman,
and with Purcell Lodge No. 1260, Benevolent Pro-
tective Order of Elks. He is a stockholder in the Nor-
man State Bank. In September, 1900, at Norman, Mr.
Williams married Miss Ninis O. Hullum. Her father is
a retired capitalist and banker of Oklahoma City. To
their union have been born two daughters: Mildred
Lee, born August 28, 1904; and Margaret Lucile, born
June 2, 1908.

Thomas I. Truscott. The roll of men who have
taken an active and helpful part in the development of
the various communities of Jackson County would be in-
complete did it not contain the name of Thomas I.
Truscott, who since his arrival in 1898 has played an
important part in the business, financial and civic life of
Olustee. When he first came to this community it was
as the proprietor of a cotton gin, but soon he entered
the grocery business in which he has continued to be
engaged, and subsequently became vice president of the
First National Bank. In 1913 his worth as a citizen
and his capacity for public service were recognized when
he was appointed postmaster, an office in which he has
efficiently served to the present.

Mr. Truscott is an Illinoisan by nativity, born at the
Village of Kane, in the southern part of Greene County,
August 12, 1853, a son of J. J. and Eliza (Kirkland)
Truscott. His grandfather, Thomas Truscott, came to
the United States from England in 1821 and soon settled
as an early pioneer in Greene County, Illinois, where he
was engaged in farming until the discovery of gold in
California, in 1849, when he made the long and dan-
gerous trip across the plains to the gold-fields. He was
one of the fortunate miners who secured valuable claims
and subsequently passed his life in the West, where he
became a prominent capitalist. J. J. Truscott was born
in Greene County, Illinois, in 1832, and some years after
his marriage there went to Arkansas, continuing to make
his home in that state until 1879, when he went to Thorpe,
Springs, Hood County, Texas, as a pioneer. An attorney
by profession, he was engaged in practice at various
places in Texas and held a high position in his vocation,
being elected county judge of Knox County, Texas, an
office in which he served for nine years. After retiring,
in 1900, Mr. Truscott came to Olustee, Oklahoma, and in
1911 went to Maud, Oklahoma, where he is now living
quietly in his comfortable home. He has been a demo-
crat all his life and has always taken an active part in
political and civic affairs, while his fraternal connection
is with the Masons. Mrs. Truscott, who was born in
Greene County, Illinois, in 1835, died at Thorpe Springs,
Texas, in 1874. They were the parents of five children,
as follows : Thomas I. ; George E., who is engaged in

merchandising at Maud, Oklahoma: Addie. of Frederick,
Oklahoma, who is the widow of W. W. Bogers, a me-
chanic; Estella, who is the wife of Hon. D. F. Gaus,
an attorney at Seymour, Texas, and a member of the
Texas State Senate; and Lueien K., M. D., who is a
practicing physician and surgeon of Oklahoma.

Thomas I. Truscott attended school at Kane. Illinois,
in Arkansas, and at Thorpe Springs, Texas, and in 1875
was graduated from the Texas Christian University, re-
ceiving a diploma in higher mathematics. Following
this, for four years, he was principal of a school in Bock-
wall County, Texas, and at the end of this period
bought a school property at Seymour, Baylor County,
Texas, which he owned and operated for eight years.
His next venture was in the handling of cattle, an enter-

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1885

prise in which he was engaged for eight years in Knox
County, Texas, and during this time also taught school,
but in 1898 disposed of his Texas interests and came to
Olustee, Oklahoma, where he erected a cotton gin. Sell-
ing this one year later, he embarked in the grocery
business, and from a modest beginning has built up an
enterprise that is now considered one of the substantial
business concerns of the city. Almost from the time of
its inception, Mr. Truscott has been vice president of
the First National Bank and has taken a leading part in
shaping its policies and directing it to success. When he
came to Olustee he interested himself almost immediately
in civic affairs, and as a friend of education was made a
member of the school board, on which he acted almost
continuously until 1913. He also displayed his ability
and integrity as a member of the village council for six
years, and June 17, 1913, was appointed postmaster of
Olustee by President Wilson and has continued to dis-
charge the duties of that position in an expeditious,
efficient and courteous manner to the present time. With
his family, Mr. Truscott belongs to the Christian Church.
He is a member of the lodge and encampment of the
Independent Order of Odd Fellows, in which he is de-
servedly popular. His political beliefs have made him a
democrat from the time of attaining his majority.

Mr. Truscott was married in 1883 in Rockwall County,
Texas, to Miss Zona Polly, who died at Seymour, Texas,
in 1897, the mother of four children, namely: Edith,

who is the wife of F. A. Edwards, who is engaged in the
insurance business in Texas; Margaret, who is the wife
of H. A. Armstrong, of Dallas, Texas, connected with the
Holland Magazine ; Mida, who is the wife of Miles Bivins,
a well-to-do cattleman of Amarillo, Texas; and Gwendo-
line, who married J. P. Chose, a pharmacist of Helena,
Montana. Mr. Truscott was again married, in 1904, at
Olustee, Oklahoma, when united with Mrs. Stella
(Crockett) Carter, widow of the late T. B. Carter, who
was a farmer of Quanah, Texas. Two children have been
born to this marriage: Dorothy and Barbara Tom, who

are attending the Olustee public schools.

Professor John Davis. The history of educational
development in Oklahoma becomes more interesting in
proportion to the recital of facts relating to the con-
tributions made by such men as Professor Davis, since
the number of individuals who may be counted as pioneers
in the school history of Oklahoma is small. It was
twenty years ago that Professor Davis began his activities
in Oklahoma, becoming superintendent of the Blackwell
public schools in 1895. The year after statehood he
was called to the Central State Normal School at Edmond,
and now for several years has been head of the depart-
ment of physics and chemistry in that institution. His
activities and influence both in and out of the class-
room have been an important feature in the remarkable
growth of the Central Normal.

John Davis was born in a plain rural Indiana com-
munity at Wolcott, March 7, 1867, a son of Joseph W.
and Nancy M. (James) Davis. His paternal grand-
father was a first cousin of Jefferson Davis, President
of the Confederacy, and was born in 1800. The father
was a farmer, minister of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, and about two years before the birth of Pro-
fessor Davis had come back from the war with the
rank of first lieutenant in an Indiana regiment. Professor
Davis has two brothers and four sisters: Reed Davis,
a lumber dealer at Grandfield, Oklahoma; Mrs. Harriet
Stocks, wife of a farmer at Clinton, Oklahoma; Arthur
Davis, agent for the Santa Fe Railway at McPherson,
Kansas; Mrs. Josie Erickson, wife of a stockman at
Latham, Kansas; Mrs. Cynthia Pitts, whose husband is

a music dealer at Lafayette, Indiana; ami Mrs. Mary
Pierce, who lives with her daughter at Yale, Oregon.

Professor Davis was educated in the public schools
of Butler County, Kansas, to which state his parents
removed in a covered wagon in 1876. He was afterwards
in the Kansas Agricultural College at Manhattan and
in the Kansas State Normal at Emporia. His life up
to the age of nineteen was spent on a farm, at which
time he left home to enter the agricultural college. He
worked his way through that school, graduating with the
degree Bachelor of Science in 1890. He then took pro-
fessional work in the Kansas State Normal, graduating
in 1892. For several years after that he was principal
of several important schools in Kansas, and in 1895
came to Oklahoma and was elected superintendent of
schools at Blackwell. In 1899 he became a member of
the faculty of the Northwestern State Normal School at
Alva, and during the following six years was the suc-
cessful instructor and guide of hundreds of prospective
teachers. Following that for two years he was super-
intendent of schools at Nowata, and in 1908 took the
chair of physics and chemistry in the Central State
Normal at Edmond.

Some of the methods employed in his successful work
as an instructor have been reduced to book form, under
the title, “A Laboratory Course in Physics,” which is
now in use in the schools of Oklahoma and has been
adopted as a text book in twelve other states. An
important feature of his work in the Central State
Normal School was the development of a school of
photography, the attendance upon which has increased in
a few years from 80 to 236. In this school are taught
the rudiments of the art and the scientific developing
and finishing of the pictures. This school does nearly
all the photographic work for the Central State Normal.
Lantern slides made here are used in advertising the
Normal, and Professor Davis is assigned the duty each
year of traveling over the state in the interest of the
school, using his slides in illustrating the character of
the work done there.

Professor Davis was married in Ponca City, Oklahoma,
in 1896 to Miss Lily Reed, who since their marriage
has been associated with her husband in educational
work. She has been critic teacher in the Central State
Normal School, and in 1915 taught a public school in
Harmon County. They have one daughter, Ruth, aged
fourteen, and in 1915 a freshman student in the Central
Normal.

Professor Davis is a member of the Presbyterian
Church, and is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity and
the Order of Yeomen. He is well known in educational
circles, is a member of the Oklahoma Educational Asso-
ciation, the Central Oklahoma Educational Association,
and the Oklahoma Academy of Science. His motto is
hard work. He is devoted to the duties of his position,
and spends a great deal of time in advancing the edu-
cation of students in overflowing classes.

John M. Jones. In point of energy, enterprise and
determination, John M. Jones, of Hennessey is probably
one of the best known men of Kingfisher County. His
career has been a singularly active one, and has been
crowned with success in a number of directions. A
resident of Hennessey since 1890, he has steadily
forged his way to business prominence as president of
the Jones Dry Goods Company, is an ex-mayor and pres-
ent postmaster of the city, and is a leading and influen-
tial Mason, belonging to the Guthrie Consistory of the
thirty-second degree. The success that has been gained
by this sturdy citizen and capable man of affairs has
come entirely as the result of his own efforts and in its

1886

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

gaining his activities have ever been characterized by
the strictest adherence to honorable business principles.

Mr. Jones was born February 20, 1861, on a farm in
the rich agricultural community of Peoria County,
Illinois, and is a son of Hugh and Esther (Breed) Jones.
Hugh Jones was born in 1806 at Johnstown, Pennsyl-
vania, a son of Malachi and Mary (Addy) Jones, the
former a native of Wales and the latter of Scotland.
When Hugh Jones was eight years of age the family
removed from Pennsylvania to Ohio, and there he was
reared and educated and resided until 1835, when he went
to Peoria County, Illinois, and settled on United States
Government land. There he continued in agricultural
pursuits on a large scale during many years. In addi-
tion he was a steamboat pilot, was one of the builders
of the Ohio Canal, and for a period twenty years was
county judge of Peoria County. In 1858-59 he pre-
empted land in Douglas County, Kansas, but at the
outbreak of the Civil war returned to Illinois, where
he drilled and organized a company for the Union army,
but because of disabilities did not serve actively at the
front. He was a Mason, and for forty years was a
deacon in the LaMarsh Baptist Church in Peoria County.
Mr. Jones died near Canton, in Pulton County, Illinois,
May 2, 1878. In 1835, at Canton, Mr. Jones was mar-
ried to Miss Esther Breed, daughter of Jonas and Grace
(Niles) Breed, the former a native of England and the
latter of Wales. She was born in 1812, at New London,
Connecticut, and died at Joplin, Missouri, in 1895, the
mother of four sons and four daughters, as follows:
William E. and Hugh, who are deceased; Amos, who
is now a ranchman of Kingfisher County, Oklahoma;
John M., of this notice; Martha, who is the widow of
S. G. Chambers; Barbara, who is the widow of James
Northrup; Charity J., who is the wife of W. P. Boy;
and Charlotte, who is the wife of John A. Powell.

John M. Jones was educated in the public schools of
Peoria County, Illinois, taking a special course at the
county normal school, and in 1878 removed to Kansas,
where he settled on Government land in Kingman County.
However, because of his youth, he failed to make final
proof on this property. The journey to Kansas had been
made by wagon, with his brother, Amos, and in 1886
Mr. Jones located at Greensburg, Kansas, where he
became manager of a loan company. He took an active
part in the organization of Kiowa County, Kansas, and
became influential in democratic politics, but confined
his activities to helping his friends, and was never a
seeker after personal preferment. Mr. Jones resided
at Greensburg for three years, following which he passed
a year in prospecting in Colorado, and in 1890 came to
Oklahoma and located at Hennessey, which town had
been founded the year before and gave promise, since
fulfilled, of becoming an important center of commercial
activity. Here Mr. Jones associated himself with the
firm of J. H. Crider & Company in general merchandise
operations, and three years later became identified with
Frederick Ehler, in the Ehler Dry Goods Company. He
was a member of the firm and vice president and secre-
tary of the company for thirteen years, or until 1908,
when he incorporated the Jones Dry Goods Company, of
which he is now president. ' This enterprise has been
developed to large and important proportions and is
one of the leading dry goods houses of the county. At
Hennessey Mr. Jones continued to manifest an interest
in democratic political affairs, and in 1906 was elected
mayor of the city, an office which he held during that
and the following year, and in which he established a
record for helpful, energetic and conscientious service.
He is at this time postmaster, to which office he was
appointed by President Wilson, November 16, 1914, in
recognition of his abilities and integrity, as well as

of the service he has rendered the party. He has
endeavored faithfully to improve the efficiency of the mail
service. Mr. Jones is past master of Coronado Lodge
No. 56, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and has
risen to the thirty-second degree in Masonry, holding
membership in the Guthrie Consistory of the Scottish
Bite.

On October 20, 1890, at Hennessey, Mr. Jones was
united in marriage with Miss Zetta Prince, who was
born in 1865, in Illinois, and they have three daughters
and one son: Calla, Boy Kehler, Beatrice and Marcie.

Boy Kehler Jones was born August 15, 1894, at Hen-
nessey, Oklahoma, and was graduated from the Hen-
nessey High School in the class of 1910. In 1911 he
was appointed a cadet at large from Oklahoma to the
United States Naval Academy, at Annapolis, Maryland,
and was graduated in 1916 with the rank of ensign.

Edward W. Downs, M. D. The world instinctively
pays deference to the man whose success has been
worthily achieved and whose prominence is no less the
result of an irreproachable life than of natural talents
and acquired ability in the field of his chosen labor.
Doctor Downs occupies a position of distinction as a
representative of the medical profession at Hinton and
the best evidence of his capability in his chosen work
is the large patronage which is accorded him.

The original progenitor of the Downs family in Amer-
ica was a native of England and he emigrated to this
country in the colonial days and settled in Connecticut.
Henry Downs, father of the Doctor, was born at Hamden,
Connecticut, in 1832, and as a young man he removed
to Iowa City, where he was married and whence he went
to Tama County, Iowa, there farming until 1866. In
that year he located on a farm in Jasper County, Iowa,
and there he served as township treasurer and as school
director for many years. He was a democrat in his
political allegiance and in early manhood he devoted
much of his time to work as a stationary engineer.
He was summoned to life eternal at Baxter, Iowa, in
1910. His wife, whose maiden name was Lucy Maria
Worden, was born at Utica, New York, July 10, 1832,
and she now maintains her home at Baxter, Iowa. There
were four children born to Mr. and Mrs. Downs, as
follows : Edward W. is the subject of this sketch ; Harry
owns and operates a garage at Baxter, Iowa; Horace is
a druggist at Baxter; and Capitola died at the age of
four years.

In Tama County, Iowa, just twelve miles north of
Toledo, January 22, 1860, occurred the birth of Doctor
Downs. He passed his boyhood and youth on his
father’s farm and received his preliminary educational
training in the public schools of Jasper County, Iowa.
He was a student in the academy at Newton, Iowa, and
in 1879 he began to farm, devoting three years to that
occupation. In 1882 he began to study medicine under
Doctor Knepper, of Collins, Iowa, and the following year
he entered the University of Iowa, in the medical de-
partment of which he was graduated in 1885, with the
degree of Doctor of Medicine. In 1901 he pursued a
post-graduate course in the Chicago Clinical School.
Doctor Downs initiated the active practice of his pro-
fession at Coon Bapids, Iowa, where he built up a large
and lucrative patronage and where he continued to
reside until 1905. In -that year he purchased a farm
forty miles south of "Winnipeg, Canada, and there was
engaged in agricultural pursuits for one year, at the
end of which he disposed of his farm, on which he still
holds a mortgage, however, and came to Hinton. Here
he has built up a splendid medical practice, being one of
the pioneer physicians and surgeons in this vicinity. He
is a member of the Caddo County Medical Society, the

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1887

Oklahoma State Medical Society and the American
Medical Association. He is affiliated with the county and
the Iowa State medical societies, likewise, and for years
was health officer in Coon Eapids, Iowa. In a fra-
ternal way he is connected with the Iowa State Lodge
No. 34, Knights of Pythias, in which he is past chan-
cellor.

Doctor Downs has been twice married. June 29, 1898,
at Coon Eapids, Iowa, he married Miss Jessie Fletcher, a
daughter of the late Capt. John Fletcher, a pensioned
Civil war veteran. Mrs. Downs was a popular and suc-
cessful teacher in Coon Eapids prior to her marriage and
she died in that city in 1902. She is survived by one
child: Henry W., born February 1, 1902, a pupil in
the Hinton public school. For his second wife Doctor
Downs married Mrs. Eliza (Clearwater) Johnson, widow
of Christopher Johnson, a jeweler at Coon Eapids, and
a daughter of Eeuben Clearwater, a retired business man
of Spaulding, Nebraska. To this union has been born
one child: Iowa Capitola, whose nativity occurred Feb-
ruary 10, 1913. Doctor and Mrs. Downs are popular in
the social life of Hinton and they command the un-
qualified confidence and esteem of their fellow citizens.

Edmond J. Gakdnek. “Biography is history teaching
by example. ’ ’ Every human life helps to make or
reflect the progress and experience of the age. Not
only does biography serve to interpret the life of a
state, but it also furnishes lessons of inspiration and
encouragement for individual appreciation. These points
are noted as of special application to the life of Edmond
J. Gardner of Valliant. Of the sketches and life histories
that appear in this publication there are few that better
illustrate the power of an idea and a purpose working
steadily in the soul of the individual than can be found
in the following paragraphs. The sketch also illustrates
many important phases of early history in old Indian
Territory, particularly the Choctaw Nation.

In August, 1832, a company of about six hundred
persons headed by Col. Thomas LaFlore, assembled at a
place near what is now the City of Paulding, Jasper
County, Mississippi, to begin a journey of about eight
hundred miles to their future home in a new country
west of the Territory of Arkansas. It was an unusual
exodus. All the inhabitants of the surrounding country
were gathered together preparatory to the journey —
men, women and children of every age and every degree
af social standing. Following the edict of the general
government, they were to leave that country forever.
Naturally their hearts were sad, and they set out with
much weeping and sorrow, sustained only by such com-
port as came from the prospect of their future home.
Some years prior to this departure the people of the
jountry had become divided into two factions — Chris-
ians and anti-Christians. Naturally on assembling the
;wo elements formed themselves into divisions, being
Irawn together by ties of kinship, friendship and be-
iefs. This particular company was called a “Christian
sompany ’ ’ because they favored Christianity. They
raveled only on week days, announcing the hour of their
laily devotion by blowing a large horn, while the Sab-
oath was a day of rest and of holding religious services.
Dhey traveled by ox wagons, horse wagons, horseback,
tnd about two-thirds walked. The wagons were chiefly
ised for carrying the necessities for the journey. Many
vere thinly clad and had no shoes, and as they journeyed
vestward cold weather came on and they suffered
greatly from the cold. About thirty died from exposure
nd were buried along the roadside near where they
lied. The roads were new and the many wagons made
hem almost impassable. While they were favored with
f OI, V— 9

reasonably fair weather, the suffering was great, espe-
cially among the feeble and children. Several babies
were born during the journey. Passing through Jackson
and crossing the Mississippi at Vicksburg, they followed
a northwest course up Eed Eiver, and about the first
day of December came to a permanent stop about forty
miles across the boundary in the new country. They
selected building places and set up a very populous
settlement. On the 9th of December, under the leader-
ship of Eev. Alfred Wright, a noted missionary, they
organized a church and established a school, naming the
place Wheelock.

At the time of the removal from Mississippi to Indian
Territory in 1832, the five brothers, Isaac, Jerry, James,
Noel and Edmond Gardner, were boys and young men,
not more than one of them being married at the time.
Their parents had died some years before in Mississippi.
These five were all there were at that time of the
Gardner name that were Indians by blood.

Jerry died near Wheelock a few years after his
arrival, and his descendants and all the Gardners except
Noel later moved further west.

Noel Gardner married Henrietta LeFlore, daughter
of Colonel Thomas LeFlore. He settled a mile and a half
west of Wheelock, cleared up a farm, engaged in farm-
ing and stock raising, and was also a minister of the
Gospel, assisting in the church and school work at
Wheelock as interpreter and native preacher. His pos-
sessions consisted of a small farm, cattle, horses, sheep,
hogs and a small herd of deer. He died at his home
about the year 1860, leaving a widow and three sons,
Jefferson, Jerry and James. The widowed mother being
an industrious and intelligent woman managed the af-
fairs of the home to good advantage. About two years
later Jefferson and James began work in a store for their
uncle Michael LeFlore, while Jerry remained on the farm
with his mother to oversee the farming and livestock
interests.

In 1863 Jefferson moved to Eagletown, and engaged
in merchandising, became prosperous and a man of
prominence, serving his people in several official capaci-
ties and subsequently becoming governor of the Nation.
His death occurred in 1906. His brother James was for
several years in the merchandise business at Wheelock,
but in 1883 moved his business to Bonton on the Eed
Eiver. He married Miss Ida Lick, and lived on Eed
Eiver until his death in 1887.

Jerry Gardner married first Eebecea Wilson, whom he
divorced, and then married Jinny James, daughter of
William James. As already stated he remained on
the old homestead. Able to speak the English language
very limitedly, he realized the importance of learning
it, and he and his wife entered into an agreement when
they were married not to speak their native tongue in
their home except when absolutely necessary. He did
this in order to learn the language, and after he had
acquired a fluency in it the habit was so strong that he
and his wife continued through their married life to
speak it and their children never learned the native
tongue.

In the meantime, after the death of their mother in
1871, Jerry Gardner and his two brothers had some of
their interests in common, and Jerry remained at the
homestead looking after the livestock for all three. That
was the condition until 1882, when Jerry bought a
small farm on Eed Eiver near Bonton, and set up in
farming and stock raising for himself. He prospered,
accumulated considerable property about him, cleared
up a good farm, and in 1886 became sheriff of his
county. This was apparently the high tide of his earthly
achievements. Thenceforward his was a somewhat down-

1888

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

ward course. In 1887 his family was visited with an
unusual amount of sickness, resulting in the death of
two of his children. In 1888 the fullbloods of Towson
and Boktuklo Counties armed themselves in bands and
threatened extermination of the mixed bloods who were
outnumbered several to one. Consequently the mixed
bloods fled to Texas on short notice to save their lives,
leaving their families and possessions. Jerry Gardner
remained in Texas about six months, visiting his family
only a few times and then only at night. Sending word
to his wife by a friendly hand to met him at midnight
at a lone pine tree that stood a short distance from the
home, he would cautiously set out for the trysting place,
while his wife, having previously made close watch for
any of the hostile bands, would take her babe in arms
at about ten o’clock at night and followed by her three
sons, make her way through the darkness to the place
of meeting and then sit at the roots of the tree in
perfect silence. The breaking of a stick would announce
his approach, but in order to guard against any possible
mistake there was no communication until an exchange of
signals was made. Speaking in a low tone, making a
few inquiries and giving a few instructions, not being
permitted to see the faces of his loved ones, Jerry
Gardner would depart into the stillness of the night and
would then ride his horse in all haste for Texas, swim-
ming the Bed Biver wherever he reached its banks.
Along the south banks the Bed Biver at every crossing
was a saloon, and great quantities of “fire water’’ were
smuggled across, the river into the Indian country. This
only added fuel to the inflamed minds. During the
civil war between the full bloods and the half bloods
several were killed, including the agitators, before peace
was restored. During this time Jerry Gardner suffered
not only the privations already mentioned but also in-
curred considerable material loss. In 1889 he lost his
wife, and after that he showed little interest in any-
thing and his misfortunes preyed heavily upon his mind.
In 1892 he married Mrs. Ida Gardner, his brother’s
widow. However, he was never himself again, and he
continued to decline in attitude toward life and in his
material prosperity until his death in 1898. At that
time he had a daughter living by his first marriage,
Mrs. Susan Parsons of Millerton. By the second mar-
riage there were two sons and a daughter, Alfred T.,
Edmond J. and Carrie. Alfred T. married Mattie
Bartee and settled on a farm on Bed Biver. Carrie
became the wife of George Tyler, a farmer and stock
man, and settled at Wheelock.

It was of this family and of this ancestry that Ed-
mond J. Gardner comes. He is a half-blood Choctaw.
He was born November 27, 1877, on the old homestead
near Wheelock. The first employment that claimed his
attention was at the age of four when he was called to
“carry the cat to eat the lizards” around the farm
fenced by his two brothers who with neighbor boys killed
them by bow and arrow. His parents then moved to
Bed Biver, near Bonton, where he lived to the age of
thirteen in a wild country, feasting on wild meats,
listening to the voices of wild animals, and to men
too corrupt to live in any other place, with plenty of
“fire water.” There he absorbed and was saturated
with the environments of the time and took up many
of the prevalent bad habits.

The writer has seen a photograph of Mr. Gardner
at the age of thirteen. It shows a boy with strong
face and features, and with some of the wonder at the
mystery of life impressed upon his countenance. It
was at that time that this child of the back woods
became cognizant in a strange and mysterious way of
the things of the future, and that change in mental and

frati

spiritual attitude subsequently affected his entire life.
During the next five years he lived with relatives,
friends and others, going to neighborhood schools part
, of the time and advancing in his studies to the third
reader and taking up the study of arithmetic. Though,
he had a great desire for knowledge and requested toi
be sent away to school, he was unfortunate in this!
respect and was never given the privileges he craved.

At the age of eighteen, becoming tired of living with
other people, he moved into an old house by himself and
lived alone. His lonely life was happily interrupted1
when he met Miss Laura James, and they were married
July 5, 1896.

Soon after, being stricken with a desire to see the
West, in September of the same year he loaded his
belongings, consisting of a little bedding and cooking,
utensils, in with those of another family, and started:
West. His first stop was about fifty miles distant;
There in a short time he came face to face with starva-i
tion. For ten days or more he and his wife ate mushi
made up only with water and cooked from meal that
had been borrowed. At the same time the young wife
did a neighbor’s washing for a family of four to obtain
enough soap to do her own washing one time. Edmond
J. earnestly sought work, but the people who gave it toi
him had no money, and as a last resort he accepted two
small steel animal traps for a small job of work, think-
ing he would set the traps on the creek near his house
and catch a coon and in that way get some meat to eat.l
At the next house for some work he was given a sm frill
piece of meat and a gallon of meal. With this he hurried'
home, cooked it for supper, and that night the little'
household was one of feasting and joy, though little!
provision remained for breakfast.

In March, 1897, a friendly neighbor moved therm
further west and unloaded them in an old house on a:
river bank. There Edmond Gardner became a fislier-r
man. He took as a partner a boy named Henry James.'
While they caught fish in quantities they had no way to
take them to market. It is an old saying that where
there is a will there is a way. Gathering some scrap]
lumber and making a wheelbarrow, they loaded it with
three hundred pounds of fish, and while one pulled the
other pushed and thus they traversed eight miles through! Er
the black mud to the nearest town. Here the fish had'
a ready sale at five cents a pound and within two hours
they were returning with a supply of provisions and, I
as Mr. Gardner says, happier than millionaires, ThisL
fishing was continued until June, and each week they; ^ ‘
made one or two trips with their wheelbarrow, botlr
going barefooted during the rainy season of the year;

In June Edmond loaded his belongings in with those of
another family bound for the West, and after goingi
100 miles started out again to look for work. Crops
were a total failure and no employment was to be had.l
It seemed that an unseen hand led him to face every-;
thing that brings disappointment, discouragements and'
hardships. Thus in January, 1898, he returned to his j,”
old home in Towson County, a wiser, better and a more
experienced man. Before taking this trip he did not
know the value of a dollar, neither did he understand
the vision of his childhood. Now he began to think
seriously of the future, and was ready and anxious to
undertake some real vocation. At a loss to know what
to do or how to start, again and again have the words!
“you must” flashed before his mind and he could not
sit still.

Moving to Clear Creek, he began work in a black-,
smith ’s shop, and in a few months later in a store. In
January, 1899, he bought the store on “promises” and
was appointed postmaster. This gave him time foi

pi cl
same

fits we
ras in'
was

Meets,

tardner

ad is
ocation
siicce
agic.
arrativ

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1889

study and thought. Recognizing the need of an edu-
cation, he began collecting school textbooks, studied
them assiduously, and his interest and application
brought rapid advancement. That was the turning point
in his career, and everything thenceforward seemed to
change for the better. Out of that experience he
evolved some precepts and resolutions. In January,
1900, he resolved “that the leisure hour was the most
valuable part of the day,” and that “he would never
sleep in the daytime unless his health demanded it, for
there is too much that need to be done,” and that
knowledge and not money shall be my aim. ’ ’ These
cardinal principles he has put to a worthy test in his
subsequent career. In the same year he was appointed
clerk and treasurer of Towson County and served two
years. In the meantime merchandising occupied him
until 1901, when he sold out and moved to Valliant, his
present home, taking up business ’as a .photographer.
'T While his income was small, he laid away 10 per cent
41 to buy books, calling it ‘ ‘ the self instruction fund. ’ ’
Thus he acquired books and magazines, but read very
little fiction or story books because he thought it too
expensive a luxury for a poor man, not in dollars and
cents, but in hours and days. Further, the reading of
stories caused him to lose interest in more substantial
literature.

In 1905 he was elected city clerk and in the same
Jyear appointed county clerk. In 1906 he was elected
J mayor. In the meantime he had gained familiarity with
.. the law and was practicing as senior partner of the
JjjJ law firm of Gardner & Cochran. He soon gave up the
|iaw because it did not harmonize with his conscience,
[n 1909 Mr. Gardner organized the ‘ ‘ Puritan Family, ’ ’
i fraternal order. He wrote the ritual of the initiatory
legree, which exemplified the struggles of life from
beginning to success, pointing out idleness, intem-
perance and self-importance as the chief stumbling
tone; passing to old age with its joys and sorrows
md closing with a scene of death and our hope in the
esurrection. The purpose of this order was “mutual
issistance, ’ ’ its motto, “do something,” and the bene-
its were providing medical aid for the sick. The order
vas intended for the young people, boys and girls, but
was enjoyed by the old and young alike, the best
eople of the town becoming members.

In 1910 he was appointed assistant postmaster and
erved 3% years. During his leisure hours he invented
complete system of shorthand writing for his own use,
vhieh was considered by many as being equal to if not
etter in some respects than the standard systems.
Vhile studying shorthand he discovered and worked out
complete phonetic alphabet for the English language,
ery different from the common English alphabet in
haracters used and names for them, consisting of sixty-
even characters, each having only one sound, suitable
or type form and a printer’s press. In 1915 he invented
small writing machine, small enough to be carried in
he pocket, having only five keys and operated entirely
nth one hand and using his phonetic alphabet; the
ounds of the words being made in the same manner as
chord on a musical instrument — by a combination of
eys.

While concerning himself with these higher aims and

and' toilsome with no, reward in sight, and he suffered
times of despair. Again financial necessities would
interrupt his real work, and, troubles seemed insur-
mountable mountains: in his path. Having passed the
crisis and having taken up the fight anew, all these
previous discouragements passed away like snow under
a summer sun.

Mr. Gardner is the father of eight children, of whom
five are living r Mrs. Lela Shackelford, Bonnie, Susie,
Alzara and Lois. The family live in the Town of Val-
liant. He is a member of the Methodist Church and is
fraternally connected with the Masons, Independent
Order of Odd Fellows and the Woodmen of the World.

Charles M. Roberts. Not all the Oklahoma pioneers
were successful from a financial and business standpoint.
Nearly all of them possessed daring and enterprise, with-
out which qualities they would hardly have ventured into
this country. There are a few conspicuous cases of
substantial success, however, and one of these is illus-
trated by Charles M. Roberts of Okmulgee. Mr. Roberts
first became identified with what is now the State of
Oklahoma in 1888, the year before the original opening.
In 1893 he made the run into the Cherokee Strip, start-
ing from the Mickasuckee Mission^ where he was em-
ployed at that time. He secured a claim but afterwards
abandoned it.

His principal operations have been in old Indian Terri-
tory, now Eastern Oklahoma. It was on May 30, 1900,
that he arrived at Okmulgee. At that time not more
than twenty white people were settled on the site of that
old Indian town. The railroad had not quite reached
here, and in fact he was just ahead of the railroad. For
several years he conducted the Frisco Hotel of Okmulgee,
but he soon saw larger opportunities in the oil and real
estate business and that has been the source of his un-
qualified success. As an investment and operator in the
oil district he is one of the many men who have acquired
a fortune. Some of his associates say that Mr. Roberts
made $50,000 out of a single oil deal. His interests are
chiefly confined to the largest and most productive oil
fields in the country at this time, the Cushing field,
and he also has some leases and oil property in Okmulgee
County.

Charles M. Roberts was born in Berrien County, Mich-
igan, March 8, 1864. His parents were Lowell L. and
Lydia C. (Liscomb) Roberts, who were also natives of
Michigan. The family lived in that state until Charles
\yas nine years of age and they then moved to South-
western Missouri, locating in Lawrence County in 1872.
In 1886 they went to Wichita, Kansas, and in the spring
of 1888 the parents settled at Rogers, Arkansas, where
the father died later in the same year at the age of
sixty-three. The mother died at Seneca, Missouri, March
5, 1893, aged fifty-eight. Lowell L. Roberts was a car-
penter and wagon maker by trade and a very industrious
and proficient workman. While living in the North in
Michigan he made a great number of sleighs and bob
sleds as well as wagons. In the family were four chil-
dren, Nellie E., wife of Frank Good of Seattle, Wash-
ington; Jennie, wife of Lynn Wilks at Winfield, Kansas;
Charles M.; Daisy E., wife of H. C. Davis of St.
Joseph, Missouri.

Mr. Roberts lived with his parents and followed them
in their various removals until about 1888, when he was
twenty-four years of age. After he had finished his
early education he went into his father’s shop and prac-
tically grew up in the wagon making trade. That trade
furnished him his means of living for a number of years,
practically until he came to Okmulgee in 1900. When
he first came into what is now Oklahoma in November,

1890

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1888, he settled at Muskogee and found outlet for his
energies in work at his trade there for 6% years. During
the next 4% years he lived in Texas, and then returned
to Indian Territory and established himself at Okmulgee.
Mr. Roberts has given his influence and means to the
upbuilding of his home city, and is one of the leading
members of the Chamber of Commerce.

In 1888 at Rogers, Arkansas, he married Miss Mary
Johnson, who was born in Missouri, but was partly
reared in Arkansas. Her father was J. J. Johnson. To
their marriage were born three sons, two of whom died in
infancy. The son Fred Roscoe, who lives at home, and
who was married October 2, 1915, to Miss Sadie Miers
of Muskogee has come into considerable prominence as
an aviator. In the spring of 1915 he went to Ithaca,
New York, and took a practical course in aviation. He
has a fine aeroplane of his own, built in the Thomas
Brothers factory at a cost of $8,000, and similar to those
employed by the European allies for military purposes.
The Okmulgee Chamber of Commerce has built for him
an aviation field and hangar and he has proved a very
skillful flyer and usually practices in his machine or
takes it out for exhibition purposes about once a week,
and may be seen soaring about in the clouds over Ok-
mulgee every Saturday if the weather permits.

Harry W. Eby, cashier of the Colony State Bank,
Colony, Oklahoma, has been a resident of this state since
1909, when he came to Colony with Messrs. Shaub and
Millner, and secured control of the bank with which he
has since been identified. The bank was organized in
1903, as a state institution, by W. Montgomery and
Doctor Davis, both of Weatherford, and a Mr. Galloway
of Colony. The present officers of the bank are P. E.
Shaub, president; E. L. Millner, vice president; and Mr.
Eby, cashier. The capital stock is $10,000, with a
surplus of $2,900. Under the supervision of Mr. Eby
the bank has paid a 20 per cent dividend for the past
six years, and its surplus has been increased from $1,300
to $2,900. It was at no time a paying investment prior
to Mr. Eby’s connection with it, and since he came to
be connected with it the present fine home of the bank
was erected.

Mr. Eby was born in Hannibal, Missouri, on December
5, 1878, and he is a son of Frank Eby, born in New York
State, near Rochester, in 1827, and died in Hannibal in
1897.

Frank Eby left his native state in early manhood and
went to Rock Island, where he engaged in the mercantile
business and was there located for many years. He
finally went to Hannibal, where he spent the last years
of his life. He was a member of the Methodist Episco-
pal Church, and a deacon in it, and he helped to organ-
ize the church in his home town. He was a Mason and a
veteran of the Civil war, having served four years as
quartermaster of an Iowa regiment of volunteer infantry.
He married Sarah Jane Webb, who was born in Indiana
in 1830, and who died in 1906 while on a visit in New
Mexico. Harry W. is the only child born to them.
Sarah Webb, however, was the second wife of Mr. Eby.
His first wife was a Miss Gilman of Bangor, Maine. She
died in Saverton, Missouri, leaving him six children.
Charles is a railroad contractor and lives in Denver,
Colorado, where he is interested officially in the Ameri-
can National Bank. Louis died at St. Charles, Mis-
souri, where he was a merchant for some years. Seth G.
lives in Denver, and like his brother, is a railroad con-
tractor. Mary is the wife of a Mr. Colbtirn, and lives
in Mt. Rose, Colorado. Grace, now deceased, was the
wife of J. Ross, a merchant of Mt. Rose, Colorado.

Hattie married Van Slingerland and lives in St. Louis,
Missouri.

Harry W. Eby attended the public schools in Hanni-
bal, Missouri, and was graduated from the Hannibal
Commercial College in 1897. He then engaged in rail-
road contracting with his brothers, Seth and Charles,,
and was associated with them until 1906, carrying on
their operations through Georgia and Alabama, and com-
ing to Oklahoma in 1900 on a contract for the Frisco,,
between Sapulpa and Denison, Texas. They finished that
contract in 1901 and then came to Weatherford on a
contract for the old Choctaw Railroad, now the Rock,
Island. They built the road bed on this line from
Weatherford to where the town of Clinton now stands,,
finishing the work in 1901, toward the close of the year.
The brothers then took a similar contract in Texas fori
the Frisco, from Sherman to Fort Worth, and they were*
one year completing that piece of work. Returning too
Oklahoma, they carried out a contract with the Choctawi
Railroad from Tecumseh to Asher, finishing the work ini

1903, and then took a contract with the Rock Island fromi
Chandler to Guthrie, completing the work in February,

1904. Other contract work of a similar nature with thei
Midland Valley, from Fort Smith to Tulsa, they com-i
pleted in 1905, after which Harry W. Eby of this review!
withdrew from association with liis brothers and started'
operations on his own initiative. His first contract was
a levee job at the mouth of the Arkansas river, and hei
finished that work in 1906. In 1907 he was connected!
with the A. B. & A. R. R. at Atlanta, Georgia, and he
then entered the Clovis National Bank at Clovis, Newi
Mexico, as a book-keeper. He was employed there for
two years and in August, 1909, he came to Colony, Okla-
homa, since which time he has been associated in an offi-i
cial capacity with the Colony State Bank, as has already;
been stated in detail.

Mr. Eby is a democrat and takes an active part in
local politics of that faction. He has served as treas-
urer of the school board of Colony, and is a member and
a deacon in the Presbyterian Church. He is a Mason,
and is a member of Weatherford Lodge No. 138 Ancient
Free and Accepted Masons, Weatherford Chapter No. 31
Royal Arch Masons, and Weatherford Commandery.i
No. 17, Knights Templar.

Mr. Eby is well known in Oklahoma City, and is con
nected with the Oklahoma City Building and Loan Asso-
ciation there. While in that city he married, in 1901
Miss Lillian Rice, whose father was then postmaster at
Weatherford, and who is now living retired in this city
Five children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Eby:
Wesley, born in 1904, attends the public schools, as dd
also Reginald and Carolina, born in 1906 and 1910, re<
speetively. The two younger children are Frank, borr
in 1912, and Virginia, in 1914.

Staff
his i
itailj
start
if lit
arriw
positi
He s
fame
neees
Ohio,
also (
basin
propo
ream
tod
contii
aatil
and <
a ms
sight
Whili
inters
condi
citize
Sasai
She i
State,
Bade*
Kansi
Cathoi

:daugh
whoa
openii
tin Ga'
hasbi
that t
ihoma
15, It
iSaline
her 2t
Seattli
13, 186
of Cai
121,181
Sosa,
1,1881
in has
Anada
was in,
Coanh
% 188
anpra
Frai
schools

Frank A. Dinkler. An honorable place among the
citizens of Hennessey, Oklahoma, is occupied by Frank
A. Dinkier, a leading pharmacist of this wide-awake
city. For nearly a quarter of a century has Mr. Dinklei

been a resident of this community, and by his business loweve

energy, integrity and public spirit, has ably contributed
to its prosperity and growth. On a number of occasions
he has been before the people in positions of importance
and his service as a public servant has been alike grati
fying to his numerous friends and a credit to his
capability and executive power.

Mr. Dinkier was born on a farm near Churchtown, ir
Washington County, Ohio, November 14, 1863, and is i
son of Joseph and Susanna (Walter) Dinkier. Josepl
Dinkier was born in Germany in 1835 and was nineteer
years of age and an orphan when he came to the Unitec

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1891

States. He had secured only an ordinary education in
his native land, but was willing and ambitious and
ready to accept any honorable employment that would
start him on his way to his cherished goal, the winning
of his fortune in his adopted country. Soon after his
arrival, in 1854, Mr. Dinkier succeeded in securing a
position in a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, glass factory.
He spent some years in various establishments in the
famous manufacturing city and finally secured the
necessary means to invest in a small farm near Marietta,
Ohio, in Washington County. To add to his income he
also conducted a small store, and both his farm and his
business were subsequently built up to very respectable
proportions. In 1877, with his family, Mr. Dinkier
removed to Saline County, Kansas, where he took up
land from the United States Government. There he
continued to be engaged in farming and stock raising
„ jj until 1893, then changing his residence to Oklahoma,
j)M and died at Hennessey, May 30, 1913. Mr. Dinkier was
■j. jj a man of great and tireless industry, thrifty and far-
sighted in money matters, and of the strictest integrity.
While not a politician or an office seeker, he took an
interest in the affairs of his community, and at all times
conducted himself as a progressive and public-spirited
citizen. He was married August 20, 1861, to Miss
Susanna Walter, who was born in Germany in 1842.
She was four years of age when brought to the United
States by her parents, both of whom were natives of
Baden, Germany. Mrs. Dinkier died at Brookville,
Kansas, May 12, 1892, in the faith of the Roman
Catholic Church, of which her husband was also a com-
municant. They were the parents of six sons and four
daughters, as follows: Mary R., born April 14, 1862,

who made the run for land to the Cherokee Strip at the
opening in 1893, securing a tract of Government land
in Garfield County, Oklahoma, on which she proved up,
has been a professional nurse, but has now retired from
that vocation and is living quietly at her home at Okla-
homa City; Frank A., of this notice; John, born October
am 15, 1865, who is engaged in agricultural operations in
'm Saline County, Kansas; William Ignatius, born Decem-
ber 23, 1867, who met his death in a mine accident at
31 Seattle, Washington, in 1908 ; Louisa A., born December
deij 3, 1869, who in 1895 married Fred Eishmann, a farmer
of Caddo County, Oklahoma; George E., born January
21, 1872, who died unmarried November 6, 1893; Susanna
Asso Rosa, born February 14, 1874, who died as a child March
1901 1, 1880; Joseph A., born March 30, 1876, who is engaged
era in business as manager of his brother’s drug store at
Anadarko, Oklahoma; Emma, born August 3, 1878, who
was married in 1901 to O. E. Deane, a farmer of Caddo
is di County, Oklahoma; and Frederick P., born February
re 3, 1881, who is a physician and surgeon now engaged
in practice at Fort Cobb, Oklahoma.

Frank A. Dinkier received his public education in the
schools of Washington County, Ohio, while growing up
on his father’s farm, and when fourteen years of age
rani accompanied his parents to Saline County, Kansas, where
he was also surrounded by an agricultural atmosphere,
le He had shown no desire for farming as a vocation,
lines however, his inclination running toward the calling of
itei pharmacist, and accordingly, in the same year as he
sion arrived, he took up the study of his chosen profession,
tanc When he had mastered its many details he secured
ti employment and for a number of years lived at various
In points until 1892, when he came to Hennessey and pur-
chased a drug stock. Since that time he has been suc-
cessful in building up a large and paying business. He
now has an excellent trade and carries a large and
•i;ep up-to-date assortment of goods, selected wisely, arranged
etee tastefully and attractively and priced moderately. Aside
nitJfrom his business Mr. Dinkier has found time to serve

his community in offices of public trust, having been
mayor for two years and, city treasurer for eight years.
In both offices he has shown his executive ability and
strict integrity. Mr. Dinkier is a director of the First
National Bank of Hennessey, owns a well cultivated
farm in Caddo County, and considerable property at
Anadarko, including the drug store that is being con-
ducted by his brother, Joseph A. Mr. Dinkier and the
members of his family are communicants of the Roman
Catholic Church.

Mr. Dinkier was married at Augusta, Kansas, May
23, 1906, to Miss Margaret Flanagan, who was born
February 18, 1878, in Butler County, Kansas, daughter
of Martin and Johanna (Hamilton) Flanagan, the
former a native of Ireland and the later of Dubuque,
Iowa. One son and one daughter have come to Mr. and
Mrs. Dinkier: Clara Johanna, born March 30, 1908;

and George Martin, born June 30, 1911, both at
Hennessey.

Charlie Ellis Thornton. Ranking as one of the
representative business men of Washita County is
Charlie Ellis Thornton, proprietor of an undertaking and
furniture establishment at the county seat, Cordell. He
is also known as a man who has contributed to the wel-
fare and advancement of the city, and although a com-
paratively recent addition to the life of Cordell has
already strongly entrenched himself in the confidence of
its citizens. Mr. Thornton comes of a family which
located prior to the Revolution in Georgia, and was
born April 8, 1877, at Black Springs, Montgomery
County, Arkansas, a son of A. N. and Mary (Sloan)
Thornton.

A. N. Thornton was born in Georgia in 1843, and still
survives, hale and hearty in spite of his seventy-three
years. He has a winter home at Corpus Christi, Texas,
while during the summer months he resides at Cordell.
Mr. Thornton enlisted for service in the war between
the states in 1861, as a member of a Georgia regiment
in the Confederate army, and served four years with
gallantry and valor. Later he removed to Black Springs,
Montgomery County, Arkansas, and in 1891 to Limestone
County, Texas, settling near Mexia. After four years
he moved to the Panhandle and took up a ranch near
Memphis, Texas, where he and his son, Charles E., owned
nine sections of land, and although their large and valu-
able ranch property has been sold, the greater part of
Mr. Thornton’s interests are still centered at Memphis.
Mr. Thornton is a deacon in the Baptist Church. He
has been active in democratic politics, and at one time
served as justice of the peace. Mr. Thornton married
Miss Mary Sloan, also a native of Georgia, and they
became the parents of six children, namely; Tommie, who
was a carpenter and met his death in 1879, at Black
Springs, Arkansas, when he fell from a scaffolding
while working on a church belfry; Nettie, who is the
wife of S. P. McKinney, an electrician of Amarillo,
Texas; Lee M., who owns several farms in the vicinity
of Memuhis: A. H., who is a school teacher and minister
of the Baptist Church, at Cordell; Charlie Ellis, of this
notice: and E. K., who was a cattleman and died at
Rio. Texas, in 1914.

Charlie E. Thornton secured a graded school educa-
tion, and was attending the high school at Mexia in
1895, when the familv moved to Memphis. Leaving school
at that time, he assisted his father in the work of the
ranch until 1906. then entering the furniture business
at Memphis, where he continued for one year. He next
moved to Rowe, Donald County, Texas, and established
himself in the general merchandise business, but after
one year his store was destroved by fire. He rebuilt,
but soon thereafter disposed of his interests and went

1892

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

to Clarendon, Texas, where he engaged in the grocery
business, a successful ' enterprise with which he was
identified until ill health caused him to sell out, in 1909.
He next spent one and one-half years at Sulphur, Okla-
homa, and April 8, 1911, came to Cordell, where he
has since been engaged in the undertaking and furniture
business. His store is situated on the west side of the
square, the ground floor being 100 by 25 feet; and the
second floor 75 by 50 feet, and in addition to a large
stock of furniture, is equipped with every known appli-
ance for the dignified and reverent handling of the dead.
Mr. Thornton has a patronage which extends into
Washita and the surrounding counties, and his business
reputation is an excellent one all over this section.
Mr. Thornton is a democrat and a member of the
Baptist Church. He is an active and enthusiastic mem-
ber of the Cordell Commercial Club, and is fraternally
identified with Cordell Lodge No. 167, Independent
Order of Odd Fellows Memphis Lodge No. 729, and
Cordell Chapter No. 75, of the Masonic Order; Cordell
Chapter No. 206, Order of the Eastern Star; and Cordell
Lodge of the Brotherhood of American Yeomen.

On December 11, 1899, in Childress County, Texas,
Mr. Thornton was married to Miss Ollie Barnett,
daughter of J. A. Barnett, a capitalist of Clarendon,
Texas. Two children have been born to this union:
Moselle, born in February, 1902, and now a freshman at
Cordell High School; and Harry, born in October, 1903,
who is attending the Cordell graded schools.

G. M. Barrett, prosecuting attorney of McCurtain
County, went alone on a tour of inspection of the moon-
shine regions of the old Choctaw Nation in 1911. For
a week he traveled, unmolested and practically unques-
tioned, never suspected, visiting one community after
another, making memoranda of the location of the dis-
tilleries and charging his memory with the names and
physiognomies of the men operating them. Back in
his office at Idabel, he marshalled his data, placed some
of the names of operators he had obtained upon war-
rants, and held a conference with Sheriff Tom Graham.
The important result was the capitulation of six dis-
tilleries, the confiscation of their property, the arrest
of a “higher up" in the liquor manufacturing business,
the confessions of several others who voluntarily sur-
rendered, and — a brass band. The brass band led a
parade of law-abiding citizens of McCurtain County
who rejoiced in the clever work of the young Arkansas
lawyer whom they had elected prosecuting attorney and
in the fact that he had achieved what United States
officials had not accomplished in half a century of effort.
The brass band was also a feature of the reception given
Mr. Barrett, and, piled upon a wagon that featured
in the parade, were the kettles and other paraphernalia
of the moonshiners.

Mr. Barrett’s clue that led to this clever piece of
work was secured in Sevier County, Arkansas, where
he was reared and where he had known two illicit manu-
facturers of liquor who had established themselves later
in Indian Territory where settlements were fewer and
molestation infrequent. These men were brothers and
in his campaigns of the county for office, Mr. Barrett
had learned of their location. His lonely journey as a
sleuth led him there, and on a public highway he met
one of the brothers, but was not recognized.

His route to a still usually was found by an almost
unfailing sign, i. e. the stumps of small trees that had
been cut for logs to use in the construction of liquor
plants. With few exceptions he found the plants far
removed from public highways and in almost inacces-
sible canyons and caves of the wildest section of the

Kiamiehi Mountains, although one was discovered withii
200 yards of the public road which he was traveling.
“Mountain Dew’’ he found in divers quantities. Th<

most prosperous of operators put their product in bar (d1655;

rels and it was hauled to points in Arkansas on the Kan
sas City Southern. Others put it in kegs and jugs anc
bottles and delivered it to peddlers who operated ir

KliiiJs}

adjoining territory, visiting such settlements in the ••■ill’'

it Garv
isisiDg,
sea
le Ultl
I it

mountains as Hochatown, Ida, Bethel, Smithville anc
Alikchi, and at Idabel, Valliant, Garvin and Hawortl
in the southern part of the county. A few moonshiners
raised the crops of corn from which their white liquor st
was made, while others depended upon the little farmers ifer ®
of the mountain country to sell them corn or to trade' I* ®ar‘
it for liquor.

The first moonshiner placed in jail happened to be
one of the men whom Mr. Barrett had known in Arkan
sas and whom he visited in his cell, relating his experi-
ence as a detective. The man, in his surprise, confessed-
to being a moonshiner, whereupon, he and Mr. Barrett
agreed that if this man would return to the mountains,
advise his fellows of the coup and the predicament
they were in, and assist the sheriff in delivering their
plants into possession of the county, there would be-
prosecutions of only the oldest of them in the business,
provided all agreed to refrain from re-entering the busi-
ness. The moonshiner was thereupon released upon his
own recognizance. He headed for the mountains and
in a few days six plants had been brought in by the
sheriff and all the men connected with them had sur-
rendered. The men agreed among themselves who should
plead guilty and when they were presented to Mr. Bar-

bat t

IdJn

|e Cod
Led 1)
dent, in
Hr.Bai
dor cod
nd ira
margin,
feature
id of

iirith re

rett he recommended light sentences. These occurrences 1908 M;

ceed Be
letter,

happened in 1911. For several years the Kiamichis were
tolerably free of the big stills.

G. M. Barrett was born in Dyer County, Tennessee, William
June 7, 1874, and is a son of John F. and Ulysses
Luvisa (Hopper) Barrett. His father, born in North
Carolina, ran away from home at the age of fourteen
years to join his three brothers who were in the Confed-
erate army, in which he likewise enlisted and was
pounded three times, the last wound being received at

laid io
lived n
tarewel
of

and la
thing I

Appomattox, where General Lee surrendered. Mr. Bar- lappina

rett was taken a prisoner and on account of his wound
was not finally released until nearly a year after the
war had closed. In the meantime, a negro boy came to
the hospital and inquired if a Confederate soldier was
there, and, on being introduced to Mr. Barrett, remained
with him until after he had rejoined his relatives in Ten-
nessee. When he returned to his former home in North
Carolina, after a long and arduous trip on a sore leg,
he found that his father had taken his wife and other
children and set out for a new home in the West.
About the same time, Mrs. Hopper, also widowed by
the war, took her two boys and two girls from their
home in South Carolina and headed for the West. It
happened that the Barrett and Hopper families joined
and made the trip together, locating in Middle Ten-
nessee. After much wandering, veteran John F. Bar-
rett found the remnant of his family, and in due time
was married to Ulysses Luvisa Hopper. They became
the parents of six sons: G. M., Earnest L., a farmer at
Corn Hill, Arkansas; John W. and J. E., farmer? at
Garvin, Oklahoma, and S. S. and C. C., who are teachers.
At the close of the war, John F. Barrett settled on an
unimproved farm of eighty acres in Arkansas, near
Brownstown, where he resided for some years, but
finally moved to Garvin, Oklahoma, where he now makes
his home.

G. M. Barrett was reared on the home farm, where
he remained until he was twenty-one years of age, and

the ten

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1893

at that time started out to secure an education. ‘ ‘ I had
a yearning for an education/’ he says, “an ambition
to rise in the world and increase the sphere of my use-
fulness. My father, who desired to help me all he
could, furnished me with provisions and I rented a small
house where I did my own cooking and cut wood on
Saturdays to pay rent. I worked out and went to school
until I was able to teach. I then studied law and July
9, 1902, was admitted to practice law in Little River
County, Arkansas. I was admitted to practice in the
United States courts September 11, 1905.” In 1904,
while still living in Arkansas, he bought the Little
River News, at Ashdown, Arkansas, which he later sold
to Charles L. Shinn, of Hale, Missouri.

Mr. Barrett came to Oklahoma in 1905 and located
at Garvin, where he engaged in farming and stock
raising, as well as in the practice of law. In 1906 he
was secretary of the Democratic Central Committee of
the 111th District, and on October 6th of that year, called
the first primary election ever held in the district, this
being for the purpose of nominating a candidate for
the Constitutional Coiivention. The election call was
issued by the committee, of which W. L. Ray was presi-
dent, in session at Garvin, September 8, 1906. In 1907,
Mr. Barrett made the race for the democratic nomination
for county attorney, in the first statehood campaign,
and was defeated by Robert E. Steel by a narrow
margin. This campaign had an especially exciting
feature in that it stirred certain republicans of the north
end of the county, who believed Mr. Barrett would be
nominated and who knew what his policy would be
with reference to the enforcement of the law. In
1908 Mr. Barrett was appointed county attorney to suc-
ceed Robert E. Steel, temporarily suspended, and in a
letter, dated September 4th of that year, addressed to
William H. Harrison, regarding the appointment, he
said in part : “I pray God that when I shall have

lived my allotted time out on earth and come to bid
farewell to those who know me, I shall have the pleas-
ure of knowing that my life has been of some service
and has been appreciated. Next to my family the
thing I treasure most is the friendship, well being and
happiness of the people among whom I live. ’ ’ During
the ten days of his incumbency of that office, Mr. Bar-
irett convicted seven men for murder and one for lar-
ceny. This was a record that had not been surpassed
in the state, considering the brevity of time and the
character of defense made by those he prosecuted.

In the campaign of 1910 Mr. Barrett made a speak-
ing tour of the county in behalf of the celebrated
“Grandfather Clause Act,” which was given a sub-
stantial majority by the county. In that year he came
before the people again as candidate for county attor-
ney of MeCurtain County, and was elected to that office
without opposition in the general election, receiving
1,314 votes, the highest number 'cast for any county
candidate, and the largest vote with one exception cast
for any democratic candidate that year in Oklahoma.
In 1912 he defeated Jeff D. McLendon for the nomi-
nation for the office and was re-elected by a large ma-
jority. During his campaign in 1910, he said: “I

am no politician and know nothing of politics. I did
not come from a family of politicians. But must I be
defeated because my father is not a politician, because
ihe honored the plow handles instead of the judge’s
bench? Must the favored few always hold the posi-
tions of honor and trust and the politicians rule our
government? Are honesty and integrity qualifications
worth anything against political influence?”

Among his first duties after entering the office of
county attorney in 1910 were the preferring of charges,

involving failure to enforce the law, and Indian mis-
dealings, against the county judge. Conditions relating
to Indian transactions had reached an acute stage and
Governor Cruce and Governor MeCurtain of the Choctaw
Nation were appealed to with the result that D. C.
MeCurtain was assigned to the county as special assist-
ant attorney general to assist in an investigation started
by Mr. Barrett. Judge Hill of McAlester, and G. V.
McVeigh, an Indian agent, also joined in the investiga-
tion. This resulted in the removal from office of the
county judge, the return to county of about $74,000
that had been unlawfully taken from the Indians and
the deeding back to Indians of lands taken unlawfully.
Mr. Barrett is essentially a prohibitionist and he had
much to do with the MeCurtain County prohibition ma-
jority of 245 in the election of 1912 wherein it was
sought to substitute local option for statewide pro-
hibition.

No ease he was ever engaged in had a more spectacular
interest and is likely to be longer remembered in McCur-
tain County than the Coltrane Case. He took it up long
after the deeds of crime had been committed and judg-
ment passed, and in fact his efforts were directed toward
a righting of the processes of justice, a reparation to a
man who had already served some half a dozen years in
the Federal prison at Leavenworth, and a conviction of
the real criminal.

Only a brief history of the case can be attempted.
In the fall of 1902 Cicero and Sam Coltrane made ar-
rangements to live a few months at the log home of Tom
Watson and his rather attractive wife, a few miles from
Hochatown. In a short time there was friction between
Cicero Coltrane and Watson partly over business matters,
partly, it is said, because of the former’s attentions to
Mrs. Watson. One evening in May, 1903, Cicero left the
house, to feed a hog. While near the ppn he was shot
down with a double barreled gun, one load being of
fine shot and the other of buckshot. That night the
body was conveyed to a field some distance away and
buried.

The next day Sam Coltrane was arrested charged with
the murder. While in custody he made a confession
that he had killed Cicero, though neither at that time nor
at any subsequent time was a strong and impelling motive
for the killing given or proven.

Coltrane had his examining trial and was bound over
to the United States Court. Suspicion was very strong
against Watson also, and the officers arrested him. Later
on he was bound over and placed in jail with Sam, but
failing to get any testimony that would corroborate
Sam ’s against Watson, and being unable to convict either
Watson or Sam without using the testimony of Watson
and his wife against Sam, the grand jury dropped the
case against Watson and used Watson and his wife
as witnesses against Sam. Thus after a number of trials
and one or more disagreements, Sam Coltrane was sen-
tenced before the Federal judge of Durant to serve the
rest of his natural life in the Federal penitentiary at
Leavenworth. He not only protested his innocence of the
real crime but kept unceasingly diligent in securing the
influence of friends to effect his release from prison and
the establishment of his innocence.

It was after his election as county attorney that Mr.
Barrett first became identified with the ease. He had
been in office only a few weeks when an old man named
Saunders who lived in the Hochatown neighborhood was
murdered in his home and his house burned down on the
body. Mr. Barrett conducted an investigation and in the
debris of the house found some scraps of letters, which
indicated that the letters had been written from the
penitentiary at Leavenworth. In the meantime Sam Col-

1894

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

trane having learned of the killing of Saunders, wrote
Governor Cruee a synopsis of the killing of Cicero Col-
trane, stating that Watson was the man who killed old
man Saunders for the purpose of covering up all the facts
in reference to the killing of Cicero. While old man
Saunders was an important witness against Tom Watson,
it was really his son Harry Saunders who had passed
the Watson place on the evening of the killing of Cicero
Coltrane, and Watson’s wife had seen the young man
and, though it being about dark had mistaken him for
the father. Mr. Barrett soon afterward went to Leaven-
worth and procured all information he could from Sam
Coltrane. After examination of all the information, Mr.
Barrett came to the conclusion that Watson was the real
murderer, and that he had been led to kill the old man
Saunders for the purpose of getting him out of the
way as a last remaining witness against him. After Wat-
son had killed Cicero f on the protection of himself, he
and his wife conspired together . to lay it all on Sam
Coltrane, and that was an easy matter under the circum-
stances since Coltrane was a comparative newcomer in
the neighborhood and from the first realized that he
could never get his word believed against that of Watson,
and that his life depended upon his covering up the mur-
der and shielding Watson. It was for this reason that he
had consented to a plot outlined by Watson by which
it was agreed that the first one arrested for the murder
should assume all responsibility for it, while the other
would lend his influence in getting the defendant cleared.
Sam Coltrane thus fell a guileless victim to the plot, and
while he was thus 1 ‘ accessory after the fact ’ ’ he was
not the real murderer.

All this was brought out by Attorney Barrett, who
assembled a great volume of evidence and proceeded with
characteristic vigor in the prosecution of the case against
Watson subsequent to the Saunders murder. In 1912, a
few months after Saunders was murdered and his house
burned down, Tom Watson was indicted charged with
the murder of Cicero Coltrane. Mr. Barrett conducted
the prosecution of Watson, and toward the close of 1913
secured his conviction and Watson was subsequently sent
to ten years confinement and a thousand dollars fine. In
passing, it may be noted that Sam Coltrane has been
pardoned and Mr. Barrett recently signed a petition for
the pardon of Watson.

Mr. Barrett was united in marriage December 10,
1899, at Brownstown, Arkansas, to Miss Della R. Hern-
don, daughter of Robert Herndon and granddaughter of
an officer in the Confederate army during the Civil war.
To this union there has been born one daughter, Ulice,
who is now ten years old. Mr. Barrett and his family
are members of the Baptist Church. Fraternally, he is
affiliated with the local lodges of the Masons, the Inde-
pendent Order of Odd Fellows and the Woodmen of the
World, and his professional connections include member-
ship in the McCurtain County and Oklahoma Bar asso-
ciations.

Glen W. Dill. The Dills, father and son, have been
prominent in financial and other affairs at Hobart for
twelve years, almost from the founding of the city.
The late Judge D. S. Dill occupied a position of promi-
nence and influence as a banker and attorney such as
few of his contemporaries in Southwestern Oklahoma en-
joyed, and since his death many of his financial activities
have been assumed by his son Glen W., who now looks
after the extensive farm loan business established by his
father, and is also one of the largest stock holders and a
director in the City National Bank of Hobart.

The late Judge D. S. Dill was born in Ohio in 1858,
his ancestors having come originally from Germany, and

probably settled in Ohio from North Carolina. At the
age of sixteen he went west from Ohio to Nickerson,
Kansas, and eventually studied and became a lawyer. In
1887 he removed to Kansas City, Missouri, and in 1890
to Caldwell, Kansas, and at the .opening of the Cherokee
Strip established his home on a claim at Medford, Okla-
homa. In 1903 he removed to Hobart, where he became
prominent as one of the early lawyers and bankers and
for ten years was an active force in everything connected
with the civic and political life of that city and was con-
spicuous as a town booster. He became president of the
City National Bank, and held that position at the time
of his death in January, 1913. Judge Dill was a trustee
in the Presbyterian Church, was a member of Hobart
Lodge No. 198, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and
was one of the leading democrats of Kiowa County.
He married Cora Wolfinger, who was born in Ohio in ,
1863. Their children are: Glen W. ; Todd, who was j

killed by a fall over a precipice in the Washita Moun- 1
tains at the age of twenty just before he was ready j
to graduate from the Hobart High School ; Cora Marie is I
now a freshman in the Hobart High School.

Glen W. Dill was born at Kansas City, Missouri, Feb- '
ruary 10, 1888, and since early childhood has lived in
Oklahoma, having gained his early education in the
public schools at Medford, and graduating from the I
Hobart High School with the class of 1906. In 1907
he took a business course in the Gem City Business Col-
lege at Quincy, Illinois, and after returning to Hobart
spent five years as bookkeeper in the City National Bank.

In 1913, following the death of his father, he took charge
of the large farm loan business and brokerage interests
built up and established by his father in connection with
banking, and has carried on this business which repre-
sents an extensive clientage throughout Kiowa and sur-
rounding counties. His offices are in the City National
Bank Building. In the bank, of which his father was
president, he is a director and one of the principal stock-
holders. Mr. Dill is also secretary and treasurer of the
Hobart Ice & Bottling Company, is secretary of the
Hobart Mill & Elevator Company, and secretary of the
Hobart Building & Loan Association.

In politics he is a democrat, is a trustee in the Pres-
byterian Church, and is affiliated with Hobart Lodge No.
198, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and Hobart
Chapter No. 37, Royal Arch Masons. At Hobart in 1910
he married Miss Zelma Yandegrit, a daughter of the
late D. E. Yandegrit, who was a real estate broker in
Hobart but who died in Oklahoma City.

Albert Andrew Weber, M. D. Since the year 1908-
the health and sanitation of the thriving little com-
munity of Bessie, in Washita County, have been under 1
the care of Dr. Albert Andrew Weber, a medical and sur- 1
gical practitioner who has brought to his practice a most I
thorough and comprehensive training and devotion and I
skill of a high order. Doctor Weber was born at Jack- I
son, Jackson County, Michigan, April 29, 1875, and is a I
son of John and Emma (Gass) Weber.

Albert Weber, the grandfather of Doctor Weber, served I
his term in the German army in his youth and when he I
entered upon his career chose the vocation of farming, I
in which he continued to be engaged throughout his jj
life in the province of Wurtemburg, Germany. His 1
death occurred at Esslingen, when his grandson was still
very young, the grandfather being then seventy-four J
years of age. John Weber was born at Esslingen, Ger- !
many, in 1841, and emigrated to the United States in
1867, settling at Detroit, Michigan, where he was engaged 1
in butchering. From Detroit he subsequently moved to
Jackson, where he established himself in a wholesale 1

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1895

and retail meat business, and with native thrift and in-
dustry increased his holdings and enlarged his scope of
operation so that his business activities invaded the fields
of milling, real estate and banking, in all of which lines
he met with unqualified success. He died at Jackson in
1891, aged fifty years, the possessor of a handsome prop-
erty as well as of the regard and confidence of those
among whom he had lived. He was a consistent member
of the Lutheran Church, and a democrat in polities, and
took a keen and active interest in civic affairs, as well
as in the various lodges and fraternities to which he
belonged, and which included the Harmonica, the Arbeiter
Verein, the Turner Yerein, the Maennerchor and the Inde-
pendent Order of Odd Fellows. Mr. Weber married Miss
Emma Gass, who was born in Ohio in 1854, and died at
Jackson, Michigan, in 1884, and they became the parents
of five children : Emma, who lives ai J ackson, Michigan ;
Albert Andrew, of this review; John, who is a resident of
Chicago; Charles, a bookkeeper residing at Jackson,
Michigan; and Estella, who is the wife of James Moly-
neaux, auditor for the Illinois Central Railroad at Chi-
cago.

Albert Andrew Weber attended the public schools of
Jackson, Michigan, and in his youth spent three years,
from 1888 until 1891, in academic work at Stuttgart,
Germany. He was graduated from the Jackson High
School in the class of 1894, following which he went to
the University of Michigan and was graduated in 1898
with the degree of Bachelor of Science. This was fol-
lowed by three years of work in the medical department
of the same institution, and his senior year was then
passed at Rush Medical College, Chicago, where he re-
ceived his degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1903. To
further prepare himself he did hospital work in Chicago
at St. Luke’s Hospital as well as the Cook County Hos-
pital and continued to practice in that city from June,
1903, until March, 1904. At that time he first came to
Perry, Oklahoma, where he was engaged in practice for
four years, and in this time was elected county coroner of
Noble County, a position in which he was serving up
to the time of his resignation, when, in June, 1908, he
came to Bessie. Here lie'has continued in the enjoyment
of an excellent practice, attracted by his skill, sympathy
and earnest devotion. He carries on a general practice
in both medicine and surgery, being the only practi-
tioner at Bessie, and belongs to the Washita County
Medical Society, the Oklahoma Medical Society and the
American Medical Association. He has continued to be
a close and discriminating student, and in 1913 took a
post-graduate course at Rush Medical College. Doctor
Weber maintains well appointed offices in the O. P. Smith
Drug Store, where he has a comprehensive medical library,
and surgical equipment for the handling and care of the
most difficult and delicate operations. He is a demo-
crat in politics, and in additioon to acting as coroner of
Noble County was also a member of the insanity board
while there. While reared in the faith of the German
Lutheran Church, he attends the Presbyterian Church at
Bessie. Fraternally, Doctor Weber belongs to Perry
Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons ; Perry Lodge
of the Knights of Pythias; Bessie Camp of the Modern
Woodmen of America, and the Phi Beta Pi Greek letter
medical fraternity.

In 1908, at Perry, Oklahoma, Doctor Weber was mar-
ried to Miss Frances E. Irwin, daughter of Milton Irwin,
deceased, who was a millwright, and one child has been
born to this union: Vivian Alberta, born September 17,
1911.

S. E. Bell. When Mr. Bell arrived in Bartlesville
in 1903 he found it a village of a few hundred people

and just coming into fame as one of the centers of the
oil and gas industry. Since that year his own fortunes
and energies have been identified with the development
of the oil resources, and his holdings and connections
give him rank as one of the most prominent men in
that industry in Northern Oklahoma.

S. E. Bell, who has spent many years in the old Indian
Territory part of Oklahoma, was born at Mendon,
Adams County, Illinois, December 29, 1863, a son of
John A. and Eliza (Mills) Bell. His father was born
in Indiana and his mother in Kentucky, and both were
taken to Illinois when children and grew up and married
there. The father enlisted at Canton in the spring of
1862 in an Illinois regiment of infantry, and was with
the armies of Grant and Sherman until the close of the
war. He took part in the Atlanta campaign, then in
the march to the sea, and finally reached Washington
and marched up Pennsylvania Avenue in the grand
review after the close of the war. Soon after the war
he removed to Knox County, in Northeastern Missouri,
and about 1890 went 'to Neosho County, Kansas, where
his wife died in 1897 at the age of fifty-six. The father
is now living at Caney, Kansas, retired. In early life
he was a farmer, but for many years was in the hard-
ware business in Missouri and Kansas. He is a mem-
ber of the Methodist Church and is a stanch republican.
He served as mayor and justice of the peace at Cun-
ningham, Missouri, and also' as justice of the peace in
Neosho County, Kansas, and as police judge at Caney.

S. E. Bell was one of a family of five sons and five
daughters, all now living except two sons. His early
life was spent at home until the age of seventeen, and
his education came from the common schools. In 1883,
when about twenty years of age, he went to Neosho
County, Kansas, and spent two years as a clerk in a
hardware store. For two years following he was in
business for himself at Erie, Kansas, and then entered
the Indian Territory and was employed for three years
in a general store at Fort Gibson. For the next three
years he was connected with the old Ann Pereival store,
a well known establishment in that part of the terri-
tory. Mr. Bell finally came out of the Indian Territory
and was engaged in the hardware and implement busi-
ness at Caney, Kansas, until 1903. He then located in
Bartlesville, which was then a mere hamlet, and has
since made himself a factor in the oil industry, both
as an individual operator and in association with others.
He is president of the Bell Oil Company, incorporated,
and was formerly president of the Lehman-Bell Oil Com-
pany. He is now manager of the co-partnership company
of Bell, Stratton & Company, operating extensively in
Kay County. His holdings as an oil man extend to
practically all the better known districts of Northern
Oklahoma.

Mr. Bell is a republican, and for two terms served as
clerk of the city council at Bartlesville. He is also a
Master Mason. In 1892 Mr. Bell married Mrs. Minnie
R. Vann. She was born in the Cherokee Nation and has
a thirty-second portion of Cherokee Indian blood. Her
father, John Cunningham, was a pioneer at old Fort
Gibson. By her first marriage her three children were:
John C. Vann, of Bartlesville; N. B. Vann, of Arizona;
and Fannie, who died at the age of seven years. Mr. and
Mrs. Bell have three children of their own: Alfred E.,
who is associated with his father; Laura P., who is now
a student at Chicago, taking courses in domestic science
and art preparatory to teaching; and Lorena, who is in
the high school at Bartlesville.

James W. Porter. Though a young man of only
thirty years, James W. Porter has for almost ten years
of that time been an active factor in banking affairs

1896

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

in Western Oklahoma. He is now vice president of the
Cotton Exchange Bank of Leedey, assisted in organiz-
ing that and several other institutions in Dewey and
other counties and is also vice president of the State
Bank of Commerce at Trail and vice president of the
Texmo Cotton Exchange Bank at Moorewood.

Born at Newton, Tennessee, December 5, 1885, James
W. Porter comes of a family that originated in Ireland
and established itself in Alabama during the period of
early settlement in that commonwealth. His father,
J. W. Porter, who was born at Montgomery, Alabama,
in 1839, is now living retired at Shawnee, Oklahoma.
From Alabama he went to Bock Island, Illinois, and
later to Newton, Tennessee, in 1893 established his home
at Cleburne, Texas, and in 1903 went to Shawnee. For
many years he was in the hotel business. He served
throughout the conflict between the North and the South
as a Confederate soldier, going out with an Alabama
regiment, was wounded and taken prisoner, but subse-
quently returned to the ranks after being exchanged.
J. W. Porter was married in New York State to Miss
Utica Streeter., who was born in Utica, New York, in
1848.

James W. Porter from the age of eight years lived
in Cleburne until his father removed to Shawnee. He
attended the public schools at Cleburne, and graduated
with the high school class in 1903, and from that year
until 1906 was laying the foundation of his business
career as an employee in a department store at Shawnee.
In 1906 he became associated with W. O. Horr and Irving
H. Wheatcroft. These gentlemen organized at Bay the
Cotton Exchange Bank and similar banks in Texmo,
Cheyenne, Crawford and Elk City. In 1911 the bank
at Bay was removed to Leedey, and has since been the
Cotton Exchange Bank of Leedey. Its present officers
are; Irving H. Wheatcroft, president; James W. Porter,
vice president; C. B. Flint, cashier. The bank has a
capital stock of $15,000 and the present surplus account
is $1,500. In 1911 at the corner of Main Street and
Broadway a modern and well furnished banking house
was constructed, the banking' rooms being on the lower
floor and offices above. It is a cement block building.

In politics Mr. Porter is a democrat, but has given
most of his attention to local affairs, and for two years
served as mayor of Leedey. He still has membership in
the First Baptist Church at Cleburne, Texas, and is
affiliated with Leedey Lodge No. 227 of the Knights of
Pythias. At Texmo, Oklahoma, in 1906 he married
Miss Velma Horr, daughter of C. A. Horr. Mr. Horr
is a resident of Leedey and in the real estate business.

Hon. E. E. Glasco. One of the leading civil and
criminal lawyers of the state, Hon. E. E. Glasco, has
also won distinction as a public servant, the value of
whose labors in the Oklahoma Legislature cannot be
overestimated. He was born in White County, Illinois,
in 1870, but was reared principally in Wayne County,
where his parents, Thomas M. and Martha A. (Burrell)
Glasco, resided on a farm. Thomas M. Glasco, a native
of Illinois, was but fifteen years of age at the outbreak
of the Civil war, but he bravely joined his father in the
same company of the Eighty-seventh Begiment, Illinois
Volunteer Infantry, and subsequently served four years
under the flag of the Union. Mr. Glasco ’s paternal and
maternal grandfathers were natives of South Carolina,
and the ancestry of the former has been traced back
beyond the days of the Bevolution in America. Both
parents are living now at Washington, Oklahoma. In
the family of Thomas M. and Martha A. Glasco there
were three sons and three daughters, as follows: E. E.,

of -this review; E. D., who is a prominent stockman and
real estate dealer at Washington, Oklahoma; Clarence,

who is a prosperous farmer at Athens, Texas; Mrs. Ada
Jackson, who is the wife of a machinist at Athens,
Texas; Mrs. Mary E. Smith, who is the wife of a mem-
ber of the firm of Smith-Glasco Hardware Company, at
Blanchard, Oklahoma; and Mrs. Sarah Sapp, who is the
wife of an agriculturist and stock dealer of McClain
County, Oklahoma.

E. E. Glasco was educated in the public schools of
Illinois and the Hayward Collegiate Institute, at Fair-
field, Illinois, from which he was graduated in 1892
with the degree of Bachelor of Arts., Following this,
he completed a course in the Southern Illinois State
Normal School, at Carbondale, Illinois, and for the
eight succeeding years was a popular and efficient teacher
in the public schools. While in Illinois, Mr. Glasco
served two years in the capacity of assessor of Wayne
County.

In 1897 Mr. Glasco moved to Athens, Texas, and for
three years thereafter continued to follow the vocation
of educator. At that time he became interested in
journalistic work, founding the Henderson County News
at Athens, and this paper soon became involved in a
heated campaign involving the liquor question, support-
ing the side of the prohibitionists and assisting them
to victory. The character of officers sought by the pro-
hibitionists were elected, among them being District
Judge B. L. Gardner, who still retains his seat on the
bench. Following the outcome of this struggle, Mr.
Glasco went to Tishomingo, Oklahoma, where he began
the practice of law, to which he had devoted much study
for several years. He succeeded in building up a good
practice, but in 1906 came to Purcell, Oklahoma, and
in 1907 was elected the first county judge of McClain
County, an office which he acceptably filled for one term.

Mr. Glasco was first elected to the Oklahoma Legis-
lature in 1912 and during that term was made chairman
of the Committee on Banks and Banking. He was the
author of the banking act passed by that body which
remedied defects in the guaranty law and placed the
guaranty plan on a more substantial basis, and was joint
author of the law prohibiting race track gambling and
of a series of bills regulating the loaning of money. In
1914 he defeated the late C. M. McClain, who had been
a member of the Constitutional Convention, for the
nomination and was re-elected to the Legislature, on a
platform pledging an anti-usury law and exemption
reforms. His victory was notable in view of the oppo-
sition encountered at the hands of bankers and retail
merchants who opposed his plan of remedial legislation
relating to usury and exemptions. He was made chair-
man of the Committee on Judiciary No. 1, and a mem-
ber of the committees on Criminal Jurisprudence, Con-
gressional Bedistrieting, Eevenue and Taxation, Pro-
hibition Enforcement and Banks and Banking. He was
the author of a bill preventing usury, and a bill validat-
ing insurance policies and requiring insurance companies
in case of a total loss of property insured to pay the
face amount of the policy. Mr. Glasco was a stanch
adherent of measures advocating the interests of labor
and the farmers, and in the 1912 Legislature was sternly
opposed to the passage of a bill relating to coal miners
which, after being passed by the Legislature, was referred
to and defeated by the people. He was a candidate for
speaker of the House of the Fifth Legislature, but with-
drew from the contest and threw his strength to A.
McCrory, who was thus elected. Mr. Glasco has been a
delegate to every state democratic convention since the
acquirement of Oklahoma statehood, being a member of
the 1912 convention platform committee, and was a
delegate to the democratic national convention at Bal-
timore in 1912.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1897

Mr. Glasco was married in 1889, while still a resident
of Illinois, to Miss Eosa E. Donovan, who died in March,
1907. To this union there were horn four children, as
follows: Roy, aged twenty-one years, who passed the

state bar examination in 1914 and is now employed in
the law office of Thompson & Patterson, at Paul’s Val-
ley, Oklahoma; Ellen, aged nineteen years, who is a
high school graduate and lives at home with her father;
Raymond, aged seventeen years, who is employed as a
chemist in the plant of the Kansas Chemical Company,
at Wichita, Kansas; and Crystal, aged twelve years, who
is a student at Purcell High School. In 1908 Mr. Glasco
was again married, his second wife having borne the
name of Mrs. Mattie Keener. They have one daughter:
Evelyn, who is three years of age.

Mr. Glasco and his family are members of the
Methodist Episcopal Church South. Professionally, he
is connected with the McClain County Bar Association
and the Oklahoma State Bar Association. He is senior
member of the law firm of Glasco & Osborn, and is justly
accounted one of the leading civil and criminal lawyers
of his part of the state.

Djllakd. Watts, M. D. One of the hardest working
physicians in Oklahoma is Dr. Dillard Watts of Laverne.
It is said that Doctor Watts has a practice extending
over three counties and is almost constantly at work
answering the calls of his large patronage.

He represents one of the' old families of Kansas, and
much of his early experience was connected with farm-
ing and other lines of business until he could realize his
ambitions by entering the medical profession. He was
born on a farm in Johnson County, Kansas, March 15,
1869, a son of Josiah and Sarah (Mann) Watts. Josiah
Watts was a notable figure in western life in the early
days. He was born in 1820 in St. Charles County, Mis-
souri, and was directly related to the family of Daniel
Boone, the Boones having been among the pioneers in
St. Charles County. Josiah Watts was also of French
stock, his great-grandfather having been an officer in the
Revolutionary army under General Lafayette, with whom
he emigrated to America. Josiah Watts showed his stock
by a life of much excitement and adventure in the West.
In 1849 he participated in the rush to the West during
the gold excitement and spent four years on the Pacific
Coast as- a prospector and miner. He went out by ox
team overland and returned by the Isthmus of Panama.
After his return to Missouri he became associated in
mercantile business with James Bridger, the famous
trapper and Indian fighter, and for a number of years
was located at the eastern terminus of the Santa Fe
Trail, at what is now Kansas City. He then homesteaded
land in Johnson County, Kansas, prior to the Civil war,
and the title to that land still remains in the Watts
family. He was one of the prominent men of Johnson
County, where he died April 30, 1896. In 1858 Josiah
Watts married Miss Sarah Mann, who was born March
20, 1838, a daughter of Samuel Mann, a native of Mis-
souri, and she now lives at Stilwater, Kansas. There are
seven children, five sons and two daughters, namely:
Banaugh, now a physician at Okemah, Oklahoma;
Samuel, deceased ; Mary, who died in infancy ; Ada,
widow of Jerry R. Harbeson of Sapulpa, Oklahoma;
Robert B., a physician at Wellington, Missouri; Leo, a
farmer in Beaver County, Oklahoma.

Dr. Dillard Watts, the youngest of the family, grew
up on a farm in Johnson County, gained a public school
education, and worked on the farm with his father until
he was twenty-one. For the following four years he was
in the drug business at Napoleon, Missouri, and after
earning and accumulating the necessary means he entered

in 1898 the Kansas City Medical College, where he spent
two years. He also practiced under a preceptor for two
years, and thus by continued hard work and paying his
own way finally graduated from medical college with
the degree M. D. in the class of 1908. Seeking a perma-
nent location Doctor Watts came to Oklahoma, and prac-
ticed at the old Town of Speermore, where he built up
much of the practice which he still retains. Speermore
was his home until 1914, in which year he moved to
Laverne to be near the railroad, and now has his office
and residence in that growing little city.

Doctor Watts is a Scottish Rite Mason, belonging to
the bodies of that order at Guthrie. In 1896 he married
Miss Jessie Hawkins, who was born in Bates County,
Missouri, in 1872, and who died January 20, 1899, at
Kansas City, Missouri. To their marriage were born two
children: Zoe, wife of Philip Doherty, a lumberman at

Laverne; and Beulah, who is an elocutionist. On March
29, 1915, Doctor Watts married Emma Garrity, who was
born in Riley County, Kansas.

J. C. Sheets. The wonderful development of the oil
and gas industry of Oklahoma during recent years has
attracted to this state men of ability, enterprise and pro-
gressive spirit from all parts of the country. Among the
first to come to the vicinity of Copan was J. C. Sheets, a
West Virginian, who has since been active in the promo-
tion and development of some of the leading industries
of this part of the state. At the present time he is
associated with enterprises of importance and large pro-
portions that have contributed materially to the business
prestige of Washington and the surrounding counties.

J. C. Sheets was born at Salmon, West Virginia, No-
vember 19, 1876, and is a son of Leander and Alice Starr
(Curtis) Sheets. His father was born at New Mata-
moras, Washington County, Ohio, March 18, 1838, and
as a young man went to West Virginia, where he con-
tinued to be engaged in agricultural pursuits until his
retirement. In his later years he came to Oklahoma,
and his death occurred at Copan, in September, 1908.
Mrs. Sheets was born at Hockingport, Athens County,
Ohio, November 24, 1849, and was about ten years old,
in 1860, when taken to West Virginia by her parents.
That state continued to be her home until she came to
Oklahoma, where she still resides. There were four chil-
dren in the family: Vaughn L., a graduate of the Amer-
ican Medical College, and now a practicing physician and
surgeon of Chicago, Illinois, where he has offices at No.
59 East Madison Street; Earl H., a resident of Mus-
kogee, Oklahoma, and partner in the oil producing firm of
Sheets Brothers and various other concerns; J. C., of
this review; and Dr. F. C., a graduate of the American
Medical College, and now a practicing physician of Okla-
homa City.

J. C. Sheets received his education in the public schools
of Cameron, West Virginia, and in 1899 became inter-
ested in the oil business as a producer, although he had
been connected with this industry in one or another capac-
ity since his sixteenth year. In 1902, as one of the first
producers of Copan, he came here with his brother,
Earl H., and founded the firm of Sheets Brothers, which
has steadily grown into one of the largest concerns in
this line in Washington County. The firm now operates
twelve properties, and since its inception has drilled about
300 wells, the brothers operating farm lands and timber
tracts extensively. J. C. Sheets is secretary and treas-
urer of the Georgia Oil and Gas Company, manager of
Sheets & Company, president of the Alamo Oil Company,
secretary and treasurer of the Swastika Oil and Gas
Company, secretary and treasurer of Sheets Brothers &
Jackson and manager of the Collis Oil and Gas Company.

1898

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

He is known among his associates as one of the shrewdest
oil operators in the state, and his judgment is taken as
final in regard to gas and oil properties.

Mr. Sheets ’ contribution to the upbuilding of Copan
is a beautiful home, built in 1905, of reenforced con-
crete, with eight rooms, modern in every particular, and
including private sewerage and private water works. He
was reared a democrat, but is inclined to vote inde-
pendently, preferring to use his own judgment in the
selection of candidates. At the present time he is serv-
ing as treasurer of his school . district. He is a thirty-
second degree Mason, belonging to the Shrine at Tulsa,
the Commandery at Sistersville, West Virginia, of which
he is a life member, the Consistory at Guthrie, and the
Blue Lodge at Copan. He is also a life member of the
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, at Indepen-
dence, Kansas, and holds membership in the local lodges
of the Independent Order of Odd Eellows and the Knights
of Pythias.

Mr. Sheets was married in 1904, to Miss Millieent E.
Holdren, who was born at Independence, Ohio, January
16, 1876, a daughter of H. H. and Harriet E. (Webber)
Holdren, natives of the Buckeye State and residents at
Newport. To Mr. and Mrs. Sheets there has been born
one daughter: Alice Millieent.

Hugh Henry. There is a picturesque elevation in
Okmulgee County known as ‘ ‘ the Hugh Henry Hill ’ ’
which rises 192 feet above the general elevation of the
town at its foot. Crowning this hill is the home of
Mr. Hugh Henry, who has lived in this one locality for
fully forty years. He is a quarter blood Creek Indian,
having inherited that ancestry from his mother, and
consequently was given an allotment of the lands in
this part of the old Creek Nation. Eor many years
Mr. Henry had extensive livestock interests, and is one
of the old time cattlemen of Texas and Indian Territory.

That part of the ranch which he called his meadow
land up to fifteen years ago is now the site of the
thriving little City of Henryetta. The name was given
to honor him as the oldest settler, and seldom has a
name been better bestowed as a token of honor and
respeet.

Hugh Henry is one of the picturesque characters still
surviving from the early days of old Indian Territory.
He grew up on the frontier, and early learned some of
the pioneer virtues, to speak the truth, zealously to guard
his honor, and to do justice to his fellow men, and to
treat all under his roof with due hospitality. In the
early days his home was noted for its generous hos-
pitality, and though he lived in the midst of outlawry
and violence he was always safe because he treated
others as he expected to be treated. His home again
and again served as a place of entertainment for United
States marshals, outlaws, train robbers, horse thieves,
and bootleggers. In fact he has had officers of the law
and outlaws in his home at the same time, and many a
beef was slaughtered from his herd to provide them
food. He made it a rule and it was one thoroughly
respected to protect all persons who were his guests,
despite their character or vocation, and it was probably
due to this custom that he never lost a horse or any
property by theft.

Hugh Henry was born in the “old stone fort” at
Nacogdoches, Texas, that historic building which had
been the bulwark of the early Spanish against the
Indians and French along the Texas frontier and which
was the scene of a bloody battle during one of the early
revolutionary uprisings in Eastern Texas. In that his-
toric place he first saw the light of day January 13,
1848. His parents were Woodson D. and Lovisa (Hut-

ton) Henry. His father was a white man and his
mother a half-blood Creek Indian. Both were born in
Alabama, where they married, and they came to
Texas in 1832. Woodson Henry and his wife’s father,
James Hutton, took thirty families of Indians into
Texas in that year, corresponding with the general
migration of Indians from the east to the west side of
the Mississippi River. Soon after the birth of Hugh
Henry his parents moved to the Brazos River in Hill
County, Texas, and there the mother died when Hugh
was four years of age, leaving a still younger child,
Patrick, then only two years old. The six children were :
James, Caroline, Parelee, Ezekiah, Hugh and Patrick.
Of these Mr. Hugh Henry is the only one still living.
After the death of the mother the father carried Hugh
and Patrick back to the home of Nancy Hutton, their
grandmother, in Smith County, Texas. There Hugh
Henry lived until he was nine years of age. His father
having in the meantime married again took his two
boys home in Cherokee County. Hugh Henry did not
like his stepmother, and after two months he ran away
and returned to his grandmother. His father followed
and carried him back home, where he received a sound
thrashing for his disobedience. A few days later his
father went to court, and the self reliant youth again
made his escape from conditions which he thought
intolerable, but this time took an unfamiliar route. He
traveled west into Fannin County, Texas, sleeping by
the roadside at night. In Fannin County he met a Mr.
Cannon, boss of a cattle ranch, and the boy remained
on that ranch and1 had a good home with the Cannons
for seven years, receiving only board and clothes for
such work as he could do. While there he became an
expert in all the arts and practices of the old time
range.

He was only thirteen years of age when the war broke
out, and in 1863 he joined John Terry’s regiment under
Captain Glasscock. He was with his command until the
close of the war, and to use his own words, “had his
last fun at the Mansfield fight in Louisiana. ’ ’

After the war he started for San Antonio, Texas, and
at Lampasas Springs met his old friend and protector,
Cannon, for whom he took a herd of cattle north to
Dodge City, Kansas, being paid $65.00 a month. This
was in 1866. In 1867 he was again in the Rio Grande
country, and in the fall of that year started north. On
this trip he stopped on the Canadian River and joined
his uncle, Watt Grayson. Mr. Henry had many inter-
esting experiences in the early days, and during the
two seasons of 1867-68 he was out on the range hunting
buffalo. That was just about the beginning of the
buffalo hide industry, and Mr. Henry relates that the
hunters classified the buffaloes into three divisions. The
pelt of the buffalo cows were unfit for commercial pur-
poses, and the leather and fur came chiefly from the
bulls. He remained with his uncle, Watt Grayson, as an
employe on the cattle ranch until the latter’s death in
1875.

That was the year when Mr. Henry located on Coal
Creek, near the present site of the City of Henryetta.
Here for fourteen years and four months he was asso-
ciated with Sam and Wash Grayson in the stock
industry. When he first started with the Grayson broth-
ers he had only sixty-two head of cattle, but at the end
of the fourteen year period had turned off the ranch
and sent to market about 36,000 head. He did his first
work at wages of $15.00 per month, but was drawing
$2,400 a year when he gave up ranching. It was the
coming of the railroad and the founding of Henryetta
which caused him to abandon ranching.

When Mr. Henry first located in this neighborhood in
1875 his nearest neighbor was six miles away, and

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1899

consequently he readily deserves the distinction of being
the oldest settler. He still owns 160 acres adjoining the
little City of Henryetta, while his children have their
allotments nearby. He has a fine home on the hill
already mentioned, and for the past fifteen years has
devoted his land to farming and general stock raising.
The approach of civilization has been viewed not alto-
gether with satisfaction by Mr. Henry, although he
recognizes its benefits. It is largely due to his incon-
sistency with the restricted pursuits and customs of the
populous community, and even now he is planning to
take his wife and children further west into New Mexico
and hunt up an unrestricted cattle range. He is just
as vigorous apparently as he was thirty years ago, and
he can use a Winchester with all the deadly1 accuracy
which made him noted as a sure shot in days gone by.

The first postoffice established after the railroad was
built was called Henry City, and when Henry Beard
became prominent in promoting the town caused the
change of the name to Henryetta, the latter part, etta,
being in honor of Mr. Beard’s wife.

Mr. Henry was first married in Texas to Malinda Ann
Dickerson, who was born in that state. She died at the
old home in Indian Territory in 1883. Of her six chil-
dren two are now living: James of Payton; and Luella,

wife of John Key of Henryetta.

In 1885 Mr. Henry married Arminta Exon, who was
born in Warsaw County, Illinois, in March, 1868. When
she was four years of age her parents came to Indian
Territory, and she grew up in the Creek Nation. To
this marriage were born twelve children, nine of whom
are still living: Patrick, who lives at Ponca City; Mack;
Sam, who died at the age of eight months; Anna May,
wife of Stephen Gillam of Henryetta; Woodson, who
died at the age of twelve years; Hettie, wife of Ed
Burgen, a full-blood Creek Indian of Okmulgee; Hugh,
Jr.; Hilibymicko; Muskogee, who died at the age of
three weeks; Tsininina, who lives at home; Wynema;
and Yahola.

It is noteworthy that Hugh Henry never had a day
in school in all his life, though he learned to write his
name while riding in the saddle. He appreciates the
value of an education, especially in modern times, and
is giving his children the best possible advantages.
There is a photograph extant showing Hugh Henry in
the picturesque garb by which he was familiarly known
to all the old timers in this part of Oklahoma. He then
wore his hair long, as was the custom, and his locks
fell to his waist, some of them being two feet four inches
long.

Courtland M. Feuquay. One of the young men who
have made a promising record as a lawyer in the
Lincoln County bar is Courtland M. Feuquay, who was
admitted to practice three years ago and has already
shown some striking ability in the handling of cases
- entrusted to his charge.

Courtland M. Feuquay was born in Kansas April 15,
1890; and is a son of the late John W. Feuquay, for
many years a leading and successful business man of
Chandler. He built and owned the Feuquay Block, one
of the well known buildings in the central business dis-
trict. He was born in Parke County, Indiana, and
during the Civil war served with an excellent record in
the Union army. He had many narrow escapes from
danger, was wounded and at one time left on a battle-
field as dead. He married Jence C. Holland, who was
born in Goldsboro, North Carolina, of a prominent family
of that state, a daughter of West Holland. John W.
Feuquay died at Chandler at the age of sixty-nine.
For many years he was engaged in business as a coal
operator. He was also in the government service. His

political affiliations were with the democratic party, and*
he was a member of Chandler Post of the Grand Army
of the Bepublic. Mrs. Feuquay, his mother, is one of
the prominent women of Oklahoma, active in club affairs,
and a member of the Woman’s Belief Corps in Oklahoma
and also one of the leaders in the Women’s Suffrage
movement of the state.

Courtland M. Feuquay, the only child of these parents,
received his education in the Chandler High School,
received the degrees of B. O. from Epworth University,
B. A. from University of Oklahoma and LL. B. from
Yale. He is also an alumnus of the University of
Virginia. For a man of his years he has seen much
of the world and was orator of the day, American Boy
Day, at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 and at the
Jamestown Exposition in 1907. He was associated for
two years in the practice of law with Colonel Hoffman
at Chandler, and since that time has been in practice
for himself. He has shown the results of a studious
mind and a fine individual fitness for the profession.
Mr. Feuquay is a Scottish Bite Mason of thirty-two
degrees, and also affiliates with the Knights of Pythias
and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and while
at college was a member of a Greek letter fraternity.

Milas Lasater, was born in Palo Pinto County,
Texas, in the year 1872, and is the eldest of four sons
of George M. and Mary S. (Johnston) Lasater.

George M. Lasater, the father, was a pioneer cattle-
man of Palo Pinto County, his father having been the
first county judge after the organization of that county,
to which unorganized territory he had removed from Fan-
nin County in the early ’50s.

Milas Lasater spent his boyhood on his father’s ranch,
and attended the public schools of that section of the
state. He was for a time in the city schools of Murfrees-
boro, Tennessee, and lastly continued his studies at De-
Pauw University, Greencastle, Indiana. While prosecut-
ing his own studies, and afterwards, he engaged in teach-
ing school in Indian Territory and Texas. In the year
1898 he withdrew from this work and settled on a ranch
near Pauls Valley, the present county seat of Garvin
County, Oklahoma. In that locality he conducted trading
operations in the live stock business, and engaged in the
breeding of pure bred Herefords. He became a stock-
holder in the First National Bank of Pauls Valley, later
cashier and active vice president of that institution, of
which he still remains a director and one of its vice
presidents. While engaged in the banking business at
Pauls Valley he became owner and publisher of the
Pauls Valley Democrat.

It was at Pauls Valley that Mr. Lasater had met and
wedded Miss Sarah Waite, whose father, Thomas Waite,
was a pioneer settler of that section of Indian Territory
and whose mother was a member of the Chickasaw tribe
of Indians, one of the Five Civilized Tribes. Mrs. La-
sater’s early education was in the Chickasaw tribal
schools, but she spent nine years in the schools at Ober-
lin, Ohio, graduating from Oberlin College with an A. B.
degree. Mrs. Lasater takes an active interest in the pub-
lic school work of Oklahoma City, and devotes much of
her time to the education of their daughters, Corinne and
Carol.

Mr. Lasater ’s material interests in Oklahoma are
varied and important, consisting of banking connec-
tions and ranching interests that he has maintained for
many years, but the major part of his time and atten-
tion is given to his executive work as agency supervisor
in Oklahoma and Kansas for the Equitable Life Assur-
ance Society of New York.

The following statements were written by one familiar

1900

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

'with the character and services of Mr. Lasater: A

citizen by marriage of the Chickasaw Nation of Okla-
homa, Mr. Lasater has for many years been a represen-
tative leader in the growth and development of that sec-
tion of the state. In recent years his activities have
far transcended local limitations, and his philanthropic
spirit has been manifested in divers ways. He is a
man of high intellectual attainments, broad views, and
distinctive liberality. His public career has covered
several years, beginning with membership in the
Sequoyah convention that assembled at Muskogee and
adopted a constitution for a state proposed for Indian
Territory alone. In 1906 he was elected a member of the
Constitutional Convention that prepared and adopted the
organic constitution on which is based the government
of the present State of Oklahoma, combining the two
territories, then Indian Territory and Oklahoma Ter-
ritory.

As a member of the Constitutional Convention of the
State of Oklahoma, Mr. Lasater was chairman of the
Committee on Revision, Compilation, Style and Arrange-
ment, and as such he edited and prepared for permanent
record every paragraph of the constitution. He was a
member also of the Committee on County Boundaries, the
report of which he prepared, also a member of the Bank-
ing Committee, the Committee on Public Institutions, and
other special committees created from time to time.

In 1908 Mr. Lasater was appointed by Governor Has-
kell a member of the first Text-book Commission of the
new commonwealth, a position of which he continued the
incumbent until a decision held the work of the commis-
sion to be not legally effective. Later, when the defect
of law was remedied he asked that he be not reappointed
a member of this commission. In 1908 also Mr. Lasater
received from Governor Haskell appointment to member-
ship on the board of control of the State Training School
at Pauls Valley. In this position he aided in the found-
ing of this institution. In 1909 Governor Haskell ap-
pointed Mr. Lasater, state insurance commissioner, a posi-
tion particularly important at that time for it was during
this administration that Oklahoma ’s Insurance Code
became operative. Mr. Lasater made a good record in
the administration of the affairs of that office.

Wherever he has lived Milas Lasater has been active
in the social and club life of the community. At Pauls
Valley he served as president of the Commercial Club
of that city. He is a life member of the Pauls Valley
Lodge of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons. In
the Consistory of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish
Rite of Masonry at McAlester he has received the thirty-
second degree. He is a Noble of the Mystic Shrine. In
college he affiliated with the Delta Kappa Epsilon Greek
Letter Fraternity. He is an active and influential mem-
ber of the Oklahoma Life Underwriters’ Association, and
in the capital city he is identified with the Oklahoma
City Golf and Country Club, the Men’s Dinner Club, and
the Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Lasater is a staunch and effective exponent of the
principles of the democratic party. He is liberal in his
religious views with a deep reverence for the spiritual
verities as expressed in the following beautiful words by
William Henry Channing, words that he has stated most
perfectly represent his creed: “To live content with

small means ; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and re-
finement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respect-
able. and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly,
talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to
babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheer-
fully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never; in a
word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow
up through the common, — this is my symphony. ’ ’

Hon. Toombs H. Davidson. A prominent Muskogee
lawyer, and now a member of the state senate from the
twenty-seventh senatorial district, Toombs H. Davidson,
having lost his father at the age of seven, made his own
way in the world, doing farm and railroad work in vaca-r
tions to earn money sufficient to complete his education.
He was elected to the senate at the age of thirty, and
was to an extent the political product of a strong or-
ganization of young democrats in Oklahoma. For the
nomination he defeated two of the strongest and most
popular men of Muskogee County. His residence in
Oklahoma is coextensive with statehood, and he has
gained a gratifying success both in law and politics.

Senator Davidson was born June 4, 1884, at Chepulta-
pec, Blount County, Alabama, a son of William H. and
Martha (Hartley) Davidson. His paternal grandfather,
a native of South Carolina, served under General
Wheeler in the Confederate army, while in private life
he was a newspaper editor. Senator Davidson ’s maternal
grandparents were prominent citizens of Alabama, and
the Hartleys came to America about the time of the
Oglethorpe colony.

Senator Davidson attended public school in Alabama,
graduating in 1902 from the high school at Haleyville.
His law studies were pursued in the office of an attorney
at Haleyville until admission to the bar in 1906. His
first experience as a lawyer was in Haleyville, and from
there he removed to Stigler, Oklahoma, in 1907. Mr.
Davidson was admitted to practice before the Supreme
Court of Oklahoma shortly after statehood. In” July,
1913, he located in Muskogee, where he now has a promis-
ing private practice.

His political record begins in Haskell County, in
which he was a delegate to every democratic state
convention while living at Stigler, and in 1912 was
treasurer of the Haskell County Democratic Campaign
Committee. He also filled the offices of city attorney
and justice of the peace in Stigler. When Senator
Davidson was elected to the senate in 1914 he carried
Haskell County by more than 1,000 majority, without
making a campaign in that county. While in Haskell
County he was a leader in the organization of the
Young Men’s Democratic Club and president of the
local club at Stigler.

His legislative record is highly creditable. He was
chairman of the Committee on Private Corporations and
a member of committees on Judiciary No. 2, Commerce
and Labor, Banks and Banking, Insurance, Public Build-
ings, Oil and Gas, and Legislative and Judicial Appor-
tionment. He was one of the authors of the popular home
ownership bill and assisted in the passage of the rural
credits bill. Coming from a city that has made re-
peated efforts to be officially designated as the seat of a
state fair, he was interested in the passage of a state
fair bill. Having made his own way in the world by
hard manual labor, Senator Davidson has shown sym-
pathy with important measures bearing the approval of
the State Federation of Labor, and assisted in the
passing of a bill requiring railroad companies to build
hospitals for employees in the state, and also a bill
establishing working hours for women.

Senator Davidson is unmarried. He is affiliated with
the Odd Fellows Lodge at Muskogee and with Lodge
No. 179, Knights of Pythias, at Stigler, being a past
chancellor. He is the past master ofr the Masonic
Lodge No. 121 at Stigler, and while master was the
youngest man in the state in years and Masonic expe-
rience to fill that position. His lodge re-elected him
master after his removal to Muskogee. In a higher
degree with the Scottish Rite he belongs to McAlester
Consistory No. 2 at McAlester, and also to Bedouin
Temple of the Mystic Shrine of Muskogee. He also;

HISTOKY OP OKLAHOMA

1901

belongs to the D. 0. K. K. at Muskogee, an order
affiliated with the Knights of Pythias. Senator Davidson
is a member of the Haskell County Bar Association.
He is a lieutenant in the Pickett-Wheeler Camp of Con-
federate Veterans at Stigler. He and County Judge
Crittenden organized the camp and compromised a lively
though friendly contest over the name, Crittenden
holding out for the name Pickett and Davidson for
Wheeler.

Hon. J. W. Marshall. Among the members of the
Oklahoma judiciary there are many whose early training
has been secured as teachers, their first introduction to
the mysteries and perplexities of the law having been
gained in the evening hours after long and exhausting
labors in the schoolroom. In this category is found
Hon. John Walter Marshall, judge of the County Court
of Stephens County, whose first term in this office proved
so satisfactory to the people of the county that he was
reelected in 1914 without opposition. Judge Marshall
also has the distinction of having a township created for
and named after him, i. e., Marshall Township, which
includes the City of Duncan, the Judge’s place of resi-
dence since 1906.

John Walter Marshall was born at Graham, Young
County, Texas, November 7, 1874, and is a son of W. H.
and Elizabeth (Blocker) (Walker) Marshall. His pater-
nal grandfather, a farmer and minister of the Baptist
faith, was born in Virginia and died in Tennessee, while
his maternal grandfather, John Blocker, went from Mis-
souri in pioneer days to Parker County, Texas, and there
died, after a number of years spent in agricultural pur-
suits. W. H. Marshall, father of the Judge, was born
in 1832, in Tennessee, and from his native state removed
to Mississippi, from whence he removed in 1873 to
Graham, Young County, Texas, and in 1884 to Nacog-
doches County, in the same state. Pour years later he
went with his family to New Birmingham, Cherokee
County, Texas, and in 1894 came to Oklahoma and located
at Duncan. Here he resided until 1900, when he made
removal to Denton County, Texas, and there lives in
quiet retirement. During the period of his active career,
Mr. Marshall carried on operations in farming and stock-
raising, and in the various communities in which he
resided took an active and helpful part in civic and
public affairs. He was one of the organizers of Young
County, Texas, and also served as the first county
assessor there. He is a member of the Methodist Episco-
pal Church. During the Civil war he enlisted in the
Confederate army, with which he served for four years,
participating in a number of battles and having numerous
thrilling experiences. At the sanguine battle of Shiloh
he was wounded; at Paducah, Kentucky, had his horse
shot under him, and at one time was taken prisoner by
the northern troops, but succeeded in making his escape.
Mr. Marshall married Mrs. Elizabeth (Blocker) Walker,
a widow, daughter of John Blocker. She was born in
Arkansas, in 1837, and died at Marlow, Oklahoma, in
1900. There were three children in the family: John
Walter, of this notice; Lee, who resides at Duncan and is
engaged in farming and stockraising; and Sydney, who
died at the age of fourteen years.

_ John Walter Marshall acquired his preliminary educa-
tion in the public schools of Young and Nacogdoches
counties, Texas, and as a youth learned the trade of
printer, which, however, he followed only a short time.
He had remained on the home farm assisting his father
until he was fourteen years of age, and in 1894 accom-
panied his parents to Duncan, Oklahoma, where for three
years he helped his father cultivate a farm. Securing a
teacher’s certificate, in 1897 he started teaching in the
public schools of Stephens County, and continued for

two years, when he turned his knowledge of printing and
the newspaper business to account by editing the Marlow
Review, a journal with which he was connected one year.
He then resumed school teaching as a vocation, and con-
tinued to be thus engaged until 1906, in which year he
occupied the position of assistant principal of the Duncan
High School. In the meanwhile, he had devoted himself
to the study of law in his leisure hours, and in 1907 was
admitted to practice after successfully passing the state
examination. He soon attracted to himself an important
and lucrative practice, and has gradually advanced to a
leading position at the Stephens County bar. A democrat
in his political views, for a number of years he has been
active in local affairs, and at the time of statehood cam-
paigned this district in the interests of Hon. J. R. Allen,
who was sent to the Oklahoma Legislature. About the
same time Marshall Township was created for him and
named in his honor, and he became the first justice of
the peace, serving as such for two terms. In November,
1912, he was elected county judge of Stephens County,
and November 6, 1914, was elected to this office for a
second term, without opposition. He has proven an able,
impartial and dignified judge, conferring honor upon the
locality over which he has . jurisdiction and being gen-
erally popular with the members of the bench and bar.
His offices are in the courthouse. Judge Marshall is a
member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He holds
membership in the Duncan Chamber of Commerce and
the various organizations of his profession, and is fra-
ternally identified with Mistletoe Lodge No. 17, Ancient
Free and Accepted Masons, of which he is past chan-
cellor; Duncan Camp No. 515, Woodmen of the World,
of which he is past consul commander; and Camp No.
9680, Modern Woodmen of America, of Duncan.

Judge Marshall was married at Robberson, Garvin
County, Oklahoma, to Miss Nettie Vandagriff, daughter
of S. J. Vandagriff, a farmer now residing in Comanche
County, Oklahoma, and four children have been born to
this union : Maude, born April 20, 1902, attending public
school ; Lois, born March 22, 1903, also a public school
student; Blanche, born December 2, 1909, attending
public school; and John, born November 2, 1913.

Dr. Ross Statler Cannon is a physician and surgeon
of note and although he has lived at Hydro for only
one year to date he has already gained the faith of his
fellow men and is rapidly building up a splendid patron-
age. Prior to coming here he was engaged in profes-
sional work at Sterling, Oklahoma, for thirteen years and
while there was deputy health officer of Comanche County.

A son of Thomas M. and Kate Wood (Statler) Cannon,
Doctor Cannon was born at Neosho, Newton County,
Missouri, February 17, 1877. The father was a native
of Indiana, where he was born in 1849, and he was
summoned to the life eternal in 1880, at which time the
doctor was but three years of age. He was a grist and
flour miller and removed from the Hoosier State to
Neosho, Missouri, in young manhood. In polities he was
a republican. Mrs. Cannon was born at Bedford, Penn-
sylvania, in 1850, and she now maintains her home at
Albany, Oregon. After being widowed she taught in the
Seneca, Shawnee and Wyandotte Indian Reservation
schools and subsequently was superintendent of the Pot-
tawatomie Indian School, north of Topeka, Kansas; of
the Ponca Indian School, three miles from Ponca City;
and of the Lagoona Schools, at Lagoona, New Mexico.
She was engaged in the profession of teaching for fifteen
years and was very popular and successful in that line.
During her work in the various Indian reservations she
collected a remarkable series of Indian photographs which
were unfortunately burned in her trunk in the depot
fire at Lagoona in 1903. Two children were born to Mr.

1902

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

and Mrs. Cannon: Ross S. is the subject of this sketch;
and Thomas M., Jr. is a resident of Albany, Oregon,
where he is a registered druggist and operates a poultry
ranch.

Doctor Cannon attended the public schools of Neosho,
Missouri, and also those of Cassville and he completed his
high-school course in the City of St. Louis, Missouri. In
1898 he was graduated in the St. Louis Medical College,
witli the degree of Doctor of Medicine. He entered upon
his professional practice at Newkirk, in Kay County,
Oklahoma, and remained there until 1901. He was
coroner of Kay County and also served as medical exam-
iner on the insanity board, and was county physician. In
1901 he located at Sterling, in Comanche County, Okla-
homa, and remained there until April, 1914, which date
marks this advent at Hydro. He was deputy health
officer of Comanche County while a resident of Sterling
and there controlled a large and lucrative practice. His
offices at Hydro are in the Opera House Building on
Main Street. He is a staunch republican in politics and
is a member of the Comanche and Kay County Medical
Societies and of the Missouri State Medical Society.

In Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1914, Doctor Cannon
married Miss Cleo V. Collier, a daughter of R. S. Collier,
who is living in retirement at Hydro. Doctor and Mrs.
Cannon are both popular in connection with the social
activities of Hydro and their home is the scene of many
attractive gatherings.

Huser & Htjser. One of the ablest law firms of
Okfuskee County is that of Huser & Huser, both of
whom have made a fine record as attorneys and citizens
and they now control and handle a large share of the
important litigation in the local courts. The firm com-
prises Judge William A. Huser and his brother, Eugene
Huser. They have their offices at Okemah. William A.
Huser is a forffier county judge of Okfuskee County
and Eugene Huser is now serving as city attorney.

Judge William A. Huser was born in the geographical
center of Spencer County, Indiana, July 12, 1872. His
birth occurred on a farm, and just ten miles from the
-old homestead was the little cemetery where Lincoln’s
mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, was buried, and as a
boy he frequently visited her grave. Judge Huser is of
old American and Revolutionary stock. Two of his
Revolutionary ancestors, Thomas Chancellor and William
May, were both buried in Spencer County, Indiana. His
great-grandfather, Robert Huser, was also in the Revo-
lutionary war and was buried in Kentucky. Both May
and Chancellor were present at the surrender of Corn-
wallis, at Yorktown, in 1781, at the close of the Revo-
lution.

The parents of these brothers were John Thomas and
Martha E. (May) Huser. The former was born in
Switzerland County, Indiana, in 1842, and the latter in
Spencer County in 1846. John T. Huser grew up in
Marion County, Indiana, but spent most of his life in
Spencer County, where he died October 22, 1900. The
mother died at Okemah, Oklahoma, in 1912. The father
spent all his active career as a farmer. The parents had
only two sons, Eugene being the older.

Eugene Huser was born in Spencer County, Indiana,
August 12, 1867, and continued to reside there until
June, 1903, when he moved to Comanche County, Okla-
homa, and joined his brother in the practice of law at
Okemah in July, 1912. He had a common school educa-
tion back in Indiana, and after going to Oklahoma
studied law in Comanche County, where he was admitted
to the bar in 1912. He is an active democrat, a member
of the Presbyterian Church, and is affiliated with the
Knights of Pythias and the Independent Order of Odd

Fellows. In 1889 Eugene Huser married Cora Farris,
who was born in Indiana, a daughter of George and
Emily Farris. To their marriage have been born seven
sons: James Alston, George Thomas, Oliver Stanley,

Samuel Jennings, Ellis Alvin, Herbert M. and John
Marshall.

William A. Huser spent his early years on the old
homestead in Spencer County, Indiana, and besides an
education in the local schools he attended the law
department of the Indiana State University at Bloom-
ington, and in 1893 was admitted to the Indiana bar
at Roekport. He took up practice in his native county,
and left a promising business there in 1899 to come to
Oklahoma. He established his first home at Hastings,
in Comanche County, but at statehood moved to Okfus-
kee County and engaged in practice with C. B. Connor,
under the firm name of Connor & Huser. In 1910 Mr.
Huser was elected county judge of Okfuskee County
and gave a careful and efficient administration of those
duties during 1911-12. In 1912 he was a candidate
before the democratic primaries for congressional nomi-
nation, but was defeated. Since then he and his brother,
Eugene, have been associated as partners.

Judge Huser is democratic member of the state com-
mittee from Okfuskee County. He is a member of the
American Historical Association, belongs to the Methodist
Episcopal Church, is a Knight Templar Mason, and is
now Master of Okemah Lodge No. 234, Ancient Free
and Accepted Masons. He is also affiliated with the
Knights of Pythias.

In 1904 Judge Huser married R. M. Pettit, who was
born in Iowa, daughter of C. G. and Jennie Pettit, who
now live in Jefferson County, Oklahoma. Judge Huser
and wife have two daughters, Margaret and Elaine.

Elmer C. Wheeler. The business enterprise of
Elmer C. Wheeler has been an important factor in con-
serving the property and civic rights of the people of
his blood and race in Oklahoma. Mr. Wheeler is
descended from two stocks of American Indians, with
an important admixture of the French pioneers who first
explored and traversed the country west of the Missis-
sippi. He is now the head of a prominent family at
Pawhuska in Osage County and is carefully looking
after the large interests which are under his supervision
as a result of the allotment in severalty of the Indian
lands of the Osage Nation. •

Mr. Wheeler was born in Thurston County, Nebraska,
March 17, 1878, a son of M. P. and Eliza (Loise)
Wheeler. His father was born in Wisconsin in 1846,
and his mother was born in Nebraska in 1847. These
parents were married in Richardson County, Nebraska,
and moved from there to the Omaha Indian Reserva-
tion, on which they lived until June, 1891, when they
came with other members of the tribe to Pawhuska, in
Indian Territory. Mr. Wheeler ’s mother was a daughter
of Edward Paul and Mary Jane (Barada) Loise. They
belonged to some of the earliest French families in the
vicinity of St. Louis. Mr. Wheeler’s mother first mar-
ried Antoine Cabaney, and had one son by that union.
Mr. Wheeler’s grandfather was half Osage and half
French origin, and his grandmother was half French
and half Omaha Indian. His grandfather established a
trading post at what is now the City of Omaha, where
a Frenchman by the name of Edward Sarpy, in the
employ of the American Fur Company, had established
a post in the early ’40s, this enterprise giving the first
distinction to the site now occupied by that flourishing
city. Mr. Wheeler’s grandfather lived at Omaha until
a short time before his death, when he went to St. Louis
and there fell a victim to the cholera. Mr. Wheeler’s

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1903

great-grandfather on his mother’s side was Mitchell
Barada, who was one of the first white men to locate
west of the Missouri River. He was with the historic
expedition of Lewis and Clarke that explored the Mis-
souri River to its source early in the nineteenth century,
and a number of years later he made three trips to
California after the discovery of gold, and died in
Nebraska. Mr. Wheeler’s parents both reside in Osage
County, his father being a retired farmer. They had
ten children, five of whom died in infancy, and the five
now living are: Paul E., of Cleveland, Oklahoma;

Elmer C.; Lovania, wife of L. E. Brock, a rancher in
Osage County; Anna, wife of Jack Weinrich, a merchant
at Pawhuska; and Alma, living with her parents.

Elmer C. Wheeler lived with his parents until his
marriage in 1903, though much of his time was spent
away from home attending different Indian schools.
From 1888 to 1890 he was in the Indian School at
Genoa, Nebraska, and then spent three years in the
Osage Indian Boarding School. From 1896 to 1897
he was in the Chilloeo Indian School and graduated in
1897. During 1899-1900 he was in the Indian Training
School at Santa Fe, New Mexico, and took his diploma
from that institution in the latter year. After leaving
school he spent some time in the employ of the United
States Government as an engineer at the ice plant in
Pawhuska.

On September 23, 1903, Mr. Wheeler was married to
Eva E. Rogers. She comes of the noted Rogers family
of Oklahoma, and was born in Osage County August 3,
1877, a daughter of Antoine and Elizabeth (Carpenter)
Rogers, who are still living and have their home at
Wyana. Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler have one child, Virginia
Rogers. They are also rearing five children by Mrs.
Wheeler’s sister. Their father was Arthur, a son of
Judge Thomas L. Rogers, one of the distinguished citi-
zens of Northeastern Oklahoma whose career will be
found sketched on other pages of this work. These five
orphan children now in the home of Mr. and Mrs.
Wheeler are: Joseph L., Ellen Elizabeth, John R., Wil-

liam C. and Isabel Rogers.

In recent years Mr. Wheeler has been busied in super-
vising the allotment of his family and children, com-
prising altogether about 6,000 acres. Of this handsome
estate about 1,000 acres are already under cultivation as
farming land, and the rest is pasture and grazing land.
Mr. Wheeler owns two good buildings in Pawhuska, and
occupies a substantial home which is the property of his
children.

In politics he is a republican, and is prominent in the
Masonic order. He is a Knight Templar Mason and is
also a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason. His
local affiliations are with Wahsahshe Lodge No. 110,
Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, Horeb Chapter No.
63, Royal Arch Masons; Omega Council, Royal and
Select Masons; Palestine Commandery No. 31, Knights
Templar; Oklahoma Consistory of the Scottish Rite;
The Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Tulsa. He is a
past master of his lodge and past commander of Pales-
tine Commandery. He is also affiliated with the Benevo-
lent and Protective Order of Elks and the Knights of
Pythias.

James A. Embry. This name has long had significance
in the political life of Oklahoma, and one of its bearers
is James A. Embry, now serving as circuit clerk of Lin-
coln County. Mr. Embry is a son of one of the early
settlers in Lincoln County, and his own life has been
spent in this state from early boyhood, a period of
twenty-five years. He has recently been admitted to the
bar and prior to his election as district clerk in 1912

Vol. v— 10

had made an acceptable record as district clerk of Lincoln
County.

James A. Embry was born September 21, 1878, on a
farm near Owensburg, Kentucky, son of V. R. Embry,
now a resident of Jennings, Oklahoma. His father was
a native of Kentucky and of old Kentucky lineage, with
many of the characteristic qualities of the Kentucky
people. V. R. Embry was reared in Kentucky and when
a boy in his teens enlisted for service in a Kentucky
regiment in the Union army and saw four years’ >of
active service as a soldier. At the beginning of settle-
ment in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, he came as one of
the pioneers and developed a large farm. He subse-
quently removed to the City of Jennings, and died at
Morgantown, Kentucky, in February, 1916. He married
Miss E. Bratcher, who died some years ago. She trans-
mitted some of the noble qualities of her heart and mind
to her children, who were six in number, as follows:
Clinton, of Lincoln County; John, a prominent lawyer
of Oklahoma City; James A.; Iverson; Eliza, living in
Iowa City, Iowa; and Hannah, of Oklahoma. The
parents were both Methodist Church people.

James A. Embry was eleven years of age when his
parents located in Lincoln County, and many of his
early recollections are associated with the wilderness
conditions which then prevailed in this state. He grew
up on a farm, and by the wholesome occupations of the
country developed a strong physique and a vigorous
mentality. He was educated partly in the public schools
of Kentucky and partly in the high school at Chandler,
and his early life was devoted to farming and stock
raising. He was associated with his brother, John
Embry, and later took up the study of law with him
and was admitted to the bar in 1914.

In 1904 Mr. Embry married Ivy Boatright, a woman
of refinement and culture. Mr. and Mrs. Embry have
six children: John, Henry, Glen, Dorothy, Ivy and

James A., Jr.

Mr. Embry, like his father, has a military record to
his credit, having served for twenty months in the
Thirty-third United States Infantry during the Spanisli-
American war. He subsequently served as lieutenant of
the National Guard, and in 1916 was elected department
commander for Oklahoma of the United States Spanish
War Veterans. He and his wife are members of the
Methodist Church and he belongs to the Veteran Reserve
Corps and is a member of the Masonic Lodge.

Warren L. Thayer. The first appearance of Warren
L. Thayer in Oklahoma was as a harvest man. About
fifteen years ago he took up a Government claim in
Harper County, and his prosperity and influence has
been steadily growing ever since. He is now one of the
leading citizens and business men of Laverne.

His birth occurred February 27, 1880, at Union City,
Michigan, a son of Robert M. and Frances M. (Blosser)
Thayer. His father, who was of Scotch parentage, was
born June 17, 1855, at Jackson, Michigan, and was a
lumberman until he came to Oklahoma in 1901. In that
year he took up a claim in Woodword County and became
active in the organization of Ellis and Harper County.
He now owns and operates a large stock farm seven
miles from May. Robert M. Thayer was married in 1877
and his wife was born November 30, 1854, at Logan,
Hocking County, Ohio, a daughter of Abraham and
Miriam (Graffis) Blosser, who were natives of Pennsyl-
vania and of Dutch stock. Mrs. Thayer had a college
education and is an active member of the Methodist
Church. ,Their children are: Warren L. ; Goldie, who

was born March 23, 1888, and is now the wife of Bert
B. Waltman, a railway official in Denver, Colorado:
Pearl Blanche, who was born August 3, 1891, and is now

1904

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

the wife of Bynum Bouse, a rancher at Des Moines, New
Mexico; Ernest Blaine, who was born May 7, 1894, and
now lives at Laverne, Oklahoma; and Katie Lorena
Thayer, who was born July 16, 1896, and is now the wife
of W. T. McNeil of Beaver City, Oklahoma.

At the age of seventeen Warren L. Thayer completed
a high school course at Knoxville, Tennessee, and at the
age of twenty-one graduated A. B. from the Ewing and
Jefferson College in Blount County, Tennessee. It was
with this education and preliminary experience that he
came to Grant County, Oklahoma, and spent his first
season in the harvest fields. He also taught school one
term. Then in 1901 he settled on his claim of Govern-
ment land in Woodward County, and by hard work and
good judgment has become one of the extensive farmers
of that section, having a large tract under cultivation.
For one year he was connected with the Spearmore State
Bank of Laverne, but is now engaged in a prosperous
life insurance business at Laverne. He is also interested
in oil properties in Oklahoma and Texas as a promoter
and developer, and having read law in the intervals of his
business pursuits was admitted to the Oklahoma bar in
1916 and is now prepared to practice his profession.
Mr. Thayer is a member of the Masonic Order, the
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Knights of
Pythias and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.
Politically he is a republican.

On January 12, 1910, at Coleman, Texas, he married
Miss Sallie May Smith, who was born at Alvarado, Texas,
January 8, 1887, a daughter of Thomas and Emma
(Quinn) Smith, natives of Texas. Mrs. Thayer is a
granddaughter of Deaf Smith, a pioneer scout and fron-
tiersman in Texas, a historic character in the Texas
Revolution, and his name is indelibly impressed upon
Texas geography in Deaf Smith County, which is now the
largest county in area in the United States. Mrs.
Thayer completed her education in a Texas college.
They have three daughters: Helen, born January 19,

1911; Dorothy, born August 24, 1913; and Virginia
Pauline, born February 16, 1916.

Joseph J. Henke, M. D. A physician and surgeon
splendidly equipped for his work of curing the sick, Dr.
Joseph J. Henke has gained prestige throughout Caddo
County by reason of his natural talent and acquired abil-
ity in the field of his chosen work. His professional
career excites the admiration and has won the respect of
his contemporaries in a calling in which one has to gain
reputation by merit and long hours of patient work.

At Westphalia, in Osage County, Missouri, occurred
the birth of Dr. Joseph J. Henke, a son of Henry H.
and Mary (Radmacher) Henke, the former of whom was
born near Osnabruek, Prussia, in 1848, and the latter at
Van Buren, Missouri, in 1853. As a young man the
father learned the trade of merchant tailor and located
at .Westphalia, Missouri, where he is now living retired.
He and his wife are the parents of five children, as fol-
lows: Joseph J. is the subject of this sketch; William
is cashier of the Bank of Erick, at Erick, Oklahoma;
Charles is a mechanic and resides with his parents at
Westphalia, Missouri; Annie, deceased, was the wife of
Henry Eicholz, a well-to-do property owner in St. Louis,
Missouri; and Regina is the wife of Andrew Fennewald,
a dry-goods merchant at Westphalia.

After completing the prescribed course in the public
schools of Westphalia, Doctor Henke pursued a business
course at St. Joseph’s College, at Teutopolis, Illinois,
being graduated in that institution in 1892. For two years
thereafter he taught school in Osage County, 'Missouri,
and he then removed to Westphalia, Texas, where he was
engaged in teaching for the ensuing four years. In 1898

he was matriculated as a student in the College of Physi-
cians & Surgeons at St. Louis and was graduated therein
April 11, 1900, with the degree of Doctor of Medicine.
He took a post-graduate course in that institution in 1903
and in 1915 did post-graduate work in the Physicians &
Surgeons College of St. Louis, Missouri. Immediately
after graduating he was an interne in Jefferson Hospital,
St. Louis, for one year, and he then located at Lindsay,
Texas, where he practiced for a year. In 1902 he came
to Hydro and he has the distinction of being the pioneer
physician and surgeon in this place. He controls a general
medical and surgical practice and the large patronage
given him is the best evidence of the faith bestowed in
him by his fellow citizens. His offices are located on
Broadway just off Main Street and in connection with
his life work he is a valued and appreciative member of
the Caddo County Medical Society, the Oklahoma State
Medical Society and the American Medical Association.
He is a republican in politics and his religious faith
coincides with the teachings of the Roman Catholic
Church. It is interesting to note that Doctor Henke,
with others, established the Bank of Hydro, and was for
years a stockholder in that corporation.

October 29, 1901, in Waco, Texas, Doctor Henke mar-
ried Miss Rose Kleypas, a daughter of Bernard and Ber-
nadine Kleypas, the former of whom is now deceased and
the latter of whom resides at Waco, Texas. Bernard
Kleypas was an officer in the Franeo-Prussian war in
1870. Doctor and Mrs. Henke became the parents of
three children, the oldest of whom, Bernard H., died at
the age of six months; Mildred B. was born November
17, 1906; and Joseph Reid was born November 15, 1911.

Dr. G. F. Border, prominent surgeon of Magnum,
and mayor of the city, is one of the foremost men of
his community. He came here in 1900, and in the same
year opened the Border Hospital. It was all inadequate
in the beginning to the demands of the place, but today
he is the owner and proprietor of one of the finest and
best equipped private hospitals to be found anywhere
in the , country. With accommodations for thirty
patients, it is always filled to capacity, though it is
exclusively a surgical hospital.

Doctor Border was born in San Augustine, Texas, on
Deceinber 22, 1873, and is the son of G. F. Border, who
was born in England in 1838, and who died in San
Augustine, Texas, in 1883. Charles F. Border, grand-
father of the subject, was an English emigrant to
America, settling in San Augustine, Texas, while others
of the same generation came over and settled in Ohio,
where their descendants may be found today. G. F.
Border, Sr., was a boy when he came to America with
his parents, and he was reared in San Augustine, where
they settled. While quite young he entered the whole-
sale hardware business in Galveston, later became the
proprietor of a similar establishment, and for many years
was thus engaged. He was a major in the Southern
army during the Civil war, serving four years in Hood’s
Brigade. He was severely wounded in the service, and
suffered a term of imprisonment. After the war he
returned to business pursuits, but he suffered much ill
health as a result of his wound, and he finally died from
its effects. He was a member of the Masonic fraternity
and a democrat. He married Elizabeth Brooks, daughter
of Gen. T. G. Brooks, who served in the Civil war and
after the war was a merchant in San Augustine. She
was born there in 1848, and now makes her home with
her son, Doctor Border, who is one of their five chil-
dren, briefly mentioned as follows: May married S. M.

Polk, a mechanic of Mangum. Mattie is the wife of
J. M. Burleson, a near relative of Postmaster General

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1905

Burleson, and they live in San Augustine, where he is
engaged in the cattle business. Dr. G. F. was the third
child. C. L. died at San Augustine, and he was sheriff
of the county at the time of his death. Cora married
E. H. Boberts, and lives in Dallas. Mr. Boberts is
deceased. He was a real estate man of Dallas, and his
widow is now the owner of a great deal of land in the
state. She has two sons, — E. H. and Isaac, both of
whom are medical students in Baylor University.

G. F. Border had his early education in the public
schools of San Augustine, and was a graduate of the
Patron High School, class of 1891. He later attended
Center Texas College, and was graduated from the
Louisville Medical College in 1895 and from the St.
Louis College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1900 with
the degree of M. D. Doctor Border began practice in
the U. S. Marine Hospital in Atlanta as assistant sur-
geon before he had his degree, and he has since taken
numerous post-graduate courses, among the courses at
the Chicago Polyclinic, the New York Polyclinic and
with Mayo Brothers at Bochester, Minnesota. In 1899
he practiced medicine in Holland, Texas, and in 1900
he came to Mangum, in the same year opening the
Border Hospital. It was a small and unpretentious
place then, with a few rooms over the City Drug Store,
but the demand for places in the little hospital was so
great that in 1907 Doctor Border built his present mod-
ern hospital at 224 West Jefferson Street. His is the
oldest private hospital in the State of Oklahoma, and it
accommodates patients from all over the state, from
Texas and from other states. Thirty beds is its capacity,
and it is owned and managed exclusively by Doctor
Border, whose professional work is confined wholly to
the surgical field.

Doctor Border is official surgeon for the Bock Island
Bailroad and for the M. K. & T. Boad. He is health
officer for Mangum and has held that office for the past
fifteen years.

A democrat, Doctor Border was elected to the office
of mayor in 1912, and again in November, 1914, for a
term of four years. At the last election he had no
opposition. He has a good deal of civic pride, and it
has been his ambition to make Mangum the cleanest
town in the state. In 1914 the city won the state prize
for cleanliness as a result .of Doctor Border’s efforts.
Through his efforts, too, were sanitary drinking foun-
tains placed in the public schools.

Doctor Border is a member of Mangum Lodge No. 61,
Ancient Free and Accepted Masons; Mangum Chapter
No. 35, Boyal Arch Masons, Consistory No. 1, Valley
of Guthrie; India Temple, Ancient Arabic Order of
Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, Oklahoma City; Mangum
Lodge No. 1169, Benevolent and Protective Order of
Elks; and he is a member of the County, State and
American Medical societies. At one time he was a
stockholder in a number of insurance companies. Doctor
Border is unmarried.

James L. Austin. A representative member of the
bar of Washita County, Senator Austin is engaged in
the practice of his profession at Cordell, the attractive
and thriving metropolis and judicial center of the county,
and there came consistent recognition of his character
and ability when, in the fall of 1912, he was elected a
member of the State Senate, as representative of the
Sixth senatorial district. In both the Fourth and Fifth
sessions of the Legislature he proved himself a valuable
working member of the Senate and his influence was
potent in the furtherance of judicious legislation and in
the furtherance of the best interests of the state and its
people, the while he has shown himself specially mindful
of and loyal to the interests of his specific constituency.

Senator Austin was born at Mount Airy, Sequatchie
County, Tennessee, on the 24th of June, 1870, and he is a
son of Thomas Jefferson Austin and Sarah Austin, both
of whom still maintain their home in the fine Sequatchie
Valley of Tennessee, where the paternal grandfather of
the senator was a pioneer settler and where numerous
representatives of the family still remain. Thomas J.
Austin was born and reared in Sequatchie County, and is
one of the substantial agriculturists of that section, be-
sides being a grower of high-grade live stock. He is
influential in public affairs of local order and is one of
the honored citizens of the community that has been his
home from the time of his birth. Of the children other
than him whose name initiates this review it may be
stated that Elijah F. is identified with the oil industry
at Duffey, Texas; Mrs. Thomas J. Sutherland and Mrs.
Alexander Standefer, reside at Mount Airy, Tennessee,
the husband of the former being a farmer and Mr.
Standefer being a merchant; Cleveland is a farmer in
the vicinity of Mount Airy, and the younger sons, Melvin
and Monroe, remain at the parental home.

James L. Austin attended the public schools of his
native county a portion of each year until he had attained
to the age of eighteen years, when he entered Terrill
College, in Lincoln County, Tennessee, in which institu-
tion he was graduated in 1896, with the degree of Bache-
lor of Arts. In the same year he became a teacher in
the public schools of Johnson County, Texas, where he
remained thus engaged four years. He then came to
Washita County, Oklahoma Territory, where he con-
tinued his efficient services as a successful and popular
teacher in the public schools until the admission of
Oklahoma to statehood, in 1907, when he was elected the
first district clerk of the county, a position which he
retained five years, in the meanwhile having gained secure
vantage-ground in popular confidence and esteem and
having become well known in that section of the state.
In 1912 he was elected from that district a member of
the State Senate, for a term of four years, and this term
will expire in 1916. While still teaching school Senator
Austin had given close attention to the study of law and
had admirably fortified himself in the science of juris-
prudence, so that he was well equipped when, in 1913, he
formed at Cordell a law partnership with Swan C. Bur-
nette and Charles A. Holden, the firm establishing an
office at Clinton, Custer County, also. This alliance con-
tinued until 1914, and Messrs. Austin and Holden are
still associated in the control of a large and important
law business in Washita and Custer counties, the while
Senator Austin is identified also with the newspaper busi-
ness, as owner and publisher of the Clinton News.

In the Fourth Legislature Senator Austin was chair-
man of the committee on fees and salaries and was
assigned to other important Senate committees. At
this session he was the author of a bill relating to the
construction of public highways, and though the bill
passed both houses of the Legislature its provisions met
with the disapproval of the governor, but was enacted
by the Legislature in 1915. Senator Austin was the au-
thor also of a proposed constitutional amendment reor-
ganizing the judicial system of the state, and this failed
of enactment in 1913, but passed both branches of the
Legislature in 1915. One of the distinctive ambitions of
Senator Austin in the Fifth Legislature was to bring
about the success oi these two measures which he had
valiantly championed at the preceding session and which
he again introduced, but with the desired results. In the
Fifth Legislature he was chairman of the committee on
revenue and taxation, and held membership also on the
committees on ways and means, private corporations,
roads and highways, Federal relations, public printing,

1906

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

and drugs and pure foods. He was a consistent sup-
porter of measures projected for the remedying of de-
fects in labor conditions and for the reduction of the
expense of government in the state. Senator Austin, as
a stalwart and able champion of the principles and
policies of the democratic party, had charge of the
political campaign activities of four counties when Gover-
nor Williams was candidate for the office of chief execu-
tive, and he was in full accord with the principles of
reform outlined in the democratic platform of and also
the recommendations for legislation made by Governor
Williams in the vigorous campaign. Senator Austin is a
member of the Washita County Bar Association and the
Oklahoma State Bar Association, is actively identified
with the Commercial Club in his home city of Cordell, is
affiliated with the Modern Woodmen of America and the
Woodmen of the World, and holds membership in the
Baptist Church, both his wife and daughter being mem-
bers of the Christian Church.

At Mount Airy, Tennessee, in 1895, was solemnized
the marriage of Senator Austin to Miss Florence A.
Standefer, who was born and reared in that section of the
state and whose grandfather, Hon. James Standefer, of
English lineage, served as a member of the Tennessee
Legislature. Senator Austin and his wife had been
schoolmates in Tennessee, and after their marriage both
were popular teachers in the s'ehools of Texas and Okla-
homa, Mrs. Austin being now a valued member of the
corps of teachers in the public schools at Cordell, with
great enthusiasm in her work and with reputation for
being one of the most efficient primary teachers in the
state. Ruby Lee, the only child of Senator and Mrs.
Austin, was born in Johnson County, Texas, in 1898, and
is a young woman of exceptional talent and accomplish-
ment in music and dramatic expression. She is a mem-
ber of the class of 1916 in the Cordell Christian College,
in her home city, and after her graduation in this institu-
tion she will complete her education in music and expres-
sion in the celebrated Boston Conservatory of Music.
She is a leader and loved personality in her class at the
Cordell Christian College, and an active worker in the
Christian Church in her home city, she having been a
member of the church since she was twelve years of age.

Andrew B. Oleson. The present mayor of the City
of Chandler is one of the pioneer white settlers of
Oklahoma Territory, having been identified with this
country more than twenty years. Mr. Oleson has been
a resident of Chandler for the past twelve years, and
as a business man conducts the office of mayor on
business principles, with emphasis on efficiency and with
an impartial administration for the benefit of all con-
cerned. Mr. Olson came to Oklahoma in 1892 with the
tide of home-seekers that made Oklahoma famous in
those days. He was first located on the Sac and Fox
Reservation.

A. B. Oleson was born in Norway, July 9, 1845, of a
family noted for industry, thrift and physical and mental
vigor. His parents were Bertel and Angie Oleson, his
father dying at the age of seventy-five and his mother
still living at ninety-two. His father was a farmer, and
there were five sons and five daughters in the family.

Mayor Oleson grew up on a farm, received a wholesome
training in body as well as mind, and leaving school
at the age of fifteen became a sailor before the mast,
and spent five years in sailing about the world. In
1867, at the age of twenty-two, he came to America and
located at Madison, Wisconsin, where he was employed
in the carpenter’s trade. He did some general railroad
work and later was a builder and contractor, and in
that business laid the foundation for his substantial

prosperity. He was in Western Kansas for a time,
erected some courthouses and other important buildings,
lived in Iowa, later in Princeton, Illinois, and for several
years was a building contractor for the Chicago, Bur-
lington & Quincy Railroad. Later he returned to Iowa,
and in 1886 located in Kansas, where he did an extensive
business as a building contractor. He afterwards took
some large contracts from railroads, lived in Pueblo,
Colorado, for a time, and in 1892 came to Oklahoma.
Since moving to this state he has performed a number
of important contracts in building, including courthouses,
business blocks, private residences and other structures.

He was superintendent of the courthouse here, which was
built in 1907. He has been quite successful in his opera-
tions and owns 160 acres of land in this county, also
his home and three houses in Chandler which he rents,
besides city and farm property in other parts of the
state.

In 1872 Mr. Oleson married Elizabeth Hildebrand, a
native of New Jersey, and she died here in 1913 when
sixty-two years of age. To their marriage were born
six children, four sons and two daughters. Those still
living are: Ben, a business man at Sapulpa, Oklahoma;

Harry, of Chandler; Ann, who married Tom Jessem, of
Dakota; Edward Charles of Sapulpa, Oklahoma; and
Ella, at home. Mr. Oleson has always been a stanch
supporter of the republican party. For the past forty
years he has been connected with the Independent Order
of Odd Fellows, and in whatever relation he has stood
with business or with the community has exemplified a
thorough integrity and a high degree of public spirit.

He is a member of the Lutheran Church.

Charles Swindall. The bar of the State of Okla-
homa claims as one of its leading representatives in
Woodward County the well known attorney whose name
initiates this paragraph and whose large and important
law business extends not only into the various courts !
of Oklahoma but also into those of the Panhandle of 1
Texas, is wide ramification affording ample voucher for
his distinctive ability in his profession and the high esti-
mate placed upon him as a lawyer and citizen.

Mr. Swindall was born at College Mound, Kaufman I
County, Texas, on the 13th of February, 1876, and is a
son of Jonathan W. and Mary E. (Standley) Swindall.
His father was born in the City of Macon, Georgia, on
the 11th of April, 1831, a son of Andrew and Panina
(Ward) Swindall, both natives of Virginia and repre-
sentatives of families that immigrated to America from
England in the Colonial days and that settled in the
historic Old Dominion. In 1859, when about twenty-
eight years of age, Jonathan W. Swindall removed from
Georgia to Texas, but in 1861 he returned to his old
home in Georgia, where he remained until the close of
the Civil war. He had received excellent educational
advantages and after the termination of the great con-
flict between the states of the North and the South he i
engaged in teaching school in Louisiana. There he re- '
mained until 1872, when he returned to Texas, in which 1
state he continued his labors as a successful and popular |
representative of the pedagogic profession for nearly a
quarter of a century, his retirement from this vo'cation
having occurred in 1895, when he established his home
on a farm in Kaufman County, that state. In 1886 he i
became superintendent of the first high school estab-
lished at Terrell, Texas, and the total period of his j
service as a teacher comprised forty-five years. He and
his wife still reside on their fine homestead farm, their
marriage having been solemnized November 5, 1857.
Mrs. Swindall was born near the City of Rome, Georgia,
on the 9th of November, 1836, and is a daughter of

HISTOKY OF OKLAHOMA

1907

Jonathan and Mary (Maddux) Standley, who likewise
were natives of Georgia, where they passed their entire
lives. Mrs. Swindall was .graduated in Andrews Female
College, at Cuthbert, Georgia, and her husband acquired
his higher education in the famous old University of
Virginia, at Charlottesville. They became the parents of
four sons and four daughters : Lula F. was born Decem-
ber 25, 1859; Edith A., February 23, 1862; Annie A.,
February 18, 1865; Standley M., December 12, 1868;
Frederick Ward was born December 18, 1870, and died
April 20, 1900; Mary Maddux was born June 26, 1873,
and died October 18, 1891; William and Charles, twins,
were born February 13, 1876, and the death of the
former occurred July 20, 1877, the latter being the
immediate subject of this review.

On the homestead farm of his father, in Kaufman
County, Texas, Charles Swindall was reared to manhood,
and in 1895 he was graduated in the high school in the
City of Terrell, that county. In the same year he
entered Vanderbilt University, in the City of Nashville,
Tennessee, and in the law department of this admirable
institution he was graduated as a member of the class
of 1897 and with the degree of Bachelor of Laws. Dur-
ing his senior year he was vice president of the Philoma-
thian Literary Society of the university.

In the year of his graduation Mr. Swindall came to
Oklahoma Territory, and in August of that year he
arrived at Woodward with the portentious cash capital of
$6. He was forthwith admitted to the territorial bar
and gallantly opened an office and prepared to serve his
strenuous professional novitiate. During the first six
months he supplemented the somewhat precarious income
derived from his budding law practice by serving as
bookkeeper in a newspaper office. On the 1st of April,
1898, he was appointed county attorney of the adjoin-
ing County of Day, and at the ensuing popular election
he was chosen the regular incumbent of this office, of
which he continued in tenure three years and in which
he not only gained valuable experience but also made a
record that materially advanced his reputation as an able
trial lawyer. Upon retiring from office he returned to
Woodward, where he has since continued in active general
practice and gained secure vantage-place as one of the
representative lawyers of Western Oklahoma. He con-
tinues a close and appreciative student and his law
library is the largest and best private collection of its
kind in this section of the state.

Mr. Swindall is a staunch and effective advocate of
the principles and policies of the republican party and is
a representative of Woodward County as a member of
the Republican State Central Committee. He has com-
pleted the circle of York Rite Masonry and has received
also the thirty-second degree of the Ancient Accepted
Scottish Rite, besides being affiliated with the adjunct
organization, the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of
the Mystic Shrine. He was the third to be elected wor-
shipful master of Woodward Lodge, No. 189, Ancient
Free and Accepted Masons, and in his home city he is
identified also with the organizations of the Knights
of Pythias, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks
and the Modern Woodmen of America. Mr. Swindall is
a member of the Woodward County Bar Association and
the Oklahoma State Bar Association, and in the district
of Western Oklahoma he is retained as attorney for the
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad Company. He
was unanimously selected as a delegate in 1916 to the
Republican National Convention at Chicago.

On the 31st of January, 1911, at Guthrie, this state,
was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Swindall to Miss
Emma E. Endres, who was born at Macomb, McDonough
County, Illinois, on the 19th of September, 1886, the
marriage ceremony, at the former territorial capital City

of Oklahoma, having been performed by Judge Jesse J.
Dunn, chief justice of the Supreme Court of the state.
Mrs. 8Swindall is a daughter of Conrad and Martha
Endres, who maintain their home in the City of Wichita,
Kansas. Mr. and Mrs. Swindall have no children.

Thomas D. Palmer, M. D. The professional activ-
ities of Dr. Thomas D. Palmer have spanned fifteen years
of Oklahoma history, during which time he has achieved
distinction and material success in his calling. Since his
arrival at Elk City, in 1911, he has won the confidence
of a large practice, not through any of the methods of
the charlatan, but by reason of large professional skill
and a devotion to the best ethics and standards of his
honored vocation.

Doctor Palmer was born at Plymouth, Illinois, May 31,
1&77, and is a son of A. S. and Phoebe (Kennedy)
Palmer. The family originated in England, from whence
the first American ancestor emigrated during colonial
days, and subsequently the family branched out from
the original settlement, the direct ancestor of Doctor
Palmer taking up his residence in Illinois. In that state,
at Plymouth, Hancock County, A. S. Palmer was born
in 1851. A farmer and stock raiser throughout his life,
he continued to reside at Plymouth until 1900, then mov-
ing to Topeka, Kansas, where his death occurred four
years later. He was active in the affairs of the Chris-
tian Church, being a member of the official board in his
own town for many years, and in political and civic
matters also took an active participation, holding various
offices within the gift of his fellow-citizens, acting as
county treasurer of Hancock County, Illinois, for several
years, and generally acquitting himself in a commendable
manner in all of life’s affairs. He was a member of the
Masonic fraternity. Mr. Palmer married Miss Phoebe
Kennedy, who was born at Plymouth, Illinois, in 1853,
and died at Kansas City, Missouri, in 1909, and they
became the parents of six children, namely: Dr. Thomas
D. ; Ida May, who married George Grigson, purchasing
agent for the Rock Island Railroad at Kansas City, Mis-
souri; Fluta, who married Otto Ahrens, private secretary
to Henry C. Frick, the American coke and steel manu-
facturer of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Edward, coal
weigher for the Rock Island Railroad at Kansas City,
Missouri; his twin, Edwin, a linotype machine operator
for the Kansas City Star, at Kansas City, Missouri; and
Carl, also a linotype operator of Kansas City.

Thomas D. Palmer attended the public schools of Ply-
mouth, Illinois, where he was duly graduated from the
high school in the class of 1883. He was reared on
his father’s farm, where he continued to reside until
attaining his majority, but it was not his desire to follow
an agricultural career, and in 1896 he entered the Kansas
City Medical College and' completed his studies there in
1901, being graduated with the degree of Doctor of Medi-
cine. In 1906 he took a post-graduate course at the
Chicago College of Physicians and Surgeons, in 1908 at
the Chicago Polyclinic, and in 1910 at Fisher’s School,
Chicago, where he specialized in diseases of the eye, ear,
nose and throat. At the time he received his degree, in
1901, Doctor Palmer came to Oklahoma, it being his
belief that this state offered an excellent field for the
young and ambitious professional man. His first loca-
tion was at Cherokee, where he remained until 1907, then
going to Ingersoll, where he remained until 1911, and
where he served one term as city treasurer in addition
to carrying on his practice, and then in 1911 came to Elk
City, which has continued to be his home. Here he is
connected with the firm of Tedrowe, Tisdal & Palmer,
owner of the Frances Hospital, one of the modern insti-
tutions in this part of the state. Doctor Palmer main-

1908

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

tains offices on Main Street, and while his practice is
general in its character it is perhaps as a specialist in
diseases of the eye, ear, nose and throat, that hp has
gained his best reputation. Possessed in general meas-
ure of the qualities which make the personally popular
as well as financially successful physician and surgeon,
he has made a name as a careful, conscientious and thor-
oughly skilled devotee of his profession. He keeps in
close touch with the professional brotherhood, belonging
to the Beckham County Medical Society, the Oklahoma
State Medical Society, the American Medical Association
and the Southwestern Medical Society. His fraternal
connections are with Elk City Lodge No. 182, Ancient
Free and Accepted Masons, with the Knights Templar,
and with the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks,
of Elk City. In politics he is a democrat.

Doctor Palmer was married in 1911, at Oklahoma City,
to Miss Mary K. Spellman, of Hempstead, Long Island,
New York. They have no children.

Benjamin D. Woodson, M. D. Immediately after
his graduation from Memphis Hospital College, Memphis,
Tennessee, in 1890, Dr. Benjamin D. Woodson came to
what was then Indian Territory and entered upon the
practice of his profession at Monroe, and since that
time has continued to follow his vocation in this section.
Since 1912 he has been located at Poteau, where he is
known as a skilled and successful practitioner, and in
1915 was appointed county superintendent of health
for Le Flore County.

Doctor Woodson was born near Hartford, Sebastian
County, Arkansas, March 6, 1868, and is a son of Wil-
liam G. and Nettie (Taner) Woodson. His father was
a native of Virginia and a member of an old and
highly respected family of Irish origin whose residence
was in the vicinity of the City of Richmond. William
G. Woodson was reared to manhood in Virginia, and
when the Civil war came on joined one of the volunteer
regiments from his state in the service of the Confederacy
and fought valiantly as a soldier for the cause he deemed
just. The war over, he moved to Arkansas, where he
was married to Nettie Taner, a native of Texas, and
they became the parents of five children, of whom Ben-
jamin D. is the only survivor. A farmer by vocation,
William G. Woodson’s first location in Arkansas was in
the vicinity of Greenwood, the county seat of Sebastian
County, and later he moved to near Hartford, in the
same county, that property continuing to be his home
until 1882. At that time he came to a tract of land
located near Monroe, in Indian Territory, where he died
in 1883, aged about sixty years.

Benjamin D. Woodson was only about fifteen years of
age when his father died, and he is accordingly greatly
indebted to the late C. C. Matthews, of Wister, Okla-
homa, for fatherly care and advice. He was reared as
a farmer, but early determined upon a professional
career, and after receiving his primary education in the
public schools entered Buckner College, Witcherville,
Arkansas, where he was graduated in 1884. For two
years thereafter he was engaged in teaching school,
thus earning the means wherewith to pursue his profes-
sional studies, and entered Memphis Hospital College,
Memphis, Tennessee, where he was graduated with the
degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1890. Returning to
Monroe, Indian Territory, he opened a small office and
hung out his shingle, and in the course of the next few
years experienced the trials and disappointments
through which every young physician is forced to pass
before he can gain a foothold. However, he was perse-
vering, and instead of showing his patience, cheerfully
and industriously sought to impress himself favorably

upon the community, so that practice was gradually
attracted to him, and from that time forward his suc-
cess was assured. In 1912, feeling that he had outgrown
his community, he looked about for a broader scene for
his activities and came to Poteau, where he has since
built up an excellent general practice. On May 1, 1915,
his abilities were recognized by his appointment to the
office of county superintendent of health for Le Flore
County. He keeps abreast of the progress made in
his profession, and has taken two post-graduate courses,
1893 and 1900, at the Chicago Polyclinic, of Chicago,
Illinois. He keeps likewise in touch with the medical
brotherhood, and is, a member of the Le Flore County
Medical Society, the Oklahoma State Medical Society and
the American Medical Association. Fraternally, he is a
Royal Arch Mason, a Pythian and an Odd Fellow. His
religious faith is that of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
South.

Doctor Woodson was married in 1895 to Miss Lillie
McClure, a native of Arkansas, and to this union there
have been born five children.

Almee Sidney Norvell. About six years ago there
came to Eastern Oklahoma a young attorney, who already
had had considerable experience in handling cases before
the courts of Arkansas and Tennessee, and in a year
or so he had settled down to the enjoyment of a good
practice at Wewoka. Then came official honors in the
shape of the county judgeship, and he is now filling it
for a second term and with such efficiency as to assure
him of further promotions and public honors should he
so desire.

A Tennessee man, Judge Norvell was born near
Trenton in Gibson County, August 5, 1874, a son of
Joseph S. and Margaret (Taylor) Norvell. Both parents
were natives of Tennessee, where they spent their lives.
The father, who was born August 21, 1841, died
December 31, 1896, at the age of fifty-five and the
mother, who was born October 13, 1850, died October
29, 1909, aged fifty-nine. Joseph S. Norvell was a
farmer, and during the Civil war he served four years
in a regiment of Tennessee Infantry, and was four times
wounded. He was captured at the battle of Franklin
and for several months was held a prisoner. He owned
a good farm, gave it the best of attention and in that
way and by its management provided well for his family.
He also served for a number of years as justice of the
peace, and was a lifelong democrat. He was deeply
religious, was a deacon in the Baptist Church, and his
wife also took an interest in church affairs. To their
marriage were born six sons and four daughters, and
four of the sons and three daughters are still living:
Melville died at the age of nineteen; Walter died aged
four; Dora lives at Trenton, Tennessee, widow of E. E.
Strain; the fourth in age is Aimer S. Norvell; John
resides at Trenton, Tennessee; Hassie, deceased wife of
J. M. McCord; Yannie married C. C. Sublet of Trenton;
Zula married C. L. Ball of Rutherford, Tennessee;
Spencer lives at Hoxey, Arkansas; and Vaughn is a
resident of McKenzie, Tennessee.

Judge Norvell grew up in Gibson County, Tennessee,
and lived there until 1898. In 1901 he graduated from
the Normal School at Dickson, Tennessee. Three years
of his young career were spent in teaching school. He
studied law in the Cumberland University Law School
at Lebanon, Tennessee, and on graduating LL. B. in
1904 began practice at Kenton, Tennessee. After three
years there he moved to Arkansas City, Arkansas, in
1907, and thus with six years of practical experience he
came in 1910 to Wewoka, Oklahoma. Here he practiced
law actively until his first election in June, 1913, to the

(A/,

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1909

office of county judge of Seminole County. He was
re-elected and began bis second term in 1915.

Judge Norvell is an active democrat and has exercised
considerable influence in politics since he reached man-
hood. While in Arkansas he served by appointment as
county examiner or superintendent of schools. Since
coming to Oklahoma he has acquired some real estate
and oil interests. He is a member of the Missionary
Baptist Church and fraternally is a Mason.

In 1907 Judge Norvell married Ruby Patterson, who
was born in Gibson County, Tennessee, in 1886, a daugh-
ter of Captain Patterson. To their marriage have been
born two children: Albert Sidney and Grace Caroline.

C. M. Morgan, M. D. Successfully identified with the
medical profession at Chandler since 1909, Doctor Mor-
gan represents the high class ability of the modern
physician and surgeon, and furnishes a service of particu-
lar value to his home city in the Morgan Hospital, an
institution which under his management has maintained
the best standards of hospital equipment and operation.
The hospital has its home in a substantial building, five
private rooms, has all the modern facilities for comfort
and for the appropriate care and treatment of its
patients, and has skilled nurses in attendance.

Doctor Morgan was born in Vinton County, Ohio,
February 4, 1873. His father was a farmer, H. M.
Morgan, a native of Pennsylvania, and the Morgan
family in Pennsylvania dates back as far as 1662. The
maiden name of the mother was Margaret Hughes, a
native of Ohio. She died in Ohio, leaving three children.
The father is a democrat, and now lives at Oklahoma
City.

Doctor Morgan was liberally educated, and was gradu-
ated M. D. in 1906 from the University Medical College
at Kansas City, Missouri. He first located for practice
at Davenport, Oklahoma, and about three years later
moved to Chandler, where he now enjoys a large share
of the better practice in the locality.

Doctor Morgan was married in 1913 to Harriet Mc-
Laury of this state. They have a daughter, Harriet
Louella, now two years old. Doctor Morgan is a Knight
Templar and thirty-second degree Mason, and the soeial
qualities which have made him popular in that order
have also made him a genial public spirited worker in
his home community, where he is esteemed both for his
professional standing and for his true work as a
gentleman.

Richard Wilkerson. One of the successful and pros-
perous farmers of Washington County, whose entire life
has been passed in agricultural pursuits, is Richard
Wilkerson, a full-blooded Cherokee. He was born August
26, 1866, in the Choctaw Nation, and is a son of Thomas
and Lizzie (Tenewey or Foster, the former the Indian
name) Wilkerson.

The parents of Mr. Wilkerson, both full-blooded Chero-
kees, were born in Georgia and were children when
brought to the Indian Territory by the United States
Government. They resided there until the period of
the Civil war, when Thomas Wilkerson, who was a
minister of the Baptist Church, went to the South, leav-
ing his family in the Choctaw Nation, whence he returned
at the close of the war. He died when his son Richard,
his only child by his last marriage, was about six months
old. Mrs. Wilkerson survived until 1885, and died four
miles west of Porum. By a previous marriage, Mrs.
Wilkerson was the mother of two children: Eli and

Ella, who are both deceased. The .father had a son by
a former marriage.

Richard Wilkerson was reared in the Canadian District

of the Cherokee Nation, and as a youth entered the Male
Seminary, at Tahlequah, which was conducted by the
Cherokee Nation as a national school. He could not
speak English when he entered that institution, but when
he left, three years later, was well versed in the Eng-
lish tongue. He was brought up as a farmer, and re-
mained in the Canadian District until he was twenty-
four years of age, at which time he moved to the
Cherokee Strip, and was living there at the time of the
opening, in 1893, being at that time the owner of eighty
acres. He was one of seventy families living there, and
received his share from the sale of the land, amounting .to
$1.25 per acre. In 1895 Mr. Wilkerson came to his
present location, three miles north of Dewey, where he
and his children have an allotment, owning 450 acres
here and ninety acres of cheap land. Mr. Wilkerson
now has five oil wells on his property, while his son,
Oliver C., who owns his own place of eighty acres, as
well as twenty acres near Bartlesville, has seventeen
producing oil wells. Mr. Wilkerson has been engaged
in general farming all of his life and has made a suc-
cess of his operations, being considered one of the well-
to-do men of his locality. He is a democrat in political
matters, is a faithful member of the Baptist Church at
Sugar Mound, and is fraternally affiliated with Bartles-
ville Lodge, A. H. T. A., and is a Master Mason.

Mr. Wilkerson was married in March, 1891, to Anna
Hendricks, a native of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, born Octo-
ber 10, 1870, a daughter of David and Martha (Manning)
Hendricks, both full-blooded Cherokees. To this union
there have been born eleven children: David, who died

at the age of eight years; Lizzie, who died aged two
years; Ella, who is the wife of Hope Teeke, of Wash-
ington County; Katie, who lives with her parents;
Oliver C., a successful farmer and oil producer of Wash-
ington County; one child which died in infancy; William,
who lives at home; Jessie, who died in infancy; Ernest
and Earl, twins, the former of whom died aged four
years; and Owen, who lives at home. Mr. Wilkerson
also had an adopted child, Woodrow, who died February
.19, 1915.

Harry James Dray. The postmaster of Weatherford,
Oklahoma, is Harry James Dray, a man of English birth
and parentage, but a resident of America since he was
five years old. He was born in Swansbrook, England, on
January 12, 1868, and is the son of A. H. and Susan
(Smith) Dray.

A. H. Dray was born in the vicinity of Swansbrook,
where he was reared and married, and where his children
were born. His birth occurred .in 1844, and he died at
Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1898. He came to America in
.1873, and his family followed him ten months later. He
was a blacksmith by trade, and when he came to America
he made his way at once to Nebraska City, Nebraska,
where he found work in the factory of the Breaking Plow
Company. A little later, in 1874, he went to Essex, Iowa,
the family having joined him in 1874, and in Essex the
family settled down to the making of a home in a new
land. The father worked at his trade there until 1887
when he moved to WaKeeney, in Western Kansas. His
next move took the family to Plattsmouth, Nebraska,
where he was employed in the Burlington Machine Shops,
and he was by that company transferred to Lincoln, where
he worked for the Burlington until his death in 1908.

Mr. Dray was democratic in his politics, and a mem-
ber of the Episcopal Church. His wife, Susan Smith,
was born in the same village that was his native place,
in 1843, and she is now living in Black Lake, Idaho.
They were the parents of a large family of fifteen chil-
dren. A. H., Jr., lives in Stockton, California, where

1910

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

he is a blacksmith. Susan married Allen Voorhees, a
farmer of Mullen, Idaho, where they have their home.
J. P. is a barber of Ely, Nevada. Harry James was
the fourth child. W. S. lives in Savannah, Missouri,
where he is postmaster and the editor of a newspaper.
Jennie married C. N. Cooley, pastor of the Congrega-
tional Church at Black Lake, Idaho. Nellie married Harry
Cox, a merchant of Muskogee, Oklahoma. Richard died
young, as did also Minnie, George, Edward and Irving.
Frank is a resident of Black Lake, Idaho, where he is
employed as a railroad machinist. He and his mother
have a home there. Margaret married Morris Griffith,
and they live in Livingston, Montana. The fifteenth child
died in infancy.

Harry James Dray attended the public schools in Essex,
Iowa, until 1887, when the family moved to WaKeeney,
Kansas, and he entered a printing office there, following
an apprenticeship in the printing business he had served
in Essex, while still attending school. He spent three
years in the office of The Tribune in WaKeeney, and in
1890 he went to Plattsmouth, Nebraska, as foreman of
the Cass County Herald. He held that position until
1894, when he went to Auburn, Nebraska, and was fore-
man of the Herald there until 1903. In April, 1903, he
came to Weatherford, Oklahoma, and entered the office
of the Weatherford Republican as foreman, which posi-
tion he filled for a year. He then bought the Weather-
ford Democrat, an opposition paper, and published it
until April 1, 1915, when N. S. DeMotte bought an in-
terest in the paper, and since then has been the editor of
the paper. This is one of the foremost sheets in the
county, and is an influence for good wherever it circulates.
It is well managed and has a wide circulation in the
county and state.

Mr. Dray is democratic in his convictions, and has
served as clerk of the Weatherford School Board for
seven years. In August, 1913, he was appointed post-
master of Weatherford by President Wilson, and is satis-
factorily filling that office at the present time. He is a
member of the Episcopal Church, and is a Mason with
Ancient Free and Accepted Masonic affiliations. He is
also a member of the Knights of Pythias No. 11, Auburn,
Nebraska, and is past chancellor commander of that lodge.
He is a member of the Modern Woodmen of America,
the Royal Highlanders and the Court of Honor, and in
all of them is popular and prominent, with an instinct
for fraternalism and sociability that makes him welcome
in whatever circles he frequents.

Mr. Dray was married in 1903 in Peru, Nebraska, to
Miss Emma E. Randol, daughter of J. P. Randol, a
retired farmer now living in Weatherford. They have
four children: The first born, Rhea Ruth, died here at
the age of nine years. Edith and Isabelle attend the
public schools, while the youngest child, Margaret, is
not yet of school age.

C. M. Cade. It is hardly necessary to make any point
of introduction for this well known Oklahoma citizen,
banker, pioneer, man of affairs and leader in the
republican party. There are few men in the state
better known for substantial activities and broad
influence exerted continuously since the original opening
of Oklahoma Territory to settlement.

Born in Noble County, Ohio, August 4, 1856, C. M.
Cade represents an old American family. A short time
after the Revolutionary war was concluded three brothers,
William, Samuel and Moses Cade, emigrated from France
to Virginia. Of these three brothers William was the
grandfather of C. M. Cade. He was a planter in

Virginia, and afterwards transferred his residence to
a . farm on Blennerhassett Island in the Ohio River,

famous in history as the home of that unfortunate
gentleman who became involved in the plots of Aaron
Burr. William Cade spent the rest of his life in Ohio
and died at Marietta, in that state.

Samuel Cade, father of C. M. Cade, was born at
Natural Bridge, Virginia, in 1826, and died at Shawnee,
Oklahoma, March 16, 1909. He was reared in Virginia
but as a young man located at Marietta, Ohio. He was
married in Monroe County, Ohio, a county from which
Noble County was subsequently formed. In 1865 he
established his home in Lawrence County, Ohio. From
1898 to 1900 he lived in Anthony, Kansas, and in 1900
moved to Kingfisher County, Oklahoma, where he was
an early settler, and a farmer and stock raiser. He was
a democrat in politics, and very active in the Baptist
Church, in which he served as a deacon many years.
Samuel Cade married Emeline Rowe, who was born in
Guernsey County, Ohio, in 1822, and died at Anthony,
Kansas, in 1900. Their children were: W. S. Cade,

an attorney at Oklahoma City and for a number of
years a United States marshal; B. M. Cade, who died
in Lawrence County, Ohio, in 1881, also an attorney by
profession and engaged in practice at Pomeroy, Ohio;
Ceola Virginia, wife of Henry Shaw, a farmer and
stock raiser at Burton, Nebraska; C. M. Cade; and
Mary, wife of George E. Clark, who is in the railroad
shops at Shawnee.

C. M. Cade grew up on his father’s farm back in
Ohio, spending the first sixteen years of his life in the
wholesome atmosphere of the country and with such
education as the local schools could supply. Afterwards
he taught school in Lawrence County, Ohio, but in 1876
went West with the early pioneers of Nebraska, and
became a farmer at Plum Creek in that state. In 1877
he went out to the Black Hills and spent a year in that
famous mining region. From 1879 to 1884 he was a
school teacher in Anthony, Kansas, and then took part
as one of the founders of the flourishing little City of
Coldwater, Kansas, and was secretary and treasurer of
the Town Site Company from 1884 to 1889.

April 22, 1889, the opening day of the original Okla-
homa Territory, he participated in the rush and landed
in Kingfisher County. He was soon one of the leaders
among the early settlers, and was elected and served as
the first county clerk of Kingfisher county, holding that
office a year and a half. Since 1895 Mr. Cade’s home
and activities have been largely centered at Shawnee.
He was town site agent for the town, and until 1899
was in the employ of the old Choctaw, Oklahoma and
Gulf Railroad, now part of the Rock Island System. On
leaving the railway service he entered the First National
Bank of Shawnee, and for one year was its vice presi-
dent. He then resigned to become commercial agent
for the Rock Island Railroad, and was also in the right
of way department until 1902, in which year he helped
to found the State National Bank of Shawnee, becoming
its cashier, a position he still holds.

The State National Bank of Shawnee was established
in 1902 by Willard Johnston, George E. McKinnis,
Julius Greenlee, J. W. McLoud and Mr. Cade. It still
keeps its original capitalization at $100,000. The bank
is one of the commercial landmarks in Shawnee, situated
at the corner of Main and Broadway. It now has a
surplus of $20,000 and undivided profits of $8,000. The
officers of the bank at this time are: Willard Johnston,

president; George E. McKinnis and Frank Reed, vice
presidents; C. M. Cade, cashier; Willard Barnett and
N. S. Barnett, assistant cashiers. The bank is repre-
sented in the State and National Bankers Associations
by its officers.

As a banker Mr. Cade ’s interests are somewhat widely
extended. He is president of the Cimarron Valley

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1911

Bank, at Coyle; vice president of the Bank of Earls-
boro; vice president of the Bank of Meeker; director in
the First National Bank of Geary and in the First
National Bank of Mounds, all of them Oklahoma insti-
tutions.

In republican polities Mr. Cade’s name has long been
familiar to the people of Oklahoma. From 1902 to 1904
he was state chairman of the State Central Committee,
and from 1904 to 1912 was a National Committeeman
from Oklahoma. He is an active member of the Shawnee
Commercial Club, and fraternally is identified with
Shawnee Lodge No. 657, Benevolent and Protective Order
of Elks; Shawnee Lodge No. 107, Ancient Free and
Accepted Masons ; Shawnee Lodge of the Fraternal
Order of Eagles, and of the Knights of Pythias.

On March 27, 1883, in Wellington, Kansas, he married
Miss Helen Kitchen, daughter of F. H. Kitchen, who
during his active lifetime was a farmer. Mrs. Cade died
in Coldwater, Kansas, in 1884. The only child by her
union is C. M. Cade, Jr., whose home is at Dale, Okla-
homa, where he conducts a farm and raises stock, anti
he was also postmaster at Shawnee until April 1, 1915.

On November 27, 1889, at Enid, Oklahoma, Mr. Cade
married Miss Lizzie Hartz, daughter of Frank Hartz,
who was a farmer. There is one child by this union,
Leo Samuel, now a sophomore in the Shawnee High
School.

Dr. James H. Miller, whose appointment as repre-
sentative of the Choctaw Nation in Washington, recently
was made by Principal Chief Victor M. Locke, Jr., and
confirmed by the Choctaw Senate, has for many years
stood as one of the foremost intermarried citizens in the
old Choctaw Nation, and has many interests as banker,
merchant and stockmart at Antlers and vicinity.

History is best translated and interpreted through the
human actors engaged in making or witnessing it. Every
human life helps to make or reflect the progress and
experience of the age. It is the fundamental principle
in the writing of history that ‘ ‘ the life of a nation is at
bottom only the life of a man. ’ ’

The editor of this article believes there is no more
illuminating chapter on the life, manners and customs
of old Indian Territory, especially the old Choctaw
Nation, than is found in the record of what Doctor Mil-
ler has witnessed and experienced. Hence this article is
not so much a personal biography as a scroll of history
as it has been unrolled and lived before the eyes of
Doctor Miller.

In recalling happenings of nearly forty years ago in
the Choctaw Nation, Doctor Miller remembers having
attended a trial at Caddo in which several prominent men
of the Indian Nation were tried for treason. Among
these men were Col. James J. MeAlester, a member of
the first corporation commission of the state and more
recently lieutenant governor. The late Tandy Walker, a
half brother of Governor Douglas H. Johnston, of the
Chickasaw Nation; James Thompson, then treasurer of
the Choctaw Nation; and James Davis, an intermarried
citizen. The first trial was held before District Judge
Lorin Folsom, and had the jury found them guilty they
would have been shot as the Indian law provided.

This trial occurred during the administration of Cole-
man Cole, principal chief of the Choctaw Nation. Cole
was a character who deserves more than passing mention.
He was a full-blood of the old Indian type and wore a
blanket about his shoulders. Although he had a high
regard for the white men of the nation who became his
friends, his ambition was to hold the Choctaw estate
intact as long as possible. Hence he had the Legislature
enact a law providing that any person who should sell or

attempt to sell any land of the Choctaw Nation should be
guilty of treason.

About 1875 the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Bailroad
Was projected south of Vinita toward the coal fields of
MeAlester and Lehigh, and the defendants in this notable
case above referred to executed leases for coal mine
purposes to certain Choctaw lands. Thereupon Cole had
warrants issued for their arrest, charging them with
treason, and they were indicted by a grand jury. Some
of them fled into Arkansas, but later all surrendered. A
special term of court in the Third Judicial District was
convened at Caddo, and the men were tried and acquitted.
Chief Cole attended the trial, ‘as did also Doctor Miller,
who meantime had become an intermarried citizen. The
verdict incensed the chief and he arose in court and
publicly rebuked Judge Folsom.

‘ ‘ Lorin Folsom, ’ ’ spoke the principal chief, ‘ ‘ you are
as much a traitor to our beloved nation as are these men
you have acquitted, and you are not entitled to a seat on
the Choctaw Bench. It was possible for you to have
given the jury a charge* that would have convicted these
men. ’ ’ He then turned to the MeAlester group and said :
“Don’t flatter yourselves that you are free.” Then to
Sheriff Joe Bryant he turned and commanded that they
be rearrested and a new jury summoned. The chief then
threw off his blanket and took the bench. Another trial
proceeded and it too resulted in an acquittal.

To the jury the principal chief then addressed himself :
“Gentlemen,” he said, “by your act today you have
driven the wedge to the hilt that will burst our country
asunder. This is the beginning of the end. Who is to
mine this coal? Not the Indian. Who lifts this coal?
Not the Indian. You have opened the gates that will
admit to our country white men like the leaves of the
trees, without number. They will build houses and re-
main here and talk, as they did in Mississippi of old, of
vested rights. The strong will rise and the weak will go
down. There is nothing in common between the white
man and the Indian. Like oil and water, they will not
mix. Thank God, the sin is yours, not mine. I have done
my full duty. Experience taught me much in Mississippi,
and I don ’t want to live over again the days of the past.
Your act probably won’t seriously affect me or you, but
your posterity will pay the penalty of your crime.”

This event was near the close of the administration of
Chief Cole and he was defeated for re-election. No
governor of the Choctaws ever was such a czar, yet his
acts on the whole were of benefit to his people. Neither
was he averse to white men entering the nation if he
were convinced that they were patriotic and would make
the right sort of citizens.

When Doctor Miller, after attending lectures at Tulane
University of New Orleans, established himself for the
practice of medicine at Goodland in the Choctaw Nation,
he found that a permit from the Choctaw Government
was necessary. He boarded at the home of former Prin-
cipal Chief B. L. LeFlore. When Governor LeFlore came
home on a vacation from attending the Choctaw Council,
he asked him to obtain a permit to practice medicine.
So, when Governor LeFlore returned to Armstrong
Academy, then the capitol of the Choctaw Nation, seek-
ing out Chief Cole he said he had a young doctor at his
home and that he wished to obtain a permit for him.
Chief Cole said, “do you think he is qualified and all
right?” LeFlore replied yes. Cole then turned to Joe
Lawrence, who was permit collector, and said, “Joe,
issue him a permit, ’ ’ which was done. Lawrence handed
the permit to Cole, and the latter to LeFlore, saying:
“Give him this with my compliments and tell him to
make a good citizen, and if a Choctaw gets sick to go

1912

HISTORY OP OKLAHOMA

to see him whether he has money or not and that he will
be rewarded. ’ ’

As a slight token of this friendly act, Doctor Miller
is now endeavoring to locate Cole’s grave with the view
of erecting a suitable monument to his memory. After
entering Choctaw politics, Doctor Miller frequently op-
posed Chief Cole in policies vitally affecting the nation,
but in later years he concluded that he was in error and
that Cole was always right.

Before he lived in the Choctaw Nation two years Doc-
tor Miller fell in love with an Indian girl, but was unable
to marry her under Choctaw laws because he had not
lived in the nation the required two years and could not
get the required petition with ten signers testifying to
his character. So he and Miss Ella J. Robuck crossed Red
River and were married in the home of Captain Arthur,
now on the site of the Village of Arthur City. Mrs.
Miller is a daughter of Col. William Robuck, who filled
the offices of auditor and attorney general in the Choc-
taw Government and was a member of the Senate when
he died, flolonel Robuck, with Col. Dave Harkins and
McGee King, constituted a commission that settled a
boundary dispute on the eastern side of the nation, each
receiving 5 per cent of the value of the territory re-
covered. Colonel Robuck died before the commission
money was distributed and was succeeded by Campbell
LeFlore, who paid to the Robuck estate its share of the
fee. When Doctor Miller later was ambitious to enter
Choctaw politics he complied with Choctaw laws and he
and Mrs. Miller were married again under those laws.
When the enrollment period came he was enrolled with-
out question as a member of the Choctaw Tribe.

Doctor Miller’s entrance into Choctaw politics made
him an important factor in the campaign in which Prin-
cipal Chief Wilson N. Jones was candidate for re-election,
and so important were the doctor’s activities that Gover-
nor Jones appointed him tribal collector in a section
traversed by the Frisco Railroad. He was a member of
the executive campaign committee in the campaign when
Green McCurtain first ran for principal chief, and for
twelve years was chairman of the campaign committee of
his party, then known as the progressive party. In
politics he has never lost a fight. He had for two terms
the office of collector for the Third Judicial District, and
he is the only white man ever confirmed by the Choctaw
Council for a tribal office up to that time.

Doctor Miller speaks the Choctaw language and has
been associated with the Indians in various capacities.
He has known personally every principal chief since Cole-
man Cole and has attended nearly every session of the
tribal legislature since that time. As a member of the
Treaty Rights Association, he and Dr. T. P. Howell of
Davis, and Edward B. Johnson of Norman, in 1913-14
represented the association in Washington to oppose
measures that provided for the re-opening of the Choc-
taw rolls. This has been the greatest fight of recent
years on the part of the Choctaws. Their tribal estate
is worth many millions of dollars and about $7,000,000
in cash is now in the United States treasury to their
credit. So long as this great estate remains in common
and is held out as a bait, says Doctor Miller, all kinds
of people will want to be Choctaws and get on the rolls,
and money and influence almost without estimate will be
used to break the seal put on the rolls years ago. Doctor
Miller canvassed the Choctaw Nation in behalf of the
Atoka Agreement and later in behalf of the Supple-
mental Agreement. The greatest feature of the Supple-
mental Agreement was its creation of a citizenship court
which it made possible to review judgments that had
been rendered by the Federal Court in the Indian Terri-
tory. The Choctaw Government was surprised and over-

awed by the vast number of appeals that were taken to
this court. They were unprepared to make a defense
and many thousand judgments were rendered by default,
placing the names of what were known as court citizens
on the roll. Through the efforts of Mansfield, McMurray
and Cornish, who were employed by the two tribes to
review these cases, some 3,600 names were expunged
from the roll. A time limit was fixed for further en-
rollment of applicants and this limit is long expired.
Doctor Miller is of the opinion that the citizenship ques-
tion has long since been settled and that any effort to
reopen the rolls is an invasion of the Clioctaw-Chickasaw
tribes’ rights.

Doctor Miller witnessed at Goodland the execution of
Wakum Evrin, charged with murdering his wife. John
Wilson, deputy, under Sheriff Dave Gibson, fired the
shot into the Indian’s heart. Evrin had a voice of
remarkable clearness and sweetness and was noted over
the nation as one of the sweetest singers the tribe had
produced. After the murder he fled the country where
he committed the crime and located in Sansbois, Choctaw
Nation. One night a few years later during church
service the preacher Reverend Belinchey, a full blood
Choctaw, recognized the voice of Evrin joining in the
singing. He reported it to the sheriff and Evrin was
arrested. Evrin sang beautifully and with a peculiar
fervor while he was being prepared for the execution.
He sang while a minister exhorted him about his soul’s
welfare and sang until the ball sped from the officer’s
gun. He ceased his song long enough, a half minute
before the shot, to waive aside a medicine man who had
come to paint a spot over his heart, and indicated with
his own finger the target for the bullet.

Early one morning Doctor Miller was awakened by a
call at the door. Sim Joe, a Choctaw, had come for him
to visit Deupty Sheriff Wilson. The visit was made.
The significance of the incident lies in the fact that Sim
Joe was condemned to death at that time and yet had
been selected by the sheriff as messenger to the doctor.
There have been many Choctaws who exemplified similar
reliability and in whom all faith and confidence could
be placed.

James H. Miller was born in 1853 in Carroll County,
Tennessee. His father died in 1858. In 1859 he and his
mother started with his grandparents overland to Texas.
His grandfather, however, located near what is now
Prescott, Arkansas, and remained there until 1864. His
mother died while living in Arkansas, and Doctor Miller
came on to Paris, Texas, with his grandparents later.
About 1866 the lad went back to Middle Tennessee and
attended school in Giles County some three years.
Returning to East Texas he was in the employ of his
uncle in the lumber business for about a year, after-
wards attended school three terms at Sulphur Springs in
Hopkins County, Texas, and on finishing school entered
the office of Dr. W. M. Clements, Paris, Texas, and began
the study of medicine. He also attended lectures in New
Orleans, and in October, 1875 came to Indian Territory
and began the practice of medicine at Old Goodland,
Kiamichi County, Choctaw Nation. About 1892 he
moved his family to Paris, Texas, for educational and
social purposes and remained there sixteen years, and
from there moved to Antlers, Oklahoma, his present
home.

Doctor Miller has valuable ranch interests on McGee
Creek and Impson Valley. For twenty-five years he has
dealt in cattle as his principal business. He was one of
the organizers of the Hugo National Bank, is vice presi-
dent of the Citizens National Bank of Antlers, owns
stock in the American National Bank at Paris, Texas, has
a general merchandise business at Grant and a general

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1913

store at Kent. Bight miles south of Antlers he has one of
the most modern and best equipped stock farms in Okla-
homa. Among other features are a water plant and an
electric light plant, large silos, a cotton gin and grist
mill. Here are raised some of the finest stock in South-
eastern Oklahoma and only the best methods of agri-
culture are employed.

It has recently become a matter of authentic knowl-
edge that Mrs. Dr. Miller is a direct descendant of
Pushmataha, the great war chief and governor of the
Choctaws. Their relationship was outlined in a work
published by S. J. Hotama, a witch killer and religious
fanatic, who, having been convicted of murder because
of his peculiar belief, was sentenced to life imprison-
ment in the Federal prison at Atlanta, where he died.
When the fact of this relationship was known to the
Council of the Nation, Senator Frank Folsom drafted
a resolution providing that a large portrait of Push-
mataha that hangs in the Council House at Tuskahoma
should be presented to Doctor Miller. ‘ ‘ Let Dr. Miller
have the resolution,” kindly remarked Principal Chief
MeCurtain to members of the Council, ‘ ‘ but I am going
to retain the portrait of Pushmataha.” The resolution
was not presented to the Council.

Doctor Miller has a fine family of five sons and two
daughters. Edgar Poe Miller and S. G. Miller live in
Antlers and are engaged principally in the livestock
business. Mrs. W. T. Glenn, now deceased, was the wife
of the present county judge of Choctaw County. W.
W. Miller is in the livestock business and occupies the
ranch his father established here many years ago. J. H.
Miller Jr., who has lived for a number of years on old
M Bar Baneh, is engaged in the livestock business in
New Mexico. Mrs. Ruby C. McIntosh is the wife of
W. R. McIntosh, mining trustee of the Choctaw Nation,
and lives at MeAlester. Miss Edith R. Miller is attend-
ing school at Denison, Texas. Frank Wright Miller, the
youngest son, lives with his parents in Antlers.

Rufus P. Roope. One of the best known and most
honored citizens of Lincoln County is Rufus P. Roope,
who is now serving as county treasurer and who previ-
ously has held the office of county clerk. He has been
a resident of what is now the State of Oklahoma for
nearly a quarter of a century, and may be termed with
all consistency a pioneer, his original location having
been in Lincoln County, which was then an integral
part of Indian Territory. He has been closely and
worthily identified with the development and upbuilding
of Lincoln County and its attractive and thriving judicial
center, the Village of Chandler, the while he has ever
retained inviolable place in popular confidence and
esteem, as indicated by his having been called to offices
of signal public trust. Mr. Roope has shown much
circumspection and executive ability as a public official,
and his unfailing courtesy and consideration have gained
to him the good will of all with whom he has come in
contact in his official capacity as well as in the ordinary
course of civic life. He was elected county treasurer in
the autumn of 1914, as candidate on the republican
ticket, and had served the preceding two years as county
clerk. He is careful and methodical in his handling of
all details of official work and Lincoln County has been
favored in securing his services in connection with its
governmental affairs.

Rufus P. Roope was born on a plantation in Frank-
lin County, Tennessee, on the 13th of June, 1875, and is
a son of Rev. Abner L. and Emarine (Protsman) Roope,
both of whom were natives of Indiana and both of
whom attained to the venerable age of eighty years be-
fore they were summoned to the life eternal. The father

was a clergyman of the Methodist Episcopal Church and
at the time of the Civil war he served as captain of the
Eighty-second Indiana Volunteer Infantry, with which
regiment he endured the full tension of the great conflict,
having been with the commands of General Thomas and
General Sherman in many sanguinary engagements on
the battlefields of the South. In later years he perpetu-
ated the memories of his military career through his
membership in the Grand Army of the Republic, and he
never faltered in his allegiance to the republican party.
He labored with all of zeal and devotion for many years
as a minister of the church of which both he and his
wife were most devout members. Of their two children
the subject of this review is the younger, the elder son,
Charles, being deceased.

Passing the days of his boyhood and youth on the
farm in Switzerland County, Indiana, Rufus P. Roope
duly availed himself of the advantages of the public
schools, this discipline having been supplemented by a
course in a business college in Sedalia, Missouri.

Mr. Roope came to Indian Territory and established
his residence in what is now Lincoln County in 1891. He
was one of the early settlers in the Village of Meeker,
where he engaged in farming and where he served five
years as postmaster, besides which he was for a time a
teacher in a school maintained for children of the Creek
Indians. During the period of his effective service as a
county official he has, as a matter of course, maintained
his residence at Chandler, the judicial center of the
county, and he has been progressive and public-spirited,
a loyal supporter of the measures and enterprises that
have furthered the social and industrial advancement
and upbuilding of his home county and the Territory and
State of Oklahoma. Mr. Roope gave careful attention to
the study of law and is now a member of the Oklahoma
bar; in the Masonic fraternity he has advanced to the
thirty-second degree of the Ancient Accepted Scottish
Rite; he is a stalwart republican in politics; and both
he and his wife hold membership in the Presbyterian
Church.

On the 4th of February, 1898, was solemnized the
marriage of Mr. Roope to Miss Elizabeth McGee, who
was born at Mexico, Missouri, where she acquired her
rudimentary education. She was a young girl at the
time of the family removal to Kansas, and at Iola, that
state, she completed her educational discipline, after
which she became a successful and popular teacher in
the public schools. Among her schoolmates were the
children of the Funston family, of which Gen. Fred
Funston is a distinguished member. Mrs. Roope is a
daughter of the late Albert L. McGee, who was a native
of Indiana, and who later became a prosperous agricul-
turist and influential citizen in Audrain County, Mis-
souri. Mr. and Mrs. Roope have two children — Frances
Ruth and Marguerite Fern.

Harry Brown. There are turning points in every
man’s life called opportunity. Taken advantage of they
mean ultimate success. The career of Harry Brown is
a striking illustration of the latter statement. Diligent
and ever alert for his chance of advancement, he has
progressed steadily until he is recognized today as one
of the foremost business men of Anadarko. Here he is
held in high esteem by his fellow citizens, who honor him
for his native ability and for his fair and straight-
forward career. Mr. Brown is the owner of a large
lumber yard at Anadarko and in connection with his
business sends supplies to various sections throughout
Caddo County.

A native of the Emerald Isle, Harry Brown was born at
St. Johnston, Donegal County, Ireland, September 30,

1914

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1861. His paternal grandfather was Henry Brown, who
spent his entire life in Donegal County, Ireland, where
he was keeper of a large landed estate. James Brown,
father of Harry, was born at St. Johnston, Ireland, in
1845, and he emigrated to America in 1862, landing
in' Maryland, whence he journeyed west to Illinois and
going thence to Carbondale, Kansas. He was a coal
miner and followed his occupation in many states from
the Atlantic to the Pacific. April 22, 1889, he settled
permanently at Edmond, Oklahoma, and there he has
since been most profitably engaged in the lumber and
hardware business. Although seventy years of age he
enjoys splendid health and his intellect is as keen as in
the prime of life. In politics he is a loyal republican
and he represented his district in the Oklahoma Legis-
lature in 1893. He is a devout communicant of the
Roman Catholic Church and is affiliated with the Knights
of Columbus. He married Jane Britten, who was born
in Paisley, Scotland, in 1845, and who died at Edmond,
Oklahoma, in 1899. The following children were born to
Mr. and Mrs. Brown: Harry is the subject of this

sketch; Isabella married Dan Mooney, an oil man at
Ponca City, this state; J. J. assists his father in the
hardware business at Edmond, Oklahoma; Dennis T.
has been lost track of ; Catherine married Charles S.
Pitman and they live at El Paso, Texas; she is a grad-
uate of the Edmond Normal School; and Mayme, a
graduate of the kindergarten department of the Edmond
Normal School, is a stenographer and teacher and re-
sides at home with her parents.

Harry Brown came to America with his mother in
1866, his father having come to this country five years
earlier. As a result of the family moving so often,
he was educated in the public schools of several states.
April 22, 1889, he settled in Edmond, Oklahoma, and
there was engaged in the mercantile business until 1894.
He then accepted a position as traveling salesman for
the Buford & George Manufacturing Company, selling
farm implements for that concern in South Kansas and
Oklahoma for the ensuing ten years. In 1904 he came
to Anadarko among the pioneers and here engaged in the
lumber business, continuing in that line of enterprise
with marked success to the present time. His well
equipped lumber yard is situated on the corner of East
Broadway and Seventh Street and he ships large supplies
of lumber to distant points throughout Caddo and
neighboring counties. He is a republican in politics and
has served on the school board in Anadarko for a number
of years. He is a shrewd business man but is possessed
of a kindly and genial personality that makes friends
for him wherever he goes.

In Edmond, Oklahoma, in 1890, Mr. Brown married
Miss Sarah MeFadyen, a daughter of John MePadyen,
who was a farmer near Edmond prior to his demise.
Mr. and Mrs. Brown have two sons : Harry J. was grad-
uated in the University of Oklahoma, in 1914, with the
degree of Bachelor of Arts, and he is now pursuing a
post-graduate course in that institution, making a spe-
cialty of mathematics and calisthenics, which subjects
he expects to teach in the Durant Normal School next
year; John D. is a junior in the University of Okla-
homa. Both boys are fine examples of sturdy young
American manhood and they have promising careers
ahead of them.

The Brown family are communicants of the Roman
Catholic Church, to whose good works they are liberal
contributors of their time and means. Mrs. Brown is a
woman of most gracious personality and she is popular
with all who have had the pleasure of meeting her.

Dr. J. Matt Gordon. Ten years ago Dr. J. Matt
Gordon came to Weatherford and established himself in

medical practice here. Since that time he has been a
continuous resident here, and has a wide practice in the
community and surrounding towns. He is a native son of
Missouri, born at Bolivar, on November 14, 1865, and is a
son of B. E. and Rebecca A. (Brown) Gordon.

B. P. Gordon was born in Kentucky in 1818, and he
died near Bolivar, Missouri, in 1900. He came to Mis-
souri in young manhood and engaged in the farming and
stock raising business, in which he experienced a pleasing
degree of success. He was a Baptist all his life and a
deacon in the church. His wife was born in Kentucky in
1827, and she died near Bolivar, in 1892. Their children
were six in number, and are briefly mentioned here as fol-
lows: Ruan married J. M. Mullis, and they live on a
farm in Oameron, Missouri. Elizabeth married R. T.
Ellis, and they live in Bolivar, Missouri. Thomas Benton
is deceased. R. D. lives in Waynoka, Oklahoma, where
he is a druggist. Naomi married W. E. Johnson and is
now deceased. Dr. J. Matt Gordon was the sixth child.

Doctor Gordon as a boy attended the public schools at
Bolivar, continuing his studies there until he was eighteen
years old, when lie turned his attention to school teach-
ing. He taught several years in Polk County, Missouri,
and then entered the state normal school at Warrens-
burg, Missouri, to further his training. He was grad-
uated from that school in 1897, after which he was
chosen to fill the position of superintendent of the War-
rensburg Public Schools. He continued in that post from
1897 to 1902, when he entered the College of Physicians
and Surgeons in Chicago, now the medical department of
the University of Illinois, and he was graduated with
the class of 1905, with the degree M. D. Since that time
Doctor Gordon has taken the A. B. course in South-West
Baptist College, Bolivar, Missouri, and post graduate
courses in the Chicago Polyclinic in 1910 and 1912. Pol-
iowing his graduation Doctor Gordon came to Weather-
ford, and has been engaged in practice here ever since,
with offices in the Weatherford Drug Store. He is at
present serving as local health physician, and has in past
years served as president of the school boardj in which
position he was especially well qualified to act, by reason
of his previous wide experience in the educational fields.
Prom 1909 to 1911 he was a member of the Board of
Regents for the University of Oklahoma, at Norman. He
has served as president of the Custer County Medical
Society, and he also has membership in the State and
American Medical Associations. At the present time
he is president of the West Central Oklahoma Medical
Society. He is local surgeon for the Rock Island Rail-
road, and is a member of the United States Pension
Board, as well as local examining physician on that board.
Doctor Gordon owns a splendid farm about three miles
from Weatherford, and has a nice home in town.

Doctor Gordon was married in Bolivar, Missouri, in
1890, to Miss Pinnie E. Milliken, daughter of H. R. Milli-
ken, now deceased. They have no living children.

In a fraternal way Doctor Gordon is especially popular
in Weatherford. He is a Mason of high degree and is
affiliated with Weatherford Lodge No. 138 Ancient Pree
and Accepted Masons, Weatherford Chapter No. 31, Royal
Arch Masons, Weatherford Commandery No. 17, Knights
Templar, and Indian Temple, Ancient Arabic Order
Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, at Oklahoma City. He is
also a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows,
the Woodmen of the World, the Modern Woodmen of
America.

Andrew Jackson Brown, of Wewoka, has gained as
much distinction in commercial affairs as his brother,
John P. Brown, in the public life of the Seminole Nation.
As a matter of fact, however, Andrew J. Brown and

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1915

John F. Brown have for many years been closely asso-
ciated ' in business affairs, and these two brothers, with
Mr. C. L. Long, own and control the two largest busi-
ness institutions at Wewoka — the Wewoka Trading
Company and the Wewoka Realty & Trust Company,
which is incorporated with a capital of $100,000.

On other pages will be found a record of John F.
Brown, the principal chief of the Seminole Nation.
Governor Brown is about thirteen years older than
Andrew Jackson Brown, who was born at Tahlequah,
Oklahoma, March 3, 1856. He was fifth in a family of
four sons and three daughters, and their parents were
Dr. John F. and Lucy (Graybeard) Brown. Doctor
Brown was a distinguished character in old Indian Ter-
ritory and some of the more important details of the
family record will be found in the sketch of Governor
Brown.

When Andrew J. Brown was an infant his parents
moved to that section of Indian Territory between Mus-
kogee and the old Creek Agency, and in 1866 when he
was ten years of age they moved to the old Seminole
Agency in Pottawatomie County. He acquired his edu-
cation by attending the day schools operated by the
Government, was also a student at Sasakwa, the town
founded by his brother, Governor Brown, and in 1873
completed a course in the Jones Commercial College at
St. Louis.

He then returned to Indian Territory and from 1874
to 1880 took an active part in the management of the
store at Sasakwa, operated under the name of John F.
Brown & Brother. Andrew J. Brown has been a leader
in business affairs at Wewoka since 1880. At that time
there was one store and a blacksmith shop comprising
all the commercial activities of the little village. Soon
afterward C. L. Long entered the partnership, and for
a number of years the firm conducted two stores, one at
Wewoka and the other at Sasakwa. Later they organ-
ized the Wewoka Trading Company, and the store at
Sasakwa was turned over to Governor Brown, who, how-
ever, still continued an active member of the partner-
ship at Wewoka. The Wewoka Trading Company, not
incorporated, operates the largest general department
store in Seminole County and they also built the largest
business house in the town, a two-story brick 90 by 100
feet, in addition to the old store, which occupies ground
80 by 40 feet. In this store are employed from six to
twelve persons, and the trade extends all over Seminole
County. The management of the business is in the
hands of Andrew J. Brown and Mr. Long.

These three parties also own all the stock in the
Wewoka Realty & Trust Company, of which Andrew J.
Brown is president, John F. Brown vice president, and
Mr. Long secretary and treasurer. Mr. Brown and
family also have allotments of land in Seminole County
and they control extensive stock and farming interests.

Andrew J. Brown for the last twenty years has been
treasurer of the Seminole Nation, though that office since
statehood has been of nominal ^importance only. For
two terms, eight years, he was also superintendent of
tribal schools. Like his brother, Governor Brown, he
is a minister of the Gospel, of the Baptist faith, and
was active in preaching and disseminating the Gospel
truths for about fifteen years. He is pastor of the
Buckeye Baptist Church on Little River. He was also
one of the organizers and a leader in the building of
that church.

In 1879 he married Miss Mamie Jacobs, who was born
near Eufaula in 1861, a daughter of Frank Jacobs.
Mrs. Brown is a half-blood Creek. They had one child,
Clarence W. Brown, who was born January 24, 1880, and
died June 9, 1911. This son married Rebecca Bell, and
at his death he left three children who have their home

with Mr. and Mrs. Andrew J. Brown. Their names are
Lucy, Ruth and John.

H. Y. Foster, as president of the Indian Territory
Illuminating Oil Company of Bartlesville, and the
directing head of the company that controls the famous
Foster Lease in the Osage Nation, is easily one of the
most conspicuous figures in the great oil industry of the
Southwest. It was his honored father who negotiated
the Foster- Lease, but though a comparatively young
man H. V. Foster has been the moving spirit in carrying
out the plans and details of this great enterprise since
1902.

Born at Westerly, Washington County, Rhode Island,
September 6, 1875, H. V. Foster is a son of Henry and
Gertrude (Daniels) Foster, his father also a native of
Westerly, while his mother was born at Paxton, Worcester
County, Massachusetts. Henry Foster was one of the
ablest financiers and oil operators of his generation.
For many years he followed banking in Rhode Island,
’but about 1882 moved* to Independence, Kansas, where
he kept the center of his financial operations until Ms
death on February 25, 1896, at the age of forty-seven.
His name is closely associated with a great deal of
important development work in the Southwest. He was
the builder of the Missouri Pacific Railroad from Leroy
to Coffeyville, Kansas, and was also interested in mining,
constructed a number of waterworks plants in various
parts of the Southwest, and owned or partly owned
several ranches for cattle raising.

As already mentioned he secured the lease for the
production of oil on the Osage Reservation, and died
about the time the Government gave its final approval
to the terms of that lease. His wife died at Inde-
pendence, Kansas, about 1883 at the age of thirty-two.
Their two children are: Annie G., a resident of New

York City; and H. V. Foster.

H. V. Foster was specially equipped by .education and
native ability for the large business affairs which he
has directed for a number of years. He is an engineer
by profession, though most of his time has been devoted
to the executive details of business. As a boy he
attended public school in Rhode Island and Massa-
chusetts, also at Independence, Kansas, and his parents
being Quakers subsequently sent him to the Westtown
Boarding School maintained by the Society of Friends
at Westtown, Pennsylvania. Going abroad he entered
University College of London, England, and graduated
with his engineer’s certificate in 1894. On his return
to the United States he entered Columbia University at
New York.

As an engineer his first work was on a drainage
project comprising 60,000 acres in Wisconsin. In the
meantime he became interested in oil development, and
in 1902 removed to Bartlesville to take charge of the
Osage Lease and becoming president of the Indian Ter-
ritory Illuminating Oil Company. He has since devoted
all his time and energy to this industry, and is a master
of the business in every detail. Mr. Foster is also vice
president and director of the Union National Bank, and
his offices are in the Union National Bank Building.

Because of the active participation of the Foster
family in the oil industry in Osage territory and because
all matters affecting the Osage oil lands are subjects
of historical interest in Oklahoma, a few quotations from
a recent article that appeared in the Washington Star
are properly presented at this point. “A modern
industry represented by the huge oil derricks and pipe
lines of Oklahoma,” reads the article in question, “has
brought at least one nation of Indians into its own as
far as the individuals of its tribe are concerned in being

1916

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

the original landlords of that part of this continent in
which they have made their home. The red man pic-
tured in his feathered head-dress on the American penny
is suggestive of the former wealth of the nation being
held by the Indian. Today, when the white man ’s dollar
has developed a part of the country upon which the
Indians still live, the Osages have received such large
oil and gas royalties that they have been declared the
richest nation in the world. Had the white man never
come to this continent these Indians would have
undoubtedly been content in their original wild state,
taking pleasure in their hunts and ceremonials, but since
it is a fact that civilization has killed off their buffalo
and so taken their livelihood from them, the Osage
Nation may consider that the star of fortune rose about
1870.

“ At that time the encroachment of settlers who were
making their homes in Kansas was so evident to the
Indian and to the Government that later Congress pur-
chased the land upon which the Osages had been living
and ceded them the territory they now occupy. By this
deal the Indians unknowingly received lands worth mil-
lions of dollars on account of the oil lying beneath its
surface. Today these resources are so extensive that
the government in the capacity of guardian for the red
man finds itself thrown in direct business relations with
some of the greatest financial powers of the Nation.
It gains through this particular management of affairs
a clearer knowledge of the business of producing and
marketing oil, the most potential wealth-making power
of the present day.

“Nineteen years ago when James Bigheart was the
principal chief of the Osage Nation, about one million
five hundred thousand acres of land, or approximately
two thousand square miles — a tract many times a3 large
as the District of Columbia — was leased directly from
the tribe, through the United States Government, to
Edward B. Foster of New York City. The development
of a large part of the territory was made by the sub-
lessee, known as the Illuminating Company, engaged in
producing oil. When the original blanket Foster lease
and the subleases expired at the end of ten years they
were renewed for another ten years, which will expire
March 16, 1916. It was for this reason that in March,
1915, one year previous to the expiration of the lease
of the vast stretch of oil lands, the oil interests of the
world were assembled in a great conference with the
government, hoping to receive a share of consideration
when the time comes for Uncle Sam and the Osage
Indians to say who shall obtain the right to produce oil
in the Foster lease land in the future.

‘ ‘ The terms by which the Foster lease has been carried
are that of payment of one-eighth royalty on all oil
produced is made to the Indians. One twenty-fourth
royalty is retained by the Foster interests for their
management and extensive development of the land. In
years past it has been a common cry that the Indians
always came out at the little end of the horn when deal-
ing with the white man. The story of the Osage, how-
ever, is a contradiction to such a plaint, for by the
Foster lease alone the Osage Indians have to date gained
more wealth than the real producers of the oil.

“As these red men have not allied themselves with
modern civilization in being able to fill a place in the
industrial world, and as their incomes from tribal trust
funds and oil leases are more than sufficient to keep
them in idleness, there is but one answer to the question
of whether the Osages as a nation are better Indians
because of their independence through wealth. In all
there are about 2,230 citizens of the Osage tribe. From
oil royalties alone they average per capita, including

children, is nearly seven hundred dollars per year. A
family with two children receives an average annual
income of about twenty-seven hundred dollars from
this one source, besides large sums from lands allotted
to them, making the wealth of the people greater than
that of any other nation in the world. * * * As a

matter of record to date, the one-eighth royalty paid
the Indians on the Foster lease contract exceeds the
profit which the actual operators have made during the
seventeen years on their five-sixths working interest.
Nearly five million dollars have been paid to the
Indians. ’ ’

All this is interesting historical reading, and is espe-
cially suggestive of the important part played by Mr.
Foster in the industrial affairs of this state. He is a
splendid type of the modern American business man, and
one who does big things always in a big generous way.
While a republican, he has never sought public office
and has preferred to confine his contributions to his
adopted city’s welfare by conscientiously performing
the duties of good citizenship. He is a thirty-second
degree Scottish Bite Mason and a Shriner, and is also
a member of the local lodges of the Benevolent and
Protective Order of Elks, the Knights of Pythias and
the Modern Woodmen of America. In social and busi-
ness circles he is known not only in Oklahoma but in
most of the larger cities. He belongs to the Lotus and
Bepublican clubs of New York; the Illinois Athletic
Club of Chicago, the Misquamicut Golf and Country
Club of Watch Hill, Bhode Island; the Colonial Club
at Westerly, Bhode Island; and the Country Club of
Bartlesville.

May 1, 1897, Mr. Foster married Miss Marie Dahl-
gren, who was born at Chicago, Illinois, a daughter of
Carl John and Marie (Sierks) Dahlgren. Mr. and Mrs.
Foster have two children : Buth Daniels and Marie

Dahlgren.

Walter Griswold Bisbee, . M. D. Bepresenting the
first class ability and skill of his profession and enjoying
a large general practice, Doctor Bisbee is one of the
young physicians and surgeons of Oklahoma who have
quickly taken front rank in their profession. Doctor
Bisbee has a large general practice as a physician and
surgeon in Chandler. He began practice with an excel-
lent equipment and the test of real work found him
qualified for this important service among the social
professions. Doctor Bisbee is a graduate from the Dart-
mouth Medical College and Hospital of Philadelphia with
the class of 1901.

Walter Griswold Bisbee was born at Dexter, Iowa,
August 1, 1876. His father, Frank A. Bisbee, was one
of the leading citizens of Dexter, and was born in Ver-
mont of an old Vermont family, the ancestors having
come from England to New England in the early days,
and men of that name participated in all the early wars
of the country, including the Bevolution and the War
of 1812. Frank A. Bisbee is now living at Chandler
at the age of seventy-one, and his wife died at the age
of seventy.

Doctor Bisbee, after some experience in the Post-
Graduate and City Hospital of Philadelphia, came to
Chandler and began active practice. He soon had all he
could do, and the almost constant driving over the
country, loss of sleep, and arduous devotion to his duty
caused a breakdown in health. He then gave up his
practice and spent two years in recuperating in San
Antonio, Texas. While there he resumed practice, but
soon afterwards returned to Chandler and now enjoys a
reputation with the leading physicians and surgeons of
Central Oklahoma.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1917

Doctor Bisbee was married December 3, 1902, to
Eleanor Carpenter. She comes from an old Tennessee
family at Knoxville, where she was reared and educated.
Her father was Maj. D. A. Carpenter, an officer in the
Union army, with which he made a gallant record of
service. Doctor Bisbee and wife have one son, Wallace,
now seven years of age. Outside of his home and his
profession Doctor Bisbee has few interests. With him
medicine is not only a profession but also a hobby and
enthusiasm, and he finds his chief interests in continued
studies, and no doctor in the state keeps more closely in
touch with the advance of knowledge in medical and
surgical science than he.

Judge Mark L. Bozarth. There comes no greater
satisfaction to a man in public life than a practically
unanimous election to an important post of responsi-
bility. That was the experience of Judge Bozarth in
1914, when as a candidate for re-election as county judge
of Okmulgee County he had no opposition either at the
primaries or in the general election. Judge Bozarth' is a
thoroughly grounded and capable young lawyer, and has
been in active practice of the law and a figure in public
affairs at Okmulgee for the past fourteen years.

He is of fine stock of American ancestry, and his fore-
bears of mingled French, German with an admixture of
other early nationalities that figured in our Colonial
era, were among the first settlers in the Trans-Allegheny
District of Western Pennsylvania and Western Virginia.
The first American of the name, who was probably Caleb
Bozarth, came from France during the persecution of the
Huguenots and about 1735 settled in New Jersey near
Philadelphia. He had three sons, Isaac, Caleb and
John, and the first two served under General Washington
during the Revolution and afterwards were pioneers in
Kentucky. These two Revolutionary soldiers became the
ancestors of a very numerous group of descendants sub-
sequently scattered over Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and
other middle western states. John Bozarth, who was
born in 1743, a son of the immigrant ancestor, was about
eleven or twelve years of age when General Braddoek
came over with the British regulars to fight the French
and Indians on the western frontier, and John Bozarth
drove one team and wagon and was present at the disas- '
trous Battle of Braddoek ’s Field. John Bozarth subse-
quently moved out to Western Pennsylvania and was a
frontiersman during the Revolution. In his twenty-
seventh year he married Jane Ivers, who was a native of
Ireland. The Bozarths took a very prominent part in
the frontier life of Western Pennsylvania in the early
days, and one of the name Miss Rebecca Bozarth per-
formed some exploits in defending her home against
an attack of Indians which has been made the subject
of a chapter in a book entitled ‘ ‘ Daring Deeds of Ameri-
can Women.”

George Bozarth, a son of the John Bozarth just men-
tioned, was born April 12, 1774, near the historic old
Red Stone Fort in Western Pennsylvania and not far
from the present City of MorganstoWn, West Virginia.
At the age of seventeen he enlisted in a company of
Rangers and did much service against the Indians and
their British allies in patroling the country along the
Ohio River and as far down as Kentucky. In March,
1795, George Bozarth married Mary Reger, who was of
pure German extraction, spoke the German language
fluently though after her marriage the English was con-
stantly used in the household. George and Mary Reger
Bozarth were the parents of fifteen children, six of whom
died in infancy. Of those who reached maturity the
names were Anna, Temperance, Mary, Jacob, Lot N.,
Gilbert, Jane and Ruanny. The descendants of these

children became widely scattered in many of the states of
the Middle West.

One of them, Jacob, who was born in September, 1810,
was the grandfather of Judge Bozarth of Okmulgee.
Jacob had three wives and five children. The three
children of his first marriage were Elizabeth Ann,
Amanda and Allen B. By the second wife there was
a son named George Gilbert. By his third marriage, to
Charlotte Warrington, there was a son Jacob, and thus
Jacob Bozarth has for a number of years been a well
known citizen and business man of Okmulgee.

Jacob Bozarth last mentioned was born in Starke
County, Indiana, February 7, 1852, a son of Jacob and
Charlotte (Warrington) Bozarth. Jacob Bozarth, Sr.,
was one of the pioneers of Starke County, and in 1850
had the honor of being elected the first county recorder
after the organization of that county. He was married
in Starke County to Miss Warrington, who was of a
Delaware family. Jacob, Sr., died at Troy, Kansas, in
1880, and his wife died in Indiana, January 1, 1875.
Jacob, Sr., had been a teacher in his early life.

Jacob Bozarth of Okmulgee had the distinction of
being honored in 1882 with election to the same office
which his father had filled more than twenty years
earlier, county recorder of Starke County. He had grown
up on the home farm in Indiana, was given a substan-
tial education, but after being elected county recorder
served in that office continuously for eight years. After-
wards he established himself in business at Knox, county
seat of Starke County, and dealt in real estate, loans
and abstracts and in 1891 was admitted to the bar, but
confined his, practice chiefly to real estate and title law.
In 1900 he moved to Okmulgee, Indian Territory, and
has since been a prominent factor in the upbuilding of
that city, and has conducted a prosperous business in
real estate, insurance and has also been a notary public.
He built the Bozarth Hotel at Okmulgee and in many
other ways has found opportunity to serve the public
welfare as well as his own. He is an active democrat,
a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows,
and belongs to the Methodist Episcopal Church.

On October 4, 1874, Jacob Bozarth married in Starke
County Phebe Westhaver, who was born in Ohio. To
their marriage were born four children : Judge Mark

L., Ernest LeGrande, who graduated from Valparaiso
University in Indiana in 1902 and is now a druggist
at Henryetta, Oklahoma; Mary, wife of B. W. Christian
of Okmulgee; and Daisy, wife of H. L. Allen of Grass
Range, Montana.

Judge Mark L. Bozarth was born at Knox, Indiana,
August 17, 1875, and lived in Starke County until he
came to Okmulgee, September 4, 1902. He was grad-
uated in 1902 from Valparaiso University, then known
as the Northern Indiana Law School, with the degree
LL. B. In the meantime he had taken an active interest
in local politics at Knox and served three years as city
clerk. Along with a substantial practice he has com-
bined an equal interest in public affairs since locating at
Okmulgee. In November, 1912, he was elected county
judge, and in 1914 was re-elected for a second term,
in which he is still serving with admirable efficiency.
He is one of the leading democrats of* Okmulgee County
and for four years was a member of the Territorial
Democratic Executive Committee before statehood. He
is a member of the Oklahoma State Bar Association and
is affiliated with the Masonic Order, the Independent
Order of Odd Fellows and the Benevolent and Protective
Order of Elks.

On November 28, 1894, Judge Bozarth married Grace
G. Garner, who was born in Indiana, daughter of J. A.
Garner, now a resident of Okmulgee. Judge Bozarth

1918

HISTORY OP OKLAHOMA

and wife have three children: Mary Garner, born

November 15, 1907 ; Helen, born in May, 1909, and died
at the age of ten months; and Kathryn, born November
22, 1911.

J. W. White. One of the leading grocery establish-
ments of Edmond is conducted by the firm of White &
O ’Connor. Mr. White has for several years been one of
that town ’s most influential citizens. He stands for high
grade business principles, for good sanitation and good
morals and is a leader in moral and educational affairs.
Mr. White came West from Kentucky at the age of
twenty-seven, in search of health, and soon afterwards
turned his attention to ranching in Kansas. He estab-
lished near Syracuse in that state, one of the best
equipped ranches in that part of the country, and even-
tually reached a success which enabled him to take up
another line of business that was less exciting and more
suited to his talents.

J. W. White was born near Irvine, Kentucky, in 1860,
a son of John Thomas and Mahala Jane (Barnett)
White. His father, a native of Kentucky, was for many
years one of the leading public school teachers of that
state. The paternal grandfather was a native of Ire-
land and an early settler of Virginia, being a mission-
ary Baptist preacher. The maternal grandparents were
prosperous planters in Kentucky.

Mr. White had a liberal education, first in the public
schools and later in the Edgar Institute at Paris, Ken-
tucky. After finishing his course in the latter, he taught
school for three years, but ill health compelled him to
abandon that vocation. Thus at the age of twenty-seven
he was beginning his career as a rancher at Syracuse,
Kansas, and continued a resident of that locality until
1910, when he came to Edmond and engaged in the
grocery trade. The junior member of the firm of White
& O’Connor is M. J. O’Connor.

Mr. White was married in Kentucky in 1882 to Miss
Sarah Elizabeth Barnett. They have two children: Miss
Dula White, who was formerly principal of the public
schools of Britton and is now a stenographer in Okla-
homa City; and William Harrison White, aged fifteen, a
student in the public schools of Edmond. Mr. White is
a member of the Christian Church, has held several im-
portant chairs in the lodge of Odd Fellows, and is a
member and chorister of the Men’s Gospel Team of
Edmond. One interesting direction in which his original
mind has turned is as an inventor. He has patented an
auto and vehicle wheel rim attachment, based on the coil
spring principle, that promises to become an important
substitute for pneumatic tires.

Mr. White has also been a useful citizen in the different
localities where he has lived. In Kansas he held the
office of township assessor and for a number of years
was a member of the board of education in his school
district. In March, 1915, he was nominated by the
democrats for mayor of Edmond.

William Ezra Seba, M. D. One of the first medical
men to locate and open an office at the new Town of
Leedey was Dr. W. E. Seba, who during the past eight
years has built wp a large practice in the town and
surrounding country, and is one of the best qualified
physicians and surgeons in Dewey County, a fact that
is readily attested by his high standing in the com-
munity and by his professional work here and else-
where.

He comes of an old Southern Missouri family, and
was born at Bland, in that state, January 15, 1884.
His grandfather Seba came from Germany in 1853,
located in Gasconade County, Missouri, on a farm, and
died soon afterward. Doctor Seba’s father is Dr. J. D.

Seba, also a physician, who was born in Gasconade
County, at Woollman, Missouri, in 1856. He is now living
at Bland, where he has been in active practice as a
physician since 1894. In that year he was graduated
from the Beaumont College of Medicine at St. Louis.
For a number of years before taking up medical practice
he served as justice of the peace and is now editor of
the Bland Courier. He has also been coroner of Gas-
conade County, and has filled all the chairs in the
Gasconade County Medical Society and has served on
several important committees in the Missouri State
Medical Society. He is a member of the American
Medical Association, of the Modern Woodmen of
America, the Brotherhood of American Yeomen, is active
in the Methodist Episcopal Church and in politics is a
republican. Dr. J. D. Seba married Miss Katy Horst-
man, who was born in Osage County, Missouri, in 1857.
Their children are: Henry F., a farmer at Feuersville,

Missouri; John W., who has a draying business at
Bland; Dr. William E.; Rosie L., wife of R. M. Strick-
len, who is connected with the Swift Packing Company
in East St. Louis; Fred L., who is manager and pub-
lisher of the Bland Courier, owned by himself and
father jointly, and this republican paper has probably
the largest circulation in Osage and Gasconade counties;
and Louise, still at home with her parents.

William Ezra Seba attended the public schools in
Bland, and by a course of study at home and under the
direction of his father was well qualified to pass his
examinations and receive his credentials when he entered
medical school. He entered the Marion-Sims Medical
College at St. Louis in 1900, took a two years’ course,
but at the end of that time was too young to graduate.
He then employed his time in a drug store one year,
entered the St. Louis College of Physicians and Sur-
geons, and was graduated there April 14, 1905, with
the degree M. D. only a few months after his twenty-
first birthday.

After a general, practice at Bland, his old home town,
for two years, Doctor Seba came to Oklahoma in 1907
and began practice at Leedey. His offices are in the
Horr & Seba Building, of which he is one of the owners.

Doctor Seba is president of the Dewey County Medi-
cal Society, and is a member of the State Society, the
Southwestern Medical and the American Medical Asso-
ciation. He is a stockholder in the Leedey Oil & Gas
Company, and has financial interests in various other
enterprises. In politics he is a republican. He has
served as deputy health officer at Leedey and also as a
member of the town board. Fraternally he is affiliated
with Leedey Lodge No. 369, I. O. O. F., being now
Right Supporter to the Noble Grand; with Leedey
Lodge No. 227, of the Knights of Pythias; with the
Brotherhood of American Yeomen and the Modern
Woodmen of America at Leedey, and with the Mutual
Protective League.

On May 23, 1907, in Kansas City, Missouri, Doctor
Seba married Miss Marie Telkamp of Sanborn, Iowa.
Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. H. Telkamp are now living
at Mitchell, South Dakota, where her father is a retired
farmer and the owner of considerable property.

Alex Will Crain. The present tribal secretary of
the Seminoles, and the oldest white resident of Seminole
County, Alex Will Crain has an interesting career and
personality not only for his prominent participation in
Indian affairs but also because of the fact that he is
descended from some of the oldest and most prominent
American Colonial and Revolutionary stock. Among his
forefathers were gallant soldiers and men of affairs who
left their impress on different states and colonies of the

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1919

East. Mr. Crain is one of the two white men who
received formal adoption into the Seminole tribe, and
has been on the rolls of citizenship since 1883.

He was born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania,
March 10, 1847, a son of Dr. Joseph and Eebecca Gibson
(Wills) Crain. His great-grandfather was Ambrose
Crain, who as captain led a company to battle in the
Revolutionary war, being part of a New Jersey regi-
ment. Grandfather Richard M. Crain also had a
prominent career. He was surveyor general or deputy
surveyor general of Pennsylvania for about thirty years.
He was also a member of one of the early Pennsylvania
Legislatures when that body met at Lancaster. He
served as a colonel of artillery during the War of 1812
and was at Fort Henry during the defense of Wash-
ington. Col. Richard M. Crain married Eleanor White-
hill. Her father, Robert Whitehill, was a member of the
convention that drafted the Constitution of the United
States and afterwards sat in Congress representing a
Pennsylvania district for more than twenty years.
Mr. Crain’s father, Dr. Joseph Crain, was born at Lan-
caster, Pennsylvania, in 1803, spent his active career as
a physician in Cumberland County and died there in
1876. His wife was born in Cumberland County and
died when Alex W. Crain was three years of age. Two
of their children died in infancy, and those who reached
maturity were two daughters and three sons. Doctor
Crain also had children by a second marriage, but all of,
them are now deceased. Mr. Crain’s brother, Richard
M., fought during a part of the Civil war as member
of a New Jersey regiment, afterwards took up medicine,
and he died while in the employ of the Government at
the Sac and Fox Agency in Oklahoma.

The early life of Alex Will Crain was spent in Penn-
sylvania, attending the public schools, and he was also
a student in the State College of Pennsylvania. In
June, 1863, he left college to enlist from Center County
as a member of Company D in Lutzinger’s Battalion for
three months’ duty. In June, 1914, Mr. Crain visited
Pennsylvania College, and at that time received a certifi-
cate of recognition for membership in the class of
1864, and of that class only fourteen were known to be
living in 1914. Mr. Crain was promised by the college
authorities in recognition of his services in leaving
school to fight for his country a diploma, and this dip-
loma was awarded at the commencement in June, 1916,
at which time Mr. Crain returned to Pennsylvania to
accept the honor.

For two years during his early youth he also worked
on a Pennsylvania farm, and he spent two years on the
plains of Nebraska, driving ox and mule teams and get-
ting a taste of frontier existence which finally caused
him to become a permanent resident of the Southwest.
Returning East he spent another two years at home,
and then went to Texas, where he was a cowboy for a
year, and about 1872 he came into the Creek Nation.
His services here for about twelve years were as teacher
in the tribal schools, and he also clerked in a store about
four years.

In 1883 he was adopted into the Seminole Nation and
has ever since been a member of that tribe. He and
the late E. J. Brown were the only white men ever
formally adopted by this tribe. Mr. Crain served as
assistant district Indian agent under the Department of
Interior, but for the past eight years has been tribal
secretary. From 1884 to 1909 he resided on his farm
and applied himself successfully to the raising of cattle,
horses and hogs, and in the early days the range for
his livestock was unrestricted and his herds could wander
for pasture where they would. Mr. Crain still has a
Vol. v— 11

farm in the northwestern part of Seminole County along
the North Canadian River.

In polities he is a republican, though he was reared
a democrat. He has a life membership in the Masonic
order, having attained thirty-two degrees in the Scottish
Rite, is a Royal Arch Mason and a member of the Mystic
Shrine.

In 1880 at Sasakwa he married Lucy Brown, a half-
blood Seminole and a sister of Governor John F. Brown,
reference to whose career will be found on other pages.
Mr. and Mrs. Crain have three children: Anna, wife of

T. H. Oliver of Wewoka ; Allen, of Sasakwa; and
Ambrose, who lives on his allotment along the North
Canadian River. Mr. Crain has one of the most interest-
ing and attractive homes in Seminole County. All his
life he has been a diligent reader, though his career on
the whole has kept him in close touch with practical
events. Some time ago during a general discussion of
the question of state legal holidays for Oklahoma, Mr.
Crain suggested that they make a ground-hog day of
general observance, but he ceased to advocate this when
the people apparently began to take his proposition
seriously.

Hon. Jeremiah C. Strang. Prior to coming to
Guthrie, in 1893, Hon. Jeremiah C. Strang had estab-
lished an enviable record in legal and judicial affairs in
Kansas. There his distinguished talents had been early
recognized by appointment and election to offices of
grave responsibility, and when he came to Oklahoma he
brought with him a reputation as one of the strong and
forceful men of law of his day. In his new locality he
soon took his merited place among the men directing
legal and judicial machinery, and his subsequent activities
have but served to add to and embellish his reputation-
gained in the Sunflower State.

Judge Strang was born December 31, 1854, in the
Village of Trumbull Corners, Tompkins County, New
York, and is a son of Daniel and Elizabeth (Case)
Strang, natives and agricultural people of the Empire
State. The public schools of his native locality fur-
nished Judge Strang with his early education, following
which he attended an academy at Ithaca, New York,
and took a full course in the institution at Watkins, in
that state. He was rpared on his father’s farm, it
having been his intention to become an agriculturist, but
one day, while operating a threshing machine, he met
with an accident which cost him his right hand, and
when he had recovered he realized the necessity of adopt-
ing a professional career. For two years Mr. Strang
was engaged in teaching school in the country districts
adjacent to his home, and during this time to apply
himself to the study of law, to which he began to give-
his entire attention in 1869. In 1870 he removed from
Ithaca, New York, to Westfield, Pennsylvania, and there
completed his legal training under the preceptorsliip of
Hon. Butler B. Strang, his cousin, and at that time a
noted jurist. Judge Strang was admitted to practice
in 1873, when but nineteen years of age, and for four
years continued in the enjoyment of a large and repre-
sentative legal patronage at Westfield, and during three
years of that time served efficiently as district attorney.

In 1877 Judge Strang went to Kansas and entered
upon a career that was destined to make his name known
among the foremost men of his profession. Locating at
Larned, in the same year he was elected county attorney
of Pawnee County, and served in that capacity for two
years. Up to this time he had been a stanch republican,
and on going to Kansas had plunged energetically into
political affairs. In 1880 he stumped the state in behalf
of the successful prohibition constitutional amendment.

1920

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

In that same year, without his solicitation, his party
nominated him for state senator of his senatorial dis-
trict, and he was subsequently elected by a large majority.
He became the author of the bill putting into force the
prohibition constitutional amendment, introduced and
drafted many other important and successful measures,
and was an active member of a number of important
committees. He resigned after the first session of his
four-year term in order to accept the appointment by
Governor John P. St. John to the office of district judge
of the Sixteenth Judicial District of Kansas. He served
one year by appointment and two terms of four years by
election in that important office, but declined a third
nomination. In 1890 Governor Lyman U. Humphrey
appointed Judge Strang a member of the Kansas State
Supreme Court Commission, and in that connection he
rendered a faithful and highly commendable service of
three years.

In 1893 Judge Strang resigned and came to Okla-
homa. Here he opened a law office at Guthrie and
embarked upon an active practice, but he was not long
allowed to act merely as a private citizen, for in 1895
he was petitioned by leading men of his community to
make the race for the office of county attorney of Logan
County on a law enforcement platform. To this he con-
sented, was elected to the office, and fulfilled every pledge
made to the voters, his record during his two years’ of
office being one that strengthened materially his place
in the esteem and confidence of the people. In 1897
Governor Barnes, at the suggestion of the late President
McKinley, one of Judge Strang’s old and personal
friends, appointed the judge to the office of attorney
general of Oklahoma, a position which he held for two
years and only resigned because of an attack of ill
health. In 1905 he was nominated by acclamation and
was elected probate judge of Logan County, an office
which he retained for ten years and from which he then
retired to give his entire attention to his private practice.
Judge Strang seems to have assimilated the principles
of jurisprudence and to be able to supply from his intel-
lectual reservoir a correct solution to any new combina-
tion of details that will withstand the severest criticism.
Before the court his mastery of legal principles, famili-
arity with precedents and power of logical and forcible
argument make him well nigh invincible. As counsel
his services have been in great demand, and he has been
extensively retained in important and complicated litiga-
tion not alone in Oklahoma, but in various other states,
before the highest tribunals.

Judge Strang has one daughter, Lulu, who is the wife
of M. E. Trapp, lieutenant-governor of Oklahoma.

Temple Houston. In the history of the legal fra-
ternity of Western Oklahoma there has appeared no more
distinguished name than that of the late Temple Hous-
ton, who practiced at the Woodward bar from the time
of the opening of the Cherokee Strip, in 1893, until his
death, August 15, 1905. A son of the great Texas
patriot, Gen. 'Sam Houston, his early career was marked
by experiences of the most interesting character in the
Lone Star State, and from early youth his achievements
were notable in Texas jurisprudence.

Temple Houston was born August 12, 1860, in the
Texas gubernatorial mansion at Austin, a son of Gen.
Sam and Margaret (Lea) Houston. Samuel Houston
was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, March 2, 1793,
and was of Seotch-Irish descent. In 1818 he began the
study of law and in 1823 and 1825 was elected a member
of Congress, and in 1827 governor of Tennessee. On his
removal to Texas, in 1832, he was made a general of
Texas troops, and in 1836 defeated the Mexicans at
San Jacinto, which resulted in the independence of Texas,

General Houston being elected president of the new re-
public. In 1845 Texas entered the Union and General
Houston was chosen United States senator. He was
elected governor of Texas in 1859, but in 1861 was
deposed for adherence to the Union, and died at Hunts-
ville, Texas, July 25, 1863. By his second wife, Mar-
garet Lea, he was the father of four sons and four
daughters: Samuel, deceased; Nancy, who is the wife

of James Morrow, of Georgetown, Texas; Margaret, de-
ceased; Mary, who is the widow of John Morrow, of
Abilene, Texas; Nettie, the wife of Prof. James Bring-
hurst, of San Antonio, Texas; Andrew J., of Beaumont,
Texas; William R., of Kemp, Texas; and Temple.

Left an orphan at the age of seven years, at the age
of thirteen Temple Houston became a cowboy on the
plains of his native state. With his first cattle outfit he
went with a herd of stock to Bismark, North Dakota,
where he engaged as a clerk on a steamer and went
down the Mississippi River. He was then appointed to
a position as page in the United States Senate and re-
mained in that capacity at Washington, D. C., for three
years, and while there began the study of the profes-
sion in which he was later to reach such a high position.
On his return to Texas, at the age of seventeen years,
he entered Bailey University, from which he was duly
graduated, and when only nineteen years of age was
admitted to the Texas bar. He soon attracted attention
and a large practice in criminal law, and when but nine-
teen years old was elected county attorney of Brazoria
County. He was district attorney of the Texas Pan-
handle District when he had just attained his majority,
and at a time when to enter the courtroom unarmed was
to take one’s life in his hands, the young attorney made
an exceptionally creditable record. Further honors
awaited him. He was only twenty-four years old when
elected to the Texas State Senate, a body in which he
served with ability and distinction for eight years, but
that service ended his life in Texas, for with the opening
of the Cherokee Strip in 1893 he came to Oklahoma
and opened an office at Woodward, this city continuing
to be his home and the scene of his repeated successes
until the time of his death.

Mr. Houston was married February 14, 1883, to Miss
Laura Cross, who was born April 7, 1865, in Louisiana,
and to this union there were born seven children :
Temple ; Louise and Laura, who are deceased ; Sam ;
Richard; Lucile, who is deceased; and Mary. Mrs.
Houston, who survives her husband and is a lady of
many attainments, was appointed postmistress of Wood-
ward, March 10, 1914. She has managed the affairs of
this office in a highly creditable manner and in numerous
ways has been able to improve the service.

Dr. Timothy Joseph Butler. The Butler family,
represented in Weatherford by Dr. Timothy Joseph
Butler, is distinctly southern in its habitat, and is of
Scotch-Irish origin. Timothy Butler, grandshire of the
subject, was the Irish emigrant ancestor. He came first
to Canada, but his stay there was brief, and he died in
Vicksburg, Mississippi, where he was a prosperous planter
for years. Doctor Butler ’s maternal grandfather, Rob-
ert Marshall, came from Scotland to Cincinnati, Ohio,
when he was a boy of three years, and he, too, died in
the vicinity of Vicksburg, a well known planter of that
place.

Dr. Timothy Joseph Butler was born in Vicksburg,
Mississippi, on January 11, 1886, and is a son of T. J.
Butler, also born in Vicksburg, the latter in the year
1854. He died on the family plantation, St. Elmo,
Warren County, in 1889. He was Roman Catholic in
his faith. His wife was Miss Emma Marshall, born in

JlS

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1921

Memphis, Tennessee, and she now makes her home with
Doctor Butler, their only child.

Dr. Butler was graduated from the S. A. C., in Vicks-
burg, Mississippi, in 1902, with the equivalent of a high
school education. In 1904 he was graduated from the
C. H. A., in Port Gibson, Mississippi, his preparation for
his professional studies being made there. He spent the
years 1905 and 1906 in the medical department of the
University of Virginia, and the next two years in Tulane
University, in New Orleans. He was graduated from
the University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee, with
the class of 1909, when he received his M. D. degree.

In October, 1909, Doctor Butler began medical prac-
tice at Calvin, Oklahoma, and in 1911 he came to
Weatherford, where he has since conducted a practice
along general lines of medicine and surgery.

Dr. Butler is a democrat and a member of the Epis-
copal Church. His college fraternity is the Alpha Kappa
Kappa, and in Masonry he is affiliated with the Weather-
ford Lodge No. 138, Ancient Pree and Accepted Masons,
Weatherford Chapter No. 31, Royal Arch Masons, and
Weatherford Commandery No. 17, Knights Templar. He
is a member of the County, State and American Medical
societies, and the association of military surgeons, and
i holds a commission as first lieutenant in the Medical Be-
i serve Corps, United States army.

In Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1910, was recorded the inar-
i riage of Doctor Butler to Miss Letitia Templeman Geiger,
i- daughter of S. E. Geiger, of Charlottesville, Virginia,
now deceased. Pour children have been born to Doctor
s and Mrs. Butler: Emma M., Lily, Mildred and Marshall,
le all at home.

Logan Autran Wilhite. A practical and experienced
newspaper man and an expert follower of the old and
honored trade of printing, Logan Autran Wilhite, fore-
man of the printing plant of the Daily Pioneer, at Alva,
Oklahoma, has passed his entire life in this calling. He
has followed his occupation in various places, and on
several occasions has been the proprietor of newspapers,
but since 1898 has made his, home at Alva and is. well
known among newspaper men of Woods County.

Mr. Wilhite is a Missourian by nativity, born at
Slater, Saline County, Missouri, September 30, 1875, a
son of Daniel C. and Mary P. (Maupin) Wilhite. His
father was born in that county, November 20, 1844, and
was a mere lad when the Civil war came on, but enlisted
in the Seventh Missouri Cavalry, and served therewith
for 3% years. He took part in numerous battles and
had many escapes from death, on one occasion having
his horse shot from under him, while later he was
seriously wounded in the right leg. His military career
finished, he returned to Saline County, Missouri, where
he gradually drifted into building and contracting,
vocations which he continued to follow throughout the
remainder of his life. Mr. Wilhite prosecuted his
ctivities at Slater until 1886, in which year he removed
with his family to Wichita, Kansas, which city was then
experiencing an extensive boom, and where he had
lis full share of the many building contracts that were
being left. A number of the structures erected by him
till stand as monuments to his skill and honest work-
nanship. In 1900, Mr. Wilhite removed to Alva, Okla-
homa, where he purchased city property, and here con-
inued to make his home until his death, which occurred
luly 6, 1906. Soon after coming to Alva, Mr. Wilhite
leeame recognized as a progressive citizen, who stood
for the strict enforcement of the law and took a keen
nterest in the town’s advancement, and in 1903 and 1904
vas elected police judge, a position in which he fully
indicated the trust and confidence reposed in him. He

was a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows,
as well as of the Grand Army of the Republic, and never
lost interest in the welfare of his old army comrades.
Throughout his life he remained true to the teachings
of the Christian Church. Mr. Wilhite was married in
1864 to Mary P. Maupin, who was born October 20,
1843, in Virginia, and died at Alva, Oklahoma, Decem-
ber 25, 1908. She was an active worker in the move-
ments of the Christian Church, was a woman of many
excellencies of mind and heart, and her memory is still
revered by those who knew her. Pour daughters and
three sons were born to Mr. and Mrs. Wilhite, namely :
Fannie L., Paschal E., Ollie B., Hubert R., Logan A.,
Lilia M. and Bertha C.

Logan A. Wilhite was eight years of age when the
family moved to Wichita, Kansas, and there, in the public
schools, he completed his education. He was fifteen years
of age at the time he began to learn the trade of printer,
starting in tile lowly position of “devil” in the office
of the Hazelton Express, at Hazelton, Kansas, his
brother-in-law, W. P. Hatfield, being the publisher of
that newspaper. Since that time Mr. Wilhite has con-
tinued to devote his attention unreservedly to the same
line of business, although in various localities. In 1895
he came to Oklahoma, locating at Taloga, Dewey
County, where he became editor and owner of the
Advocate, but after one year disposed of his interests
therein and went to Higgins, Texas, where he became
editor and owner of the Higgins News, which he pub-
lished for two years. During one year of this time he
also served in the capacity of postmaster of Higgins.
Returning to Oklahoma in 1898, Mr. Wilhite located at
Alva, where he again associated himself with his brother-
in-law, Mr. Hatfield, who was publishing the Pioneer,
Mr. Wilhite being made foreman of the plant and re-
maining as such until March 16, 1911, when he began
the publication of the Morning Times, the first morning
newspaper to be published at Alva. This was conducted
by the firm of Eubank & Wilhite until 1914, when Mr.
Wilhite disposed of his interests in it and returned to
the Daily Pioneer, as foreman of the plant, this publi-
cation now being owned and edited by W. D. Wilkinson.
Mr. Wilhite has had broad and varied experience in
his work, and is considered a thorough master of the art
of printing. He is a republican in his political views,
but has never sought public office, with the exception of
his year as postmaster in Texas, under the administration
of the late President McKinley.

Mr. Wilhite was married April 22, 1897, to Miss Edna
M. Elder, who was born June 16, 1878, at Slater, Mis-
souri, daughter of A. J. and Elizabeth (McMahan)
Elder, of that city. Mr. and Mrs. Wilhite have three
children: Logan Errol, born July 6, 1898; Gerald A.,

born June 24, 1903; and Daniel Calvin, born June 4,
1908.

Mr. Wilhite is an actjve. member of the Christian
Church and graduated with a class of nine in Standard
Bible work in 1916.

Hon. Jesse Albert Baker. While most of the early
settlers of Oklahoma were young men, some left behind
them the record of a successful experience in order to
join their fortunes with the new frontier country. Among
these was Jesse Albert Baker, who after fifteen years of
influential membership in the Georgia bar identified
himself with Oklahoma in 1893. As was to be expected
he soon took a prominent part in the new territory, and
has maintained a position of leadership down to the
present time.

For a number of years Mr. Baker has been a resident
of Wewoka, enjoys a large practice as a lawyer and

1922

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

has many business interests, and has been prominent in
politics. " He was a member of the Constitutional Con-
vention from his section of old Indian Territory.

Representing an old and honored name in Georgia,
he was born in Bartow County May 9, 1853, a son of
Jesse and Parthenia (Moss) Baker. His grandfather,
Charles Baker, a native of Virginia, served with gal-
lantry in the war of the Revolution and was under the
command of Thomas Marshall. He fought both at
Cowpens and Kings Mountain in the southern campaign
and was wounded at the Kings Mountain fight. He died
in Cass, now Bartow County, Georgia, and was the ‘only
Revolutionary soldier buried in that county, and a few
years ago the Daughters of the American Revolution
marked his grave with a suitable memorial. He lived
in South Carolina for some years, and in that state his
son, Jesse, was born in 1800, but when quite young
went to Georgia, where both Charles and Jesse Baker
became prominent planters and slave owners. Jesse
Baker died in Bartow County in 1871. His wife, Miss
Moss, was born in Habersham County, Georgia, in 1809,
and died in 1887. In their family were fourteen chil-
dren, twelve of whom reached maturity, and three are
now living: Fannie C., wife of James W. Rich of

McCurtain, Oklahoma; Dr. Thomas H., of Cartersville,
Bartow County, Georgia; and Jesse A., who was next
to the youngest of the children.

Jesse A. Baker lived in his native County of Bartow,
Georgia, until September, 1893, when he arrived at
Guthrie, Oklahoma. He spent his early boyhood on a
Georgia plantation, and in 1875 graduated A. B. from
the University of Georgia, and then became a student
in the law department of Cumberland University at
Lebanon, Tennessee, where he finished his course in
1877. He was admitted to the bar in September, 1877,
and the Supreme Court of Georgia admitted him to
practice in all the state courts on November 27, 1878.
During the next sixteen years he succeeded in building
up a large practice in his home state and on moving to
Guthrie in 1893 he practiced law with -Dick T. Morgan
and Judge J. L. Pancoast. He also acquired extensive
farming interests in Pottawatomie County, and in 1901
he took part as a new settler in the southwestern dis-
trict of Oklahoma, locating at Lawton, in Comanche
County. There he practiced law for several years and
on April 1, 1905, moved to Wewoka, which has since
been his home.

His public career is worthy of special record. He
has always been a loyal democrat. In 1882-83 he served
as clerk of the Judiciary Committee of the Georgia
State Senate. In 1897 he was assistant chief clerk of
the Oklahoma Territorial Council, and had also served
for a time as acting city attorney of Guthrie. In 1895
he made the race against Judge Hainer for city attorney
of Guthrie, and in 1902 was a candidate against Jacob
Hammond for city attorney of Lawton. In 1906 he was
elected from District No. 81, comprising the Seminole
Nation and a part of the Creek Nation, as a delegate
to the Constitutional Convention. He was one of the
influential men in the convention, and he has in his
possession one of the historic documents pertaining to
the work of that body. This is the original call for a
democratic caucus to select a democratic candidate for
president of the convention. This call was written by
Mr. Baker himself, and is signed by nearly all the
democratic delegates, including C. N. Haskell, who was
the first governor of Oklahoma, and R. L. Williams, the
present governor. In 1907 Mr. Baker was candidate for
district judge at the primaries, that being the first pri-
maries held after statehood. Out of a vote of 10,000
he lost the nomination by only 180. The district com-

prised the counties of Seminole, Pontotoc, Coal, Atoka
and Johnson.

Mr. Baker now has a large amount of farming land
which requires his supervision and, as already mentioned,
in the early days he had a large farm in Pottawatomie
County on the North Canadian River. He is a member
of the Oklahoma Bar Association, and he and his family
are Episcopalians. On June 5, 1878, he married Miss
Jeannie Bacon, who was born at LaGrange, Georgia, in
1858. Her father, Thomas J. Bacon, served as a captain
in the Confederate army and was killed at the battle of
Seven Pines. The Bacons are among the oldest and
most prominent families of Georgia. Mr. and Mrs.
Baker have two children. Lucy Bacon, who is now a
student in the East Central State Normal at Ada; and
George Merriweather, at home. They also have an
adopted daughter, Beatrice, now the wife of J. V.
Thomas of Canton, Georgia.

Miss Lucy Baker, the daughter, is a talented young
poetess, and recently a paper read before a meeting of
the United Daughters of the Confederacy contained
some of her verses under the title “Not Forgotten,”
which deserve to be preserved in permanent form. These
are: ,

They tell us to forget, they say

Our banner has been furled and put away,

Our cause is lost and all the strife, .

The loss of home, the loss of life,

They tell us to forget.

We know the North and South has been made one,
The tumult and the call to arms are done,

And now the Blue and Gray united stand,

To form one world-power, one beloved land,

But why must we forget?

fr:

They do not know who tell us to forget
That blood of Southern sons flows in us yet,

That the old Blue is hallowed by the Gray,

That thoughts of those we lost make dear today,
And we can not forget.

The Stars and Bars are furled but loved the same,
And through their bloody stains we love the name,
Of Stars and Stripes, our banner of today,

The old cause is not lost but laid away;

So do not say ‘ ‘ forget. ’ ’

Leslie Gordon Niblack. In the career of Leslie
Gordon Niblack, of Guthrie, there is to be found much
to instruct and encourage the youths who are forced to
start out in life entirely on their own resources. When,
more than twenty years ago, he first came to this city,
he had little to aid him save a little experience in;
newspaper work, a willingness and ability to perform!
cheerfully and well whatever work came to his hands,
and a consuming ambition to make a name and place'
for himself in the field of journalism. With these assets:
he started sturdily in to make his way, and through theiii
possession he has advanced steadily to a leading position
among Oklahoma newspaper men and in public anc
political life.

Mr. Niblack was born at Evansville, Indiana, October
1, 1876, and received his education in the public schooli
of Louisville, Kentucky, and Roelcport, Indiana, and a
the state university, at Bloomington, Indiana. As :
lad of fifteen years he worked in vacation periods on th
Louisville Courier- Journal, as a cub reporter, where hi
taste for journalism was whetted and where he deteri
mined upon this profession as his life work. Before h
was eighteen years old he worked on newspapers at SI
Louis and Carthage, Missouri. Mr. Niblack located a

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1923

Guthrie in 1894 and began work as a reporter on the
Daily Leader, which had been established two years
before by politicians. Within one year he was in full
charge of the paper, which for a number of years had
hard sledding, it being a democratic paper in a strong
republican city, the territorial capital. Mr. Niblack put
all of his energy into his work. He labored night and
day, often without pay, when the ‘ ‘ ghost refused to
walk. ’ ’ Little by little he acquired an interest in the
Leader plant, which at that time was one of the most
pretentious in the state. In 1902 he acquired full pos-
session of the Leader property, the daily and weekly,
the job department and the book bindery. As president
of the Leader Printing Company he increased the equip-
ment and business, bought the Leader Building, and did
a large volume of business with the various counties of
the territory.

During all this time Mr. Niblack was active in politics,
serving successively as city and county chairman of
the democratic central committees, as acting democratic
national committeeman for the territory, and as delegate
to the presidential conventions. In 1905 he served in
the Oklahoma Senate and was minority leader of that
body. Mr. Niblack ’s campaign for the Senate was the
most sensational ever held in the territory. He elected
the entire county and district democratic ticket and was
himself elected by a majority of 614 in a district which
two years before had been carried by a republican by
3,900 majority. On two occasions Mr. Niblack refused
to become the democratic candidate for Congress, hold-
ing that a newspaper man should not run for office, but
in 1912, reluctantly yielding to the importunities of his
friends, ran for congressman at large in a field of fifteen
candidates with three to be elected. He was the fourth
man in the race, which he entered only three weeks before
the primary election.

The Leader is the oldest democratic paper in Oklahoma
and has been under one continuous management longer
than any other daily in the state. It took the lead in
the fight for statehood. When the Leader was made the
official organ of the constitutional convention convened
at Guthrie, in 1906, the Leader Printing Company did all
the printing for the convention, the bill amounting to
nearly $50,000. There was no appropriation to pay this
by the government, and Mr. Niblack was forced to wait
two years for his money or until the constitution had
been carried and the first Legislature met. Mr. Niblack
served on the state committee which waged the campaign
for the adoption of the constitution, and the Leader did
the printing for the first and second legislatures. One
year after statehood Mr. Niblack was offered $175,000
for his plant at Guthrie.

Mr. Niblack has been identified with all the business,
industrial and social interests of Guthrie and of the state.
He is recognized as a forceful and successful newspaper
man. On November 16, 1908, he administered the oath
of office to the state’s first governor, Hon. Charles N.
Haskell, on the steps of the Carnegie Library at Guthrie.
At the request of Governor-elect Haskell, Mr. Niblack
took out a commission as notary public in order to
administer the oath. He has served two terms as presi-
dent of the Oklahoma Press Association, and has been
also vice president of the National Editorial Association
and a director of the Oklahoma State Historical Society.
He is a Scottish Rite Mason of the thirty-second degree,
K. C. C. H. ; served two terms as exalted ruler of Guthrie
Lodge No. 426, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks,
of which he is a life member; and holds membership in
the Shrine, the Knights of Pythias Lodge, the Country
Club the several other clubs and organizations of
Guthrie and the state. With his wife he belongs to the
Presbyterian Church. While Mr. Niblack has a beautiful

and comfortable home at Guthrie, he believes in seeing
how others live, and during three months of each year
accompanies his family on long trips in this country and
abroad.

Mr. Niblack was married March 31, 1909, to Miss
Prances Haskell, daughter of Governor Charles N. Has-
kell, and to this union there has been born one child, a
daughter, October 26, 1911. This marriage was an
elaborate state affair, held in the capitol building, with
all the state officials attending, and Chief Justice M. J.
Kane officiating.

Manly E. Michaelson is one of the successful
younger lawyers of Bartlesville, where he has been in
practice since 1910, and his business and professional
interests have particularly identified him with the oil
and gas industry in this section of the state.

He was born in Jackson County, Iowa, March 13, 1881,
a son of George C. and Nancy Jane (Mann) Michael-
son. His father was born in the Province of Schleswig-
Holstein, Germany, in 1850, and was about eighteen
years of age when he came to America. He made his
way to Iowa, where he married Miss Mann, who was
born in Jackson County, Iowa, in 1857. After their
marriage they lived in that state until November, 1881,
when they removed to Elk County, Kansas. George C.
Michaelson became a quite successful farmer and stock
raiser in Kansas, and he and his wife now reside at
Baldwin, Kansas, enjoying the rewards of their former
years of toil. They were the parents of four sons and
one daughter.

The second in the family, Manly E. Michaelson was
taken to Kansas when an infant, and he grew up on
the old homestead near Moline in Elk County. The rural
schools supplied his early education and in 1898 he
graduated from the high school at Moline. Soon after-
wards, at the age of seventeen, he enlisted as a private
in Company P of the Twenty-first Kansas Volunteer In-
fantry for service in the Spanish- American war. He was
with that regiment about seven months, being stationed
at the Reserve Military Camp at Chiekamauga Park and
afterwards was in Kentucky and Kansas until receiving
his honorable discharge.

Following this incident of his earlier career, he spent
one year in the Kansas State Normal School at Emporia
and for one term he taught school. He was a railway
locomotive fireman until February, 1902, and with his
savings from that work entered the law department of
the University of Kansas at Lawrence, where he was
graduated LL. B. in 1905. At intervals during his law
course he had continued railroad work and even after
his admission to the bar he followed such employment
until 1907. In that year he set up in private practice
at Beloit, Kansas, and from there in January, 1910,
moved to Bartlesville, Oklahoma. For several years he
was associated with the well known law firm of Brennan
& Kane, but he is now alone in practice, and as attorney
represents several of the larger oil and gas companies
of the northern part of the state.

Politically 'he is a progressive, is a member of the
Oklahoma State Bar Association, is affiliated with the
Masonic Order, the Benevolent and Protective Order of
Elks and with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.
Mr. Michaelson is unmarried.

Joseph E. Wi-iitenton. Among the men contributed
to the citizenship of Oklahoma by the State of Tennessee
and who have won enviable and prominent positions in
business and financial life, is found Joseph E. Whitenton,
president of the Citizens Bank, of Henryetta, Okmulgee
County. Mr. Whitenton ’s salient characteristics are
determination, diligence and keen sagacity, and upon

1924

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

these lie has builded his prosperity, and with them has
won a high and well merited measure of success.

Mr. Whitenton was born in Madison County, Tennes-
see, January 21, 1882, and is a son of L. E. and Cordelia
(Sammons) Whitenton. His father, a native of Mad-
ison County, Tennessee, where he was reared on a farm
and educated. As a young man he engaged in a variety
of pursuits, being for many years a farmer of Madison
County, but eventually removed to Hardeman County,
Tennessee, where he is now the proprietor of a hotel at
Bolivar. They are stable, substantial people of their
community, holding the respect and esteem of all who
know them. Of their six children, five still survive.

Joseph E. Whitenton was granted the advantages to
be secured in the log district school house during his
youth, and later, for a time, attended high school. He
was reared on his father’s farm, was brought up to be
industrious, honest and painstaking, and in 1900, decid-
ing to seek his fortune in the West, came to Oklahoma.
He first settled at Shawnee, where he secured employ-
ment as clerk and bookkeeper in a grocery store, and
later transferred his services to a hardware store, where
he acted in the same capacity. On January 1, 1907, he
became a traveling representative of a wholesale hard-
ware company, and for more than six years remained on
the road, selling hardware in different parts of Oklahoma,
but April 2, 1913, turned his attention to banking when
he became the organizer and founder of the Guaranty
State Bank of Henryetta, of which concern he acted as
president. On January 1, 1915, this bank was consoli-
dated with the Citizens Bank, of which Mr. Whitenton has
since been president, the other officials being: W. L.
Sullins, vice president; T. E. Keggin, cashier; and E. J.
Kersting, assistant cashier. This is the only bank at
Henryetta with a savings department, . and its deposits
are protected by the Depositors Guaranty Fund of the
State of Oklahoma. A statement of its condition, as
given March 7, 1916, follows:

Resources : Loans and discounts, $171,645.44; bonds
and warrants, $19,251.41; overdrafts, $612.41; furniture
and fixtures, $3,500; other real estate, $3,002.68; cash
and sight exchange, $51,515.21 ; total, $249,527.15.

Liabilities: Capital, $25,000; surplus and undivided
profits, $5,636.60; reserved for taxes, $618.78; deposits,
$218,271.77 ; total, $249,527.15. The Citizens Bank now
has a large patronage and is considered one of the sound
and substantial institutions of this part of the state.
Mr. Whitenton maintains a sound and conservative policy
that has won public confidence, but at the same time his
methods are progressive. He is also a director in the
Guaranty State Bank of Muskogee. Aside from his
banking connections Mr. Whitenton is largely interested
in coal, oil and gas lands in Oklahoma. He is treas-
urer of the Henryetta & Western Railroad, an electric
line which is being built to connect all the towns of this
thriving mining community, and of which he was one of
the organizers. He is a democrat in his political views,
is chairman of the election board of Okmulgee County,
and has served one term as a member of the council.
Fraternally, he is a thirty-second degree Mason and a
member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
A typical Oklahoman, wide awake, alert and enterpris-
ing, he has carried forward to successful completion what-
ever enterprise he has undertaken and has made oppor-
tunity for advancement if none has seemed to exist. Thus
he has continued to work his way upward and already
has attained a very creditable and enviable position in
business and financial circles of Okmulgee County.

Mr. Whitenton was married in 1911 to Miss Fay
Sacra, daughter of James Sacra, a cattleman of Texas

and Oklahoma, Mrs. Whitenton being a native of the
former state. They have one child: Peggy, aged three
years.

Ira T. Smith, M. D., a prominent physician and
surgeon at LaKemp, was one of the pioneers of Okla-
homa, having come to the state at the time of the opening
of the Cherokee Strip, more than twenty years ago. For
many years .he has enjoyed a high standing in his
profession and also in business affairs, and success has
come to him as a reward for much earnest and hard
labor during his younger -years.

He was born November 3, 1868, in a log house on a
farm in Sullivan County, Missouri. His parents were
John E. and Nancy F. (Sipes) Smith. His father was
born in Ireland, emigrated to America with his parents
in 1829, the family locating in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania,
and there as a young man he became a structural iron
worker. He was' born in 1827 and he died in Portland,
Oregon, in 1904. He was one of the loyal natives of
Ireland who fought for the integrity of the Union
during the Civil war. He served as a private in Com-
pany E of an Iowa cavalry and went through the entire
struggle with credit. His wife was born in 1830 in
Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and died at Yici, Oklahoma, in
1914. She was a lifelong member of the Methodist
Episcopal Church. These worthy people became the
parents of fourteen children, Robert, John S., Ephraim
S., Margaret, Joseph G., Harriet Jane, James F. N.,
Daniel M., Nancy E., William T., Henry B., Ira T., Lena
Belle, and Martha, the last two being now deceased.

The first temple of learning Doctor Smith attended
was a log school house in Sullivan County, Missouri.
This instruction was interspersed with such work as his
strength permitted him to perform on his father’s farm.
Being one of a large family of children, he had the
serious responsibilities of life early thrust upon him.
In 1881 he left home and went out to Nebraska, which
was then a frontier state, and from there in 1884 moved
to Kiowa, Kansas. There he entered the drug business,
studied pharmacy and also carried on his readings in
medicine.

In 1893 Doctor Smith took part in the opening of
the Cherokee Strip, and though failing to secure a claim
in the strip he secured one in Dewey County in the old
Cheyenne and Arapahoe country. For a number of years
he devoted himself to his arduous duties as a country
practitioner in Dewey and Ellis counties, but in 1913
removed to Beaver County and bought a drug store in
the new town of LaKemp. He has a good business as a
druggist, and also has a widely extended and profitable
practice as a physician. Doctor Smith is a member of
the Oklahoma Medical Society and the American Medical
Association, and is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite
Mason, being a member of the Consistory No. 1 at
Guthrie. He is a charter member and was the first
noble grand of Fay Lodge, Independent Order of Odd
Fellows, at Fay, Oklahoma. His church is the Presby-
terian.

On December 24, 1889, in Sedgwick County, Kansas,
Doctor Smith married Miss Minnie Adella Halsey, who
was born in Kansas City, Missouri, September 16, 1869.
To their marriage have been born five children, three
daughters and two sons: Yerga M., born November 18,
1892, now the wife of G. F. Partridge, a farmer at
LaKemp; John Henry, born April 29, 1901; Lura Rose,
born May 29, 1904; Georgia Lillian, born November 29,
1906; and Ira, born October 25, 1909.

Kenneth Rogers. This is a name which will always
have prominent association with that section of Osage

•a

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1925

County where the Village of Wynona is now located. The
land of the townsite was originally owned by Kenneth
Rogers, who has spent all his life in the Osage country,
and for a number of years has been looking after his
extensive interests as a farmer, stock raiser, and fruit
grower in that vicinity. He is a business man of judg-
ment and enterprise, and his public spirit has been
reflected in his varied activities and relations with
the community where he now lives.

On a farm thirty miles east of the present Town of
Wynona Kenneth Rogers was born November 10, 1879,
a son of Antoine and Elizabeth (Carpenter) Rogers,
both of whom were born in the Cherokee Nation. The
mother was a white woman while in the veins of
Antoine Rogers flows a mixture of Cherokee and Osage
Indian blood, and also of French and English. After
their marriage Antoine Rogers and wife moved to the
Osage country about 1875, and have lived at Wynona
for the past twenty-five years. He has extensive
interests as a rancher and farmer, but has lived retired
from active business for the past two years. Antoine
Rogers married the widow of his twin brother, Joseph,
who died leaving three children: Jasper, of Pawhuska;

Minerva, who married Arthur Rogers, and both are now
deceased, leaving five children; and Louis A., of Wynona.
The six children of Antoine Rogers are: Eva, wife of

Elmer Wheeler; Kenneth; Annie, wife of C. R. Clewein
of Pawhuska ; Ora, deceased wife of J. A. Owens ; May,
living at home with her parents; and Viola, wife of
F. M. Watson, and they now live on the old Rogers
homestead at Wynona.

While growing to manhood Kenneth Rogers acquired
an education in the Osage schools, and from an early
age has had abundant opportunity to test his ability
and enterprise in the varied relations of farmer, stock-
man and fruit grower. He and his children own and
control 1,800 acres of land in the vicinity of Wynona,
and he has one of the best peach orchards in this sec-
tion of the state, its crop in 1915 totaling about 3,000
bushels. It was in 1907 that Mr. Rogers sold a portion
of his land for the townsite of Wynona, and in that
year built the finest residence in the town for his own
home. The year 1914 Mr. Rogers spent in California
with his family.

In 1903 he married Miss Ida Murphy, who was born
in St. Joseph, Missouri, December 9, 1879, lived there
until eighteen, and then came to the Osage country
with her parents, D. L. and Margaret (Campbell)
Murphy. Her father was born in Richmond, Virginia,
of Irish parentage, and he acquired his education in
Yale University. He was a cattleman and later in life
for a number of years an oil prospector, and died at
the home of his daughter, Mrs. Rogers, in 1906, at the
age of eighty-two. Her mother was a native of Rich-
mond, Virginia, but of Irish parents, and she now lives
part of the time in California and part of the time in
Dakota. Mr. and Mrs. Rogers have two children:
Helen, born December 9, 1903; and Antoine. Jr., born
July 20, 1905, who is named for his Grandfather Rogers,
being the only grandson. Mr. Rogers is a member of
the Knights of Pythias lodge of Pawhuska.

Andrew Gregg Curtin Bierer. Since the first open-
ing of Oklahoma, April 22, 1889, Andrew Gregg Curtin
Bierer has been a strong and active member of the legal
fraternity of the state, and during this time has been
connected as counsel with some of the most important
litigation brought before the state and federal courts.
He has won substantial recognition of his fine legal
talents, his fidelity to professional duties, and his careful
conservation of all interests confided to his care, and on

several occasions has been called to public offices of
importance and trust.

Mr. Bierer is a Pennsylvanian by nativity, born at
Uniontown, Fayette County, October 24, 1862, and is a
son of Colonel Everard and Ellen (Smouse) Bierer,
natives of the Keystone State and descendants of German
ancestors who emigrated to this country at an early date
in Pennsylvania ’s history and located in the German
settlement of Fayette County. There Col. Everard Bierer
was born in February, 1827. He was granted excellent
educational advantages, and on graduating from college
became a lawyer, and in 1848, when but twenty-one
years of age, was elected the first district attorney of
Fayette County. He continued to be actively engaged in
the practice of law until the outbreak of the war between
the states, at which time, an ardent Union sympathizer,
he organized a company of which he served as captain.
After being severely wounded in the fierce engagement
at South Mountain he was transferred to the One Hun-
dred and Seventy -first Regiment, Pennsylvania Veteran
Reserve Corps, of which he became colonel, and during the
later part of the war was placed in command of a division
which participated in engagements in North Carolina.
While still in the field Colonel Bierer was made one of the
Lincoln electors from his home community in Pennsyl-
vania. With an honorable record for gallant and faith-
ful service he received his honorable discharge at the
close of the war, and, after a short stay at home, in 1865
removed to Brown County, Kansas. There he not only
became recognized as a thorough and resourceful lawyer,
but as being made of legislative timber, and in 1867
he was sent to the Kansas State Legislature. In that
body he was opposed to the fifteenth amendment, against
which he voted, and urged Senator Ross to vote against
the impeachment of President Johnson. With the close
of his political and public services, he returned to his
private practice, and continued to be engaged therein at
Hiawatha, Kansas, until his death, which occurred Decem-
ber 26, 1910. Throughout his career Colonel Bierer ’s
name continued to be connected with important events
and large undertakings, and few men were better known
or more highly esteemed in legal circles of Kansas. He
was united in marriage in 1852 with Miss Ellen Smouse,
who survived him several years and died May 7, 1913, at
Hiawatha, Kansas, and they became the parents of six
sons and two daughters, namely: Everard, Jr.; Anna;

Samuel ; Daniel ; Andrew G. C. ; Retta ; William, who is
deceased ; and Bion B., who is now a captain in the
United States navy.

Andrew G. C. Bierer received his early education in
the public schools of Hiawatha, Kansas, following which
he attended Georgetown University, at Washington, Dis-
trict of Columbia, where he was graduated in 1886 with
the degree of Master of Law. In that same year he
took up his residence and began practice at Garden City,
Kansas, and while residing there served for two years
in the capacity of city attorney. On April 22, 1889, at
the first opening of Oklahoma, Mr. Bierer came to this
state, having decided that the new community opened
up better opportunities for the display of the young
lawyer ’s abilities and talents, and from that time to
the present, except when in the Supreme Court, he has
carried on a large practice at Guthrie. On April 22,
1889, Mr. Bierer and H. B. Kelley were appointed the
two members from Kansas on the initial committee, com-
posed of two members from each state elected to
initiate the organization of the provisional government,
which was subsequently organized, laid out and governed
the City of Guthrie until the organized act passed, May
2, 1889. The judge made a speech out of a wagon at
the corner where the Guthrie Savings Bank now stands
in the heart of city at that first meeting. He was not

1926

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

long in impressing the people of his adopted community
with his abilities, and in 1891 was appointed city attor-
ney, a position which he retained during that and part
of the following year. On coming here he had formed
a partnership with John H. Cotteral, under the firm style
of Bicrer & Cotteral, and this firm remained in business
until Mr. Bierer was appointed on the Supreme bench.
Mr. Cotteral at this time is serving as United States
judge for the Western District of Oklahoma. On Janu-
ary 8, 1894, the late President Cleveland appointed Mr.
Bierer to the office of associate justice of the Supreme
Court of Oklahoma, upon which bench he served with
high ability, dignity and distinction until February 28,
1898. He has since devoted himself unreservedly to the
duties of his constantly increasing practice, and has
earned the right to be numbered among the foremost
men of his calling practicing at Guthrie.

Mr. Bierer is a thirty-second degree Mason, and has
numerous friends in that fraternity. As a citizen he has
taken an active and leading part in promoting and sup-
porting movements for the public welfare and in encour-
aging enterprises for good citizenship and educational
advancement. He was married, June 26, 1888, to Miss
Nannie M. Stamper, daughter of Rev. J. N. Stamper, a
well known divine of Meade, Kansas. They are the
parents of two children : Margaretta Louise, born Sep-

tember 21, 1895; and Andrew Gregg Curtin, Jr., born
December 1, 1899.

Robert L. Lawrence, the present city attorney of
Anadarko, Oklahoma, has gained a position of distinc-
tive priority as one of the representative members of the
bar of Caddo County and he gave efficient service as
deputy county attorney in 1913 and 1914. He has gained
success and prestige through his own endeavors and thus
the more honor is due him for his earnest labors in his
exacting profession and for the precedence he has gained
in his chosen vocation.

A son of John and Mary C. (Hale) Lawrence, Robert
Lee Lawrence was born in Hamblin County, Tennessee,
January 1, 1881. The founder of the Lawrence family
in America was a native of Ireland and he settled in
Virginia prior to the War of the Revolution. James
Lawrence, grandfather of the subject of this sketch, was
born in the Old Dominion commonwealth and died in
Hamblin County, Tennessee, where he was killed by
bushwhackers during the Civil war. John Lawrence was
born in Virginia in 1834 and he removed to Tennessee
as a young man and located on a farm in Hamblin
County, where he was also engaged in stockraising.
He was exceedingly well educated, having taken degrees
both in law and as a divinity student. He was a grad-
uate of old Newman College, now known as Carson &
Newman College. He was active as an attorney and as
a Baptist minister and his political affiliations were
with the democratic party. He was summoned to the life
eternal in Hamblin County, Tennessee, in 1890, aged
fifty-six years. His wife, whose maiden name was Mary
C. Hale, was born in Tennessee in 1858. After the
death of her husband she removed, with her family, to
Jefferson City, Tennessee, where she still maintains her
home. The following children were born to Mr. and Mrs.
Lawrence: John J., an attorney by profession and

owner of a light and power company in his home city,
is a resident of Jefferson City, Tennessee; Mabel V. is
the wife of Rev. John F. Vines, pastor of the First Bap-
tist Church of Richmond, Virginia; Robert Lee is the
subject of this review; Maude E. died at the age of
twenty-one years, unmarried; and Estelle is the wife of
J. L. Wilhoite, manager of the Chattanooga Electric
Light & Power Company, at Chattanooga, Tennessee.

After completing the high-school course in Jefferson

City, Tennessee, Robert Lee Lawrence pursued an aca-
demic and business course in Carson & Newman College,
finishing the latter course in 1904. He then farmed on
the old homestead in Hamblin County, Tennessee, for
three years, at the expiration of which he was matricu-
lated as a student in Cumberland University, in the law
department of which he was graduated, in 1909, with
fhe degree of Bachelor of Laws. He was admitted to the
bar in the Supreme Court of Tennessee January 29, 1909,
and initiated the active practice of his profession in
Jefferson City, Tennessee, remaining in that place for
the ensuing nine months. He then went to Cisco, East-
land County, Texas, where he remained for three months,
coming thence to Anadarko, Oklahoma, July 1, 1909.
Here he has since maintained his home and here he has
built up a large general, civil and criminal law practice.
He was admitted to the Oklahoma bar in the fall of 1909.
He was deputy county attorney in 1913 and 1914 and
later was elected city attorney, his offices being in the
city hall building. He is a member of the Commissioners
of Insanity for Caddo County and in politics is a stal-
wart democrat. He is a Baptist in religious matters
and since his collegiate days has been a member of the
Sigma Alpha Epsilon Greek Letter Fraternity. He is
broad minded in all matters pertaining to his profession
and in private life is genial and popular among his
fellow men.

Mr. Lawrence married Miss Bessie M. Bettis, a daugh-
ter of J. E. Bettis, a prominent physician and surgeon,
whose home is in Cisco, Texas. This union has been
prolific of two children: Mary Elizabeth, born May 21,

1910; and Robert, born December 6, 1913.

Frank Haley. The entire career of Frank Haley, of
Henryetta, has been devoted to operations in mining.
From the time he was twelve years old right .up to the
present he has been connected with one or another form
of the industry, having visited many of the big fields in
this country, and has steadily worked his way upward
from an humble beginning to his present position as mine
inspector for District No. 3 of the State of Oklahoma.
His success speaks volumes for his energy, industry and
steady perseverance, for each promotion has come because
he has deserved and fairly won it, and not by reason of
any favoring circumstance or monetary or other in-
fluence.

Mr. Haley was born in County Mayo, Ireland, October
12, 1872, and is a son of Frank and Winifred (O’Don-
ahue) Haley, natives of the same county in Erin, where
both families lived for more than 300 years, as testified
by the inscriptions on tombstones, many of which are
written in the Gaelic. When Frank Haley was eight
years of age the family emigrated to the United States,
first locating at Boston, Massachusetts, and later going
to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where the youth secured his
early education in the public schools. While residing
there, as a lad of twelve years he secured employment in
the mines, and continued to do a man’s work as a miner
until 1886, when the family changed their place of resi-
dence to the City of Marion, Ohio. There both of his
parents died, the mother February 17, 1901, at sixty-
three years of age, and the father in March, 1906, when
he was seventy-eight years old. The father was a stone
cutter by trade, a vocation which he followed during the
greater part of his active life. There were five sons
and five daughters in the family, and four children are
now living.

After the family located at Marion, Ohio, Frank Haley
of this review bettered his educational training by atten-
dance at St. Mary’s Convent School. He was nineteen
years of age when he first came to the West, joining a

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1927

party that took part in the rush to the Cripple Creek
diggings in Colorado. After participation in the excite-
ment there he went to Bridgeport, Texas, where for seven
years he worked in the coal mines, and in 1902 came to
Indian Territory and engaged in mining coal at Henry-
etta. This he followed until he was appointed mine in-
spector by Peter Hanretty, chief mine inspector of the
state, and later he was elected inspector of Mine Dis-
trict No. 3. In 1914 he was reelected to this period for
a tern) of four years. In Ids official capacity Mr. Haley
is known as one of the most reliable men in this line of
work in the state. lie is aggressive, but popular, and
has the friendship of many of the leading coal operators
of Oklahoma.

Mr. Haley has been a lifelong democrat and is con-
sidered one of his party’s influential men in this section.
His fraternal connection is with the Benevolent and Pro-
tective Order of Elks, and since boyhood he has been a
consistent communicant of the Roman Catholic Church.
He is unmarried.

Ed L. Reed. While his time is now principally devoted
to the real estate and timber business at Hugo, where
he is head of the firm of Reed & Coffman, Ed L. Reed
has had such variety of experience- in the old Oklahoma
Territory and in Indian Territory as to constitute him
an authority on many matters connected with the de-
velopment and political and social life of the country.

To start the story of his career when it first touched
Oklahoma Mr. Reed made his first trip in 1893 as a
participant in the run at the opening of the Cherokee
Strip. He entered the Strip from Turkey Creek, a few
miles west of Hennessey, and secured a homestead.
That run demonstrated the fact that the Cayuse or cattle
pony, had far the advantage of the blooded horse of the
east for a service like that. Two extremes in methods
of obtaining land are in the recollections of Mr. Reed.
Near him in line, when thousands of men awaited the
firing of the signal gun at the hour of noon, stood a
negro, unmounted and perfectly composed, with a stick
in hand. When the gun fired the negro chanced being
killed by charging horses, and, remaining in his tracks,
stooped forward and planted the end of his stick in the
ground. He thereby became possessed of a valuable
claim. On the other hand men slipped into the reserved
territory before the opening, in spite of the United
States troopers on duty around the border. When the
actual runners passed they found these ‘ ‘ sooners ’ ’
calmly plowing their claims with oxen.

Something of the atmosphere of the unpeopled West
of that day is in Mr. Reed’s subsequent experiences.
For instance, he spent the first night on the prairie with
his saddle blanket for a bed and his saddle for a pillow.
Next morning he got a meager breakfast and feed for
his horse at the camp of claim holders nearby. His
luncheon next day consisted of ginger snaps and apples
in the frontier village of Hennessey. In the afternoon
he set out on a long horseback journey back to Kingman,
Kansas, his home. On the river near Pond Creek he met
a man who had buried some bottles of cold beer in the
wet sand. The heat of a September day suggested their
value to the traveler and Reed paid for three bottles
at the rate of $1 a bottle. His supper that evening
was at Enid, where a hamburger, some bread and butter
and a piece of pie cost him $1.50.

Three years later Mr. Reed entered the lumber business
at Blackwell, which was becoming one of the leading and
most prosperous towns .of the new country. Kildare
was the nearest railroad point and his lumber was
freighted overland from there. Blackwell was the habita-
tion then of seventeen saloon keepers and seventeen

restaurant keepers, but could make no boast of having
a hotel. The settlers brought money with them and all
communities prospered. Many of them saved as they
developed the region and had good bank accounts when
Dennis Flynn, delegate to Congress from Oklahoma Terri-
tory, secured the passage of an act granting free homes
to the settlers. Then these savings were invested in
improvements. So rapidly were they spent that Mr. Reed
sold forty-seven cars of lumber in forty-two days.
Naturally these financial conditions brought a maximum
of prosperity to the town of Blackwell, and Mr. Reed,
during his residence there of 3% years saw lots that at
the outset could be bought for $10 sell for $10,000.

For a number of years now Mr. Reed’s activities and
home have been in the old Indian Territory section of
Oklahoma. Making money with a stump puller has
proved one of his fascinating occupations. Mr. Reed
has not pulled stumps to rid agricultural lands of them,
neither has he had any use for the average base of a
tree that once helped to grace an eastern Oklahoma
forest. Armed with modern forceps his men have trav-
eled over the timber section and pulled the stumps of
walnut trees exclusively. From the stumps the roots
were cut and the stumps sawed into thin boards called
flitches, and these have been sold by Mr. Reed for enough
money to make the occupation not only an interesting
one but highly profitable. The demand for walnut
timber, of the variety that Oklahoma produces, created
this novel industry, and it may be carried on indefinitely.

An idea of the value of Oklahoma walnut may be ob-
tained from the fact that a few years ago a log 10 feet
long and 43 inches in diameter was sold to an eastern
veneering firm for $3,300. At that time walnut timber
with a minimum of 26 inches and a maximum of 33
inches in diameter sold readily for an average of $240
for 1,000 feet.

Walnut has been one of the most valuable of Okla-
homa timbers, but in recent years the demand for cotton-
wood and ash has increased the value of these varieties,
and Mr. Reed as a timber dealer has turned his attention
to them. His cottonwood and ash timber has been sold
practically all over the world. Indeed, Hugo is the
headquarters of the leading dealers of the world in these
classes of timber.

Experiences of Mr. Reed and other timber dealers
in Southeastern Oklahoma in the acquisition of timber
would make an interesting volume. Some of them are
unique among timber men of the United States because
of the character and diversity of persons with whom
it was necessary to deal. In earlier years, before Indian
land was saleable, the Indian’s interests were guarded
by the United States Government and the Choctaw Tribal
Government, and the dealer was constantly in danger
of trespassing. These two governments also were not
always in harmony. For instance, Secretary Garfield
of the Interior Department, granted Mr. Reed the privi-
lege of cutting timber from a tract of Indian land, and
still another branch of the government removed him
from that tract under charges of trespass.

There was always danger of making purchases where
titles were not valid. Indians of the same name sold
tracts that were not theirs, and some Indians made
several sales of the same tract. There is on record a case
in which one Indian sold the same body of land thirteen
times. Errors in titles and departmental orders kept
timber men on the move for several years. Mr. Reed
and his associates established several sawmills, and some
of these were moved about several times.

Mr. Reed was one of the first residents of Coweta,
Indian Territory, and his lumber yard was one of the
first established there. Difficulties beset the first resi-

1928

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

dents because of a questionable title to the land on
which the town was being built, and ten months elapsed
before the question was finally settled. An intermarried
citizen nearly created war by threatening to dynamite
the Reed lumber yard. Mr. Reed also opened a timber
and lumber business at Porter in the early days of
the town ’s history. There he handled walnut timber
successfully and in one and a half years shipped from
that town eighty cars of walnut logs.

During his residence of fifteen years in former Indian
Territory Mr. Reed has studied philosophically many
of the fundamental phases of the Indian problem. His
activities have taken him all over the Choctaw Nation
and practically all of the Creek Nation. The Indian
problem has not been solved and is the biggest problem
in Oklahoma. Mr. Reed believes a solution might be
found in the appointment of a commission of three
men, two of them unfamiliar with Indian conditions
in Oklahoma, to make a study of the various phases
of the problem. The vital question would be the com-
petency of Indians, and the commission should be
instructed to remove all restrictions from competent
Indians. This would result in the sale, and naturally
the development of Indian lands, and all such lands,
not now taxed, would be placed on the tax rolls of
the state.

Ed L. Reed was born in Greenville, Illinois, August
17, 1873, a son of Perry and Marie (Rea) Reed. When
he was a small boy his parents moved to Kingman
County, Kansas, and there he grew up. The father, who
has been a farmer and land owner, is now retired and
lives in Kingman, at the age of eighty-two. Mr. Reed’s
mother is also living at the age of seventy-nine. Perry
Reed is of English parentage and born at Ashtabula,
Ohio.

Mr. Reed was married at Blackwell, in 1900, to Miss
Jettie Tierney. In Mr. Reed’s family are four brothers
and two sisters: Mrs. Anna Gritting, wife of a pearl
button manufacturer in Plainview, New York; Mrs. P.
H. Parmenter, whose husband is at the head of a chain
of retail stores, and they live in Kingman, Kansas ;
Andrew Reed, employed by the Peters Shoe Company in
St. Louis ; George B. Reed, a resident of Raven, Colorado ;
A. T. Reed, in the creamery business at Pratt, Kansas;
John A. Reed, a retired merchant at Kingman. Mr.
Reed is affiliated with the Masonic Lodge, and is also
a well known member of the Oklahoma Lumber Dealers ’
Association.

Fred Drummond. The late Fred Drummond was one
of the foremost men who made commercial history in
Osage County. He was one of the pioneer white men,
and for a quarter of a century was a trader among the
Osage Indians, and held a license from the Government
until the system was abolished. He helped to build up
Hominy as a commercial and population center, was
active in banking and merchandising, and had begun
to make farming and stock raising a specialty a short
time before his death. While his material accomplish-
ments were many, he is best remembered in that section
for his sterling character^, his thorough kindliness, and
his ready acceptance of all the opportunities to benefit
his fellow man. He always favored giving every man a
chance, and frequently lent a helping hand to those
who were struggling with difficulties.

A native of Scotland, Fred Drummond was born May
2, 1864, a son of Alexander and Henrietta (Henry)
Drummond. He was the only member of the family in
America except a brother, George H. Drummond, of
Providence, Rhode Island. His mother died in 1911
at the age of seventy-five and his father passed away

at the age of seventy-one. His father was a barrister
or lawyer in the old country. Fred Drummond, who
was one of eleven children, was the favorite son of his
mother, who desired that he become a minister. At the
age of eighteen his venturesome spirit and active nature
got the better of these early influences, and he started
out to see the world, having no special inclination toward
the profession which his mother had chosen for him. He
came to New York City and spent one year in business
experience there, and then moved to Texas and for a
year and a half tried ranching. He found that his early
experiences in Scotland and New York had hardly pre-
pared him for this industry, and he returned to St. Louis
and took a position with a wholesale dry. goods house.
It was through his connection with this house that he
finally came into the Osage Nation. John R. Skinner
was for many years one of the big traders in the Osage
country, and while in St. Louis on a buying trip induced
Mr. Drummond to come out to the Osage country. Mr.
Drummond was then twenty-two years of age, and
arriving at Pawhuska found employment with Mr. Skin-
ner and later with Emory Gibson, and finally became
associated with R. E. Bird & Company in merchandising,
being identified with some of the oldest Osage traders.
In time Fred Drummond learned to speak the Osage
language fluently and became one of the most popular
and successful of the traders operating under Govern-
ment license. At a later date he also took up ranching
near Ponca City, but continued trading at Pawhuska
until 1903, when he removed to Hominy and took a
leading part in organizing the Hominy Trading Com-
pany, buying out the Price Mercantile Company as the
basis of the business. Mr. Drummond continued actively
as a member of the Trading Company until his death,
which occurred August 22, 1913.

At the time of his death he was also president of the
Farmers State Bank of Hominy, which had been organ-
ized a year or so before. His oldest son, Cecil, was his
lieutenant in the ranching business, and together they
operated' a ranch of about 3,000 acres seven miles east
of Hominy, and were extensively engaged in raising
cattle. Mr. Drummond was in the Indian trading service
until the' white men began to come into the Osage
country in large numbers, and then turned his trading
post into a general mercantile business.

He was affiliated with the Guthrie Consistory of thirty-
second degree Scottish Rite Masons, and his funeral
service was conducted by members of that body. He
was also a member of the Knights of Pythias and the
Woodmen of the World, and of the Presbyterian Church.
A public distinction that was very appropriate was his
election as the first mayor of Hominy after its incor-
poration. In 1904 he also built the largest and finest
home of the city, where his widow and some of his
children now reside.

On July 6, 1890, Fred Drummond married Miss Addie
Gentner at Coffeyville, Kansas. She was born in
Kansas October 9, 1870, a daughter of Frederick and
Blanche (Leonard) Gentner. Their children were:
Blanche Henrietta, now wife of Oscar K. Petty, vice
president of the Farmers State Bank of Hominy ; Roy
Cecil, manager of the large Drummond ranch seven
miles east of Hominy; Frederick Gentner, who is a
graduate of the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical
College at Stillwater, also took work in the commercial
department of Harvard University, and is now an active
partner in the Hominy Tra.ding Company; Alfred
Alexander, who is a graduate of the Oklahoma Agricul-
tural and Mechanical College, and is now a student in
the agricultural department of the Illinois State Uni-

HISTORY OP OKLAHOMA

1929

versity; and Lois Hope, who is still at home with her
mother.

Rev. John W. Garner. An able and earnest worker
in the evangelistic field, Mr. Garner has fought the good
fight, has defended and upheld the faith and has been
instrumental in bringing many souls as worthy sheaves
in the harvest of the Divine Master whom he has served
with all of devotion and consecrated zeal. He has not
been lacking in the militant spirit of the church faith
and in a secular way he did valiant military service as a
soldier of the Union in the Civil war. He is one of the
honored and loyal citizens of Payne County, is the
owner of a well improved farm, was the organizer of
the Christian Church at Perkins, of which he served four
years as pastor and with which he is still actively identi-
fied, his work in the ministry having been largely along
evangelistic lines since his retirement from the pastorate
noted.

Mr. Garner was born in Wayne County, Kentucky, on
the 14th of January, 1843, and is a son of Freeman and
Rachel (Coyle) Garner, both likewise natives of Ken-
tucky, where the former was born in 1806 and the latter
in 1826, the respective families having been founded in
the old Blue Grass State in the pioneer era of its history
and both family names having been identified with
American history since the colonial days. Freeman Gar-
ner was a stone cutter by trade and vocation and both
he and his wife continued their residence in Kentucky
until the time of their death, the subject of their review
being the oldest of their five children; Henderson, the
second son, is now a resident of the State of Washington,
and he likewise is a veteran of the Civil war, in which
he served the Union as a member of Company I, Sixth
Kentucky Volunteer Cavalry, with which gallant com-
mand he remained at the front for a period of three
years; Sarah is the widow of Lieut. Nathaniel Dobbs,
who was a Union officer in the Civil war, and she still
resides in Pulaski County, Kentucky; James P. is a
prosperous farmer of Payne County, Oklahoma ; and
Martin died when young.

Rev. John W. Garner remained at the parental home
until he felt the call of patriotism and subordinated all
other interests to tender his aid in defense of the Union.
On the 1st of January, 1863, about two weeks prior to
his twentieth birthday anniversary, he enlisted in Com-
pany H, First Kentucky Cavalry, with which command
he continued in active service until the close of the war.
His regiment was a part of the Army of the Cumberland,
and with it he participated in numerous engagements,
taking part in the Atlanta campaign and in the mem-
orable battle of Atlanta. From Georgia the regiment
returned to Nashville, Tennessee, from which place Mr.
Garner returned with his comrades to Kentucky, where
he received his honorable discharge. He was mustered
out as first sergeant of Company A, to which he had been
transferred from Company H of his regiment. In later
years he has vitalized his interest in his old comrades
of the Civil war through his affiliation with the Grand
Army of the Republic, in which he holds membership in
W. T. Sherman Post No. 41 at Perkins, Oklahoma.

After the close of the war Mr. Garner continued to
reside in Kentucky until 1872, when he removed to
Mitchell County, Kansas, and became a pioneer farmer
in the vicinity of Beloit, the county seat. He continued
his residence in the Sunflower State until 1899, when he
came to Oklahoma Territory and established his residence
in Payne County, where he has since maintained his
home on his well improved farm near the Village of
Perkins, the place having been developed and admirably
improved under his personal supervision.

Mr. Garner acquired his early education in the schools

of his native state and in all the long intervening years
he has continued to be a close and appreciative student
and reader; with the result that he has broadened his
mental ken to wide perspective and is a man of really
liberal education and mature judgment. For the past
thirty years he has served as a clergyman of the
Christian Church, and his labors in the vineyard of the
Master have been most zealous and effective, even as
has his temporal work along practical lines of productive
industry, through the medium of which he has won
independence and definite prosperity. He finds much
demand upon his services in the evangelistic field of
ministerial work and when not thus engaged he gives
careful supervision to the practical affairs of his fine
farm, which is situated four miles west of Perkins. Mr.
Garner is broad-minded, liberal and progressive in his
civic attitude, is well fortified in his convictions concern-
ing governmental and economic policies and is a stanch
supporter of the principles of the republican party.
Right living and right thinking have given to Mr. Garner
superb physical powers and strong mental grasp, and
his appearance is that of a man fully twenty years his
junior, in fact many who meet him giving expression to
doubt as to his having been a soldier in the Civil war,
owing to the fact that he looks too young today to have
been eligible by age for such service more than half a
century ago. His devoted wife, who has been his
cherished companion and helpmeet for nearly fifty years,
has aided him in his service in behalf of his fellow men
and has been unsparing in her zeal and earnestness as a
member of the Christian Church.

On February 26, 1866, was solemnized the marriage of
Mr. Garner to Miss Mary J. Friels, who was born in
Morgan County, Tennessee, in 1849, a daughter of Wil-
ljam and Martha (Hanks) Friels, .and, on the maternal
side, she is a third cousin of the great and martyred
Abraham Lincoln. They celebrated their golden wedding
February 26, 1916. No children have been born to Mr.
and Mrs. Garner, but they are the friends of all children
and the young folk have always found a gracious wel-
come in their home. They are well known in Payne
County and their circle of friends is limited only by that
of their acquaintances.

P. I. Brown. After fifteen years of banking experi-
ence in Kansas P. I. Brown moved to Indian Territory
in 1895, locating at Beggs in Okmulgee County and has
since been one of the live factors in business enterprise
in that section, and for a number of years has been
president of the First National Bank of Beggs. The
First National Bank is an institution with resources of
over $200,000. It has capital and surplus of $37,500,
and is one of the thoroughly stable institutions of Ok-
mulgee County. The directors are P. I. Brown, Grover
Moore, H. George, H. H. Johnson, L. B. Jackson and
E. G. Kelley.

A native of Missouri, P. I. Brown was born in John-
son County January 1, 1853, a son of James and Martha
(Harris) Brown. His father was born in Tennessee in
1812 and his mother in Johnson County, Missouri, in
1815. James Brown was brought to Missouri in child-
hood and spent the rest of his life there as a farmer
and stock raiser. During the Civil war he served two
years in a Missouri regiment of the Union army. He
was a democrat and a member of the Presbyterian
Church. He died in 1885 and his wife passed away two
weeks later. There were seven children: Elizabeth,

wife of Henry MeElwee, living in Missouri; W. E.
Brown, who for many years was head of the W. E.
Brown & Company Livestock Commission House at
Kansas City, Missouri, and is now living at Seattle,
Washington; P. I. Brown, who is the second in age

1930

HISTOKY OF OKLAHOMA

among the children ; Marion, who is a farmer near
Carthage, Missouri; Thomas, of Butler, Missouri; Mattie
Woodruff, who died in Louisiana; and Edward, who died
in Colorado.

P. I. Brown was reared and received his early education
in Johnson County, Missouri, and lived ou a farm there
until 1876. He then went into Southwestern Kansas,
establishing a stock ranch in Comanche County, and in
1881 moved to Elk County, Kansas, where he was in the
grocery business for a time. In 1884 he organized the
first bank in his town, The Farmers State Bank, which
is still in existence and a flourishing institution.

In 1895 Mr. Brown brought his family to Indian Terri-
tory and located six miles northeast of where the Town
of Beggs now stands, where he began operating as a
farmer and cattle man. When the railroad was built
and the Town of Beggs started he at once identified him-
self with its interests, and in 1901 organized the Beggs
State Bank. In 1903 this was reorganized as the First
National Bank. Mr. Brown has been its president since
organization, and up to two years ago was very active
in the management of its affairs. His business interests
are extensive, comprising a large amount of town prop-
erty and also ranch and cattle interests in the vicinity
of Beggs.

Since casting his first vote more than forty years ago
he has been an active democrat. Just before statehood
in 1906-07 he served as a deputy United States marshal
in Indian Territory. Mr. Brown is a charter member of
Beggs Lodge No. 319, Ancient Free and Accepted
Masons, and belongs to the Scottish Rite Consistory of
the thirty-second degree at Macalester.

In December, 1872, he married in Johnson County,
Missouri, Miss Hannah Jackson, daughter of Joel Jack-
son. They have two. sons, W. E. Brown and Joel Ray.

W. E. Brown is a well known banker of Sapulpa.
He was born in Elk County, Kansas, August 6, 1879,
and after completing a business course at Quincy, Illi-
nois, spent four years in the First National Bank at
Beggs with his father. He was also connected with
the First National Bank of Mounds, and since 1908 has
been identified with the American National Bank of
Sapulpa, having been cashier and one of its directors
for the past four years. He is active in the Commer-
cial Club and in various civic and social organizations
at Sapulpa, and by his marriage in 1900 to Miss Cora
Lee Pendleton has three children: Naomi, W. E., Jr.,

and Maxine.

Joel Ray Brown is cashier of the Bank of Commerce
at Wetumpka, and likewise has a capable record as an
Oklahoma banker. He married Frances Jones of War-
rensburg, Missouri, and has one son, Joel Ray, Jr.

H. C. Fellows first became identified with Henryetta
as a coal operator, and managed for several years one of
the largest companies operating at that time in this field.
In recent years he has turned to the newspaper business
and is now head of the Fellows Publishing and Printing
Company and managing editor of the Henryetta Stan-
dard. His associates are his three talented young sons,
all of whom have chosen journalism as a profession and
there is probably no other paper in Oklahoma which has
the distinction of being managed and edited by a single
family group.

Born at Lincoln, Illinois, January 12, 1865, H. C.
Fellows is a son of Dr. A. M. and Emily S. (Closson)
Fellows. Both his parents were natives of Vermont, his
father born in 1828 and his mother in 1832. Doctor
Fellows acquired a medical education in New York, and
then came to Illinois, where just before the war he mar-
ried Miss Closson. After she had completed her educa-

tion she taught in a girls ’ school in Virginia for a time
before coming to Illinois. Early in the War of the
Rebellion Doctor Fellows entered the service as a surgeon
with an Illinois regiment and served during the greater
part of the struggle. He was finally sent home from
Mississippi ill with the fever. In 1872 he took his fam-
ily to Parsons, Kansas, a town which had only recently
been established, and engaged in practice there for many
years. After retiring from practice in 1890 he lived in
Kansas City, Missouri, until his death in 1895. He was
for many years active in the republican party. His
widow is still living in Kansas City with her son, and
though eighty-three years of age writes most interesting
letters in a clear legible hand. She has always been in-
terested in educational and religious affairs and during
her active life in Southern Kansas was known as a
woman of superior culture and education. There are
three children : H. C. Fellows, A. M. Fellows, a whole-
sale coal merchant at Kansas City; and Eva L., wife of
W. H. Iloffstott of Kansas City.

II. C. Fellows was about seven years of age when the
family removed to Parsons, Kansas, where he grew up
and finished his education in the high school. In 1889*
he went out to Pueblo, Colorado, and had charge of the
fuel department of the Missouri Pacific Railroad. In
1894 he took charge of the coal business of the same rail-
road company at Kansas City, and in 1896 became pres-
ident of the Trans-Missouri Coal Company at Omaha.
Returning to Kansas City in 1897 he was sales manager
for the Kansas & Texas Coal Company for a time, and
when this corporation sold its business to the Central
Coal and Coke Company Mr. Fellows moved to Spring-
field, Missouri, and became manager of the Crescent Iron
Works for B. F. Hobart, then president of the company.
In 1903 he went back to Kansas City as manager of
the J. R. Crowe Coal & Mining Company, and this cor-
poration sent him to Henryetta, Oklahoma, to open the
mines of the Whitehead Mining Company. In 1906 Mr.
Fellows was employed by the Randolpli-Mason Coal Com-
pany, a New York corporation, to take charge of its min-
ing operations in Missouri. After one year he returned
to Oklahoma and again resumed charge of the White-
head Coal Mining Company, with which he continued until
1910.

It was in 1910 that Mr. Fellows, bought the Henryetta
Standard and organized the Fellows Printing and Pub-
lishing Company, composed of himself and sons. Since
then he has given most of his time and attention to the
publication of the Standard, which is one of the influen-
tial weekly papers of Okmulgee County and is now in
its sixth volume. In politics it is independently demo-
cratic. Mr. Fellows himself is managing editor, his sons
Carl H. and Paul H. are editors, and Albert M. is assis-
tant editor.

Since locating at Henryetta Mr. Fellows has been a
vigorous factor in local progress and served several years
as president of the Commercial Club. He is a thirty-sec-
ond degree Scottish Rite Mason and a member of the
Mystic Shrine and is also a charter member of the local
lodge of Elks.

In 1891 he married Miss Lillian MacGowan, who is a
graduate physician and one of the first women to take a
regular M. D. degree from one of the larger institutions
of the Middle West. She was born in Poweshiek County,
Iowa, in 1867, but spent most of her girlhood in West
Liberty in that state, where she finished the course of
the high school. After teaching for a time she entered
the medical department of the University of Michigan
at Ann Arbor, and was graduated M. D. in 1890. She
then went West and began practice at Pueblo, Colorado,

FRANK M. WATSON

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1931

where she met and married Mr. Fellows. Since her mar-
riage she has made no serious attempt to practice medi-
cine. Mrs. Fellows is well known in woman ’s club circles
in Oklahoma, has been president of the Ladies Improve-
ment Club at Henryetta, and has also been active in the
federated club work of the state. She has also written
a number of articles for newspapers. Her parents were
Andrew and Eliza (Morgan) MacGowan, both of whom
were born in the State of Ohio in 1826. The mother died
in 1903 and her father in 1906 at West Liberty, Iowa,
where he was for many years a farmer. The Mae-
Gowans were Quakers.

The three sons of Mr. and Mrs. Fellows are : Paul H.,
born in 1892; Carl H., born in 1894, and Albert M.,
born in 1898. Carl H., at this writing is attending the
School of Journalism at the University of Missouri.
Each one of the sons has his own particular bent and
talent in the newspaper profession, and much may be
expected of these young men in the future.

Benjamin Franklin Van Dyke. The emigrant
ancestor of Benjamin Franklin Van Dyke was William
Van Dyke, who came from Holland in company with
Peter Stuyvesant and served as attorney general of the
Colony of New Amsterdam under Governor Stuyvesant.
From that day down to the present time men of the
name have been leaders in their respective communities.

Benjamin F. Van Dyke was born in Keokuk County,
Iowa, August 6, 1862, and his parents were L. H. and
Emily (Kinnick) Van Dyke. The father was of Indiana
birth, born in 1826, and he died in Lawrence, Kansas,
in 1909. To these people were born eight children: D.
M. Van Dyke, the eldest, died in 1887 near Garden
City, Kansas, at the age of forty-five, he had been a
farmer. Louisa married W. H. Holland, a farmer, now
deceased; she lives at Whatcheer, Iowa. James W.
lives in Sacramento, California, and is the foreman of
a large ranch in that vicinity. Mary L. married Albert
Skinner, a farmer, of Peabody, Kansas. Anna died
in infancy. John, who was a building contractor, died
in Sacramento, California, in 1914. The seventh child
was Benjamin F., of this review. Emma married J. V.
Weidlein, and they live in Lawrence, Kansas, where he
is employed in the express office of the Santa Fe Rail-
road.

Benjamin F. Van Dyke was brought up on his father’s
farm in Keokuk County, Iowa, and he had such schooling
as was available in his community in those days. Never-
theless, it is reasonable to suppose that he was a student
and that he made the best of such advantages as were
to be found, for when he was twenty-one he began teach-
ing in the country schools of the county, continuing
through two terms. He then entered the Eastern Iowa
Normal at Columbus Junction and in 1885 was graduated
with the degree of B. S., upon which he was appointed
to the principalship of the schools of Columbus City.
This service was followed by a similar call to service
in Hillsboro, Kansas, where he remained until 1888, and
in that year he returned to Columbus Junction and
read law in the offices of Senator C. A. Carpenter. Three
years later, in 1891, Mr. Van Dyke was admitted to
practice before the Supreme Court of Iowa.

For the next ten years Mr. Van Dyke conducted a
law practice in Columbus Junction, and in 1901 he came
to Granite, Oklahoma, where he has since been ably
identified with the legal activities of the place. He has
found friends here and has won to himself a following
that is well worthy of his talents.

Mr. Van Dyke is a democrat since 1896, and is a
member of the Masonic and Pythian orders. His Masonic
affiliations are with Granite Lodge No. 164, Ancient Free

and Accepted Masons. Other fraternal societies that
claim him are the Modern Woodmen of America and
the Woodmen of the World. In a professional way he is
a member of the State Bar Association, and he is a
member of the Sons of the American Revolution, an
honorific membership to which he is eligible through
his paternal grandfather, William Van Dyke, who gave
valiant service as a soldier in the American Revolution
from Somerset County, New Jersey.

In 1886 Mr. Van Dyke was married in Sigourney,
Iowa, to Miss Fannie Fulton, daughter of C. M. Fulton,
then postmaster of Columbus Junction. Two children
were born to this marriage. Claire is married to Ray
II. Arnett, superintendent of the water and light depart-
ments in Granite, where they live. Dorothy was gradu-
ated from Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, in
1914, with the degree of A. B., and in 1915 received
an M. A. degree from the same school.

In March, 1903, Mrs. Van Dyke died, and in May,
1904, Mr. Van Dyke was married in Mangum, Okla-
homa, to Miss Hattie Wright, daughter of T. E. Wright,
a retired farmer of Missouri. There are no children of
this later marriage.

Frank M. Watson. The title of biggest farmer in
Osage County is’ rightly bestowed upon Frank M. Wat-
son. His farm near Wynona is a splendid illustration of
the methods and possibilities of ‘ ‘ bonanza farming, ’ ’
and everything is conducted on a big scale. In his
pastures are found hundreds of head of fine cattle, he
plants and harvests hundreds of acres of wheat every
year, and there are few business houses in Oklahoma
which represent a larger investment of capital ' and
employ more equipment and the services of more hands.

The head of this big agricultural industry is a young
man thirty-one years old. However, he has lived in close
touch with stock raising and agricultural matters in the
Southwest since boyhood, and his father has for years
been one of the well known cattle -men of the Southwest.
Frank M. Watson was born in Independence, Kansas,
February 8, 1885, a son of William and Lannie (Lane)
Watson, the former a native of Sherman, Texas, and
the latter of Kentucky. The parents were married in
Texas, and soon afterwards moved their home to Kansas.
They were married at Gainsville, Texas, where William
Watson was at that time engaged in his extensive ranch-
ing operations. He still owns two large ranches, and
for twenty-five or thirty years has ranged his cattle
herds over the states of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
Frank M. Watson is one of eight children, four sons
and four daughters.

Most of his early life was spent in Kansas, chiefly
in Montgomery County, though he also became acquainted
with the Osage country of the Indian Territory through
his practical association with his father ’s cattle busi-
ness. For a number of years his father had a ranch on
the Caney River near Bartlesville. In 1906 Mr. Watson
went to Texas with his parents, but soon afterwards
came to Wynona and that has since been his head-
quarters as a farmer and cattle raiser.

He now .has the largest farming outfit in Osage County
and has also earned the distinction of being the largest
cattle man. He has 2,000 acres in his farm adjoining
Wynona on the south, and it is all cultivated, with
about 1,000 acres in wheat, 300 acres in oats, and the
rest in feterita. It requires a big force of men to
operate such an extensive farm, and his employes num-
ber from fifteen to thirty, depending upon the seasons.
He keeps an average of about 1,500 head of cattle, and
has had as high as 6,000 head. He also handles hogs
on a large scale. Throughout this section of the country
his place is known as the J. O. Ranch, his cattle brand

1932

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

being composed of those letters. Altogether Mr. Watson
owns and controls 50,000 acres of land in Osage County.
One of the noticeable features of his farm enterprise
is the presence of three immense silos. He has also
constructed an individual water system, the finest in the
state, representing an investment of $1,500. In addition
to the use of traction engines to draw his immense gang
plows, he also requires about sixteen teams to perform
the farm work. Instead of depending upon an itinerant
threshing outfit he owns an equipment of that machinery
of his own, and has several thousand dollars invested
in all the machinery and appliances needed for the culti-
vation and harvesting of his crops.

Mr. Watson also keeps a pack of fourteen wolf hounds.
These he employs for hunting, and they have proved an
important factor in exterminating the wolves from this
section of Oklahoma. During the first six months of
1915 he and his hounds have caught fifteen wolves. Mr.
Watson is a member of the Masonic Order, the Benevo-
lent and Protective Order of Elks, the Fraternal Order
of Eagles and the Knights of Pythias. On March 21,
1908, he married Miss Viola E. Rogers, who was born
in Osage County, a daughter of Antoine Rogers of
Wynona. They have one daughter, Viola Camille.

Ira Gilbert Markee. Appreciative of the constructive
business activities, the civic loyalty and progressiveness
and the sterling character of Mr. Markee, the voters
of the Village of Perkins, Payne County, consistently
elected him to the office of president of the village board
of trustees, a position of which he has been the in-
cumbent t since 1915, and in which he has given a most
capable administration as chief executive of the muni-
cipal government. Mr. Markee has been a resident of
Oklahoma since boyhood and is a representative of one
of the sterling pioneer families of the state, his parents
having here established their residence at the time of the
opening to settlement of the Cherokee Strip, of which
the present County of Payne was a part. He is one
of the most influential business men of Perkins, where
he operates a well equipped and thoroughly modern cot-
ton gin and where he is general manager of the Farmers’
Cotton Company, which is incorporated under the laws
of the state.

Mr. Markee was born in Butler County, Kansas, on
the 26th of October, 1880, and is a son of F. M. and
Priscilla (Morgan) Markee, the former of whom was
born in Illinois and the latter in North Carolina. J. M.
Markee, grandfather of the subject of this review, was
a loyal soldier of the Union in the Civil war, and the
maternal grandfather, James Morgan, was in the same
great conflict as a valiant soldier in the Confederate
ranks, in 'which he served during virtually the entire
period of the war. The marriage of the parents of Mr.
Markee was solemnized in the State of Kansas, where
they continued their residence until the opening to set-
tlement of the Cherokee Strip of Oklahoma, in 1892,
when they came to the territory and established their
home on a pioneer farm in Payne County. They now
reside at Stillwater, the county seat, where the father
is living retired, after having contributed his share to
the civic and material development and progress of this
favored section of the state. Of the four children the
mayor of the Village of Perkins is the eldest; May is
the wife of Jesse Bennett, of Ripley, Payne County;
J. Minard is identified with business interests at Still-
water; and Fay remains at the parental home.

Ira G. Markee acquired his early education in the
public schools of Kansas and was about thirteen years
of age at the time of the family removal to Payne
County, Oklahoma, where he was reared to manhood on
the pioneer farm and availed himself of the advantages

of the local schools. He continued to be associated with
his father in the work and management of the farm until
1904, when he engaged in the cotton business and estab-
lished his headquarters in Stillwater, where he was asso-
ciated with the Thompson Gin Company for four years
and where he gained a thorough knowledge of all details
of the cotton-ginning business. Upon leaving the county
seat Mr. Markee established his home at Perkins, where
he has since operated his modern gin and ably supervised
the business of the Farmers’ Cotton Company, of which
he is general manager.

Mr. Markee is a stanch supporter of the cause of the
democratic party and is a young man of invincible enter-
prise and public spirit, so that he is admirably fortified
for the municipal office of which he is now the incumbent.
He is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fel-
lows, in which he has passed the various officials chairs of
his lodge, and both he and his wife hold membership in
the Baptist Church at Perkins.

In the State of Kansas, on the 12th of May, 1903, was
solemnized the marriage of Mr. Markee to Miss Nora
Rennick, who was born in that state on the 24th of May,
1886, being a daughter of John M. Rennick, a prosperous
farmer of Dawson, Oklahoma. Mr. and Mrs. Markee
have three children — Frances, Ruth and Bertha.

Hon. William James Ladd. A long and useful life,
William J. Ladd has lived not without some of the more
substantial honors paid to an upright and public spirited
citizen. He is at the present time representing Creek
County, his home locality, in the Oklahoma Legislature.
He was a veteran of the Union army during the Civil
War. He was a pioneer in Oklahoma at the original
opening, and some twenty years ago came into the Creek
Nation of Indian Territory, and has been very closely
identified with the upbuilding and advancement of the
little Town of Bristow, where he resides.

An Indiana man by birth, Mr. Ladd was born at
Terre Haute June 29, 1843, a son of William D. and
Sarah (Price) Ladd. His father was born near Cin-
cinnati, Ohio, and his mother near Vincennes, Indiana.
They were married in Vigo County, Indiana, spent many
years of their lives there, but after the war moved to
Vermilion County. Both parents died there, the mother
aged eighty-four and the father at sixty-eight, his death
having resulted from an accident. He was a farmer by
occupation, and tilled the soil in the fertile valley of the
Wabash River. In politics he was a republican and
filled several county offices in the early days. He and
his wife were active members of the Christian Church.
There were four children in the family: Elizabeth,

widow of William J. Morgan and living at Luther, Okla-
homa; Amanda, who married M. D. Graves, died in
Kansas as did also her husband; Leonard, now de-
ceased; and William J.

William James Ladd grew up in his native county of
Indiana, had the usual influences and circumstances of
a rural Indiana boy, acquired a fair education, and was
just coming into manhood when the war broke out. In
1862 he volunteered his services and enlisted in Company
I of the Eighty-fifth Indiana Volunteer Infantry. From
that time forward until the close of hostilities he was
with his command in the various engagements and cam-
paigns, and held the rank of non-commissioned officer.
On July 20, 1864, he was wounded by a shell at Peach
Tree Creek, Georgia, the site of that battlefield now
being included in the City of Atlanta. After recovering
from his wounds in the hospital he rejoined his regiment
and continued until the Union arms were triumphant.

Following the war Mr. Ladd engaged in the milling
business in Indiana, but in 1878 he transferred his
activities to a newer country, locating in Montgomery

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1933

County along the southern line of Kansas. There he en-
gaged in the shipping and dealing in live stock, and also
conducted a ranch.

Mr. Ladd is one of the men who has many keen
and interesting recollections of the opening of the
original Oklahoma Territory in 1889. He secured a
claim west of Edmond, lived upon it and proved it up,
and one of the fine farms in that section of the state
is the result of his enterprise and industry. In 1896
Mr. Ladd moved to the Creek Nation, locating in what is
now Creek County, and was diligently engaged in look-
ing after his ranching interests until the Town of
Bristow was started. He was one of the men who pro-
moted that village, and has had his home there ever
since, and whenever possible has done what he could to
advance its interests in the way of larger commercial
outlook, better schools, churches, and all things that go
to make up a good town. Until the last two years he
engaged in buying cotton, but is now retired from
active business.

Mr. Ladd is one of the oldest republicans in Okla-
homa. He helped to organize the republican party in
Indiana, and in the first Lincoln campaign in 1860 he
was a member of one of those historic organizations
known as ‘ ‘ The Lincoln Wide-Awakes. ’ ’ He was also a
delegate to the first territorial convention at Guthrie,
Oklahoma, July 20, 1889. In the general election of
1914 he was a candidate on the republican ticket for
the Lower House of the Oklahoma State Legislature,
and was elected by a safe majority. He is now looking
after the interests of his constituents and giving a
studious attention to general legislation affecting the
entire commonwealth. Outside of this position in the
Legislature Mr. Ladd has never cared for official honors
and never accepted any except some township offices.
He is a member of the Christian Church, and is com-
mander of Lawton Post No. 31 Grand Army of the Re-
public at Bristow.

At Paris, Illinois, September 27, 1866, not long after
he had returned from the war Mr. Ladd married Miss
Julia A. Cox. She was born in Edgar County, Illinois,
September 15, 1845. For nearly half a century they
traveled life ’s highway together, sharing in its joys and
burdens. Mrs. Ladd died while on a visit to her old
home on May 19, 1915. A large family of children were
left to mourn her loss. There were ten born into their
household altogether, but three boys died in infancy.
A brief record of the remaining seven is as follows :
Jane, who married William H. Mitchell and lives in
Kansas City, Missouri; Alice, who married Harvey Glea-
son, is now living at home with her father; David lives
in Creek County, where he is a prominent rancher ;
Thomas has been for the past thirteen years connected
with the postoffice at Muskogee; Edgar lives in Colo-
rado; Isaac E. lives in Creek County; Kate is the wife
of Ernest Narjot of Los Angeles, California.

Daniel Pierce Sparks. A veteran Confederate
soldier, a man whose life has seen many of the vicissitudes
and experiences of the past half century, Daniel P.
Sparks is one of the old and honored citizens of Shawnee,
where for several years he has filled with credit the
office of justice of the peace. He came to Oklahoma
in the early days from Texas, and for several years
was engaged in business at Shawnee and elsewhere.

His birth occurred in the Parish of St. Mary’s, near
Franklin, Louisiana, April 3, 1845. The lives of him-
self and his father, who also bore the name of Daniel
Pierce, cover practically the entire period of American
national existence. The elder Sparks was born in 1787,
the year the Federal Constitution was formulated. He
was a native of South Carolina, and a son of Daniel

Sparks. There were four brothers who came from Eng-
land to Virginia about the outbreak of the American
Revolution. Their names were Samuel, Charles, Harry
and Daniel, the last being the grandfather of the
Shawnee citizen. They were all soldiers in the American
Revolution, and Harry, the youngest, was killed in battle.
After the war the other brothers removed to South
Carolina. Daniel P. Sparks, Sr., was reared in South
Carolina, and when a young man went to St. Mary’s
Parish, Louisiana, where he married and where he
became a sugar planter. He also maintained a residence
in Greenville, South Carolina. His death occurred in
New Orleans in 1867. Members of the Sparks family
have been participants in practically every great war of
the nation. While grandfather Daniel was a Revolution-
ary soldier, his son Daniel Pierce took part in the War
of 1812, and Daniel Pierce, Jr., as already noted, was
a Confederate soldier. Daniel Pierce Sparks, Sr., was
an active member of the Baptist Church. He married
Eliza Vinson, who was born in Tennessee and died at
Houston, Texas.

The early education Of Daniel Pierce Sparks was
acquired chiefly in South Carolina, and he was pursuing
his higher education in Furman University at Greenville
when the war broke out. He was at that time just
sixteen years of age. He left school at once and enlisted
in Hampton’s Legion of South Carolina Troops. His
service covered a period of four years and three months,
practically the entire duration of the war. He was
promoted to second lieutenant in the cavalry attached
to the Twenty-first South Carolina Regiment of Infantry,
and when that organization was disbanded he returned to
Hampton ’s Regiment and was one of its scouts. He was
taken prisoner near Brentsville, Virginia, and was sent
to the old Capital Prison in Washington, D. C., being
exchanged after ninety days. While his own record as
a soldier was most creditable, his brother, John Calhoun
Sparks, came in for unusual distinction in the Con-
federate ranks. This brother was born in 1841, entered
the army at the same time as Daniel P., and was made
commander of Lee’s Scouts in Virginia, having thirty
picked and trusted men under his command. He was
killed in 1863. Nearly fifty years after the war the
Baptist Courier of Greenville, South Carolina, wrote
of him as a daring soldier and scout, and speaks of him
as ‘ ‘ the fearless Sparks, who once was personally compli-
mented by General Lee for his bravery. ’ ’ This article
was ordered to be read in every camp of the United Con-
federate Veterans.

After the war Daniel Pierce Sparks returned to New
Orleans, and in 1866 went to Houston, Texas. His
first employment there was in Baldwin’s book store,
and for a little more than a year he was a messenger
on the road in the employ of the old Texas Express
Company. He then went to Hearne, Texas, as bookkeeper
for the firm of Ledick & Reeves, and after nearly two
years opened a mercantile establishment of his own
at Hearne, and continued in business there two years.

For a number of years Mr. Sparks ’ home was at
Bellville, in Austin County, Texas. He bought and con-
ducted a farm in that locality for three years, and then
moved into Bellville, the county seat, and was engaged
in the lumber business until 1880. While there he
was again in the employ of the Texas Express Com-
pany as local agent. In 1880 Mr. Sparks moved to
Greenville, Texas, where he conducted a restaurant and
book store for more than fifteen years. Finally selling
out, he came to Shawnee in 1897, and established a
restaurant which had a large patronage and bore a
splendid reputation among its customers for a number
of years. In 1899 he also opened a similar business at

3934

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Oklahoma City, and conducted both establishments for
two years, at the end of which time he sold the busi-
ness at Oklahoma City.

As a result of an injury caused by his walking into
an open gas ditch, Mr. Sparks was unable to prosecute
his business affairs actively for some time, and one year
of this he spent in New Mexico. Finally returning to
Shawnee he entered politics and made an unsuccessful
campaign for the office of register of deeds of Potta-
watomie County. In 1912 he was elected justice of the
peace, and that is his position of service at the present
time.

Mr. Sparks is a democrat, a member of the Episcopal
Church, and is affiliated with the Masonic Order, the
Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and the Fraternal
Order of Eagles. In the last named fraternity he has
served as secretary for the past twenty years. He has
been especially active in the United Confederate Veterans,
and has served as commander of Camp No. 976, and as
commander general of the Second Division.

In 1866, soon after the war, Mr. Sparks married
Miss Lizzie Duncan of Greenville, South Carolina. She
died in 1867, leaving one daughter, Lizzie Duncan, who
is now the wife of W. T. Boyd, an employee of the
Santa Fe Bailroad Company, located at Albuquerque,
New Mexico. In 1872, at Bellville, Texas, Mr. Sparks
married Miss Josephine Haggerty. They are the parents
of three children: John Calhoun is bookkeeper and head
clerk for the firm of Phillips & Norris, cotton oil
manufacturers, at Ada, Oklahoma; D. P. Sparks, Jr., is
a foreman in the machine shops of the Bock Island Bail-
road Company, at Shawnee; Josephine is the wife of
P. A. Norris, a cotton oil manufacturer at Ada, Okla-
home.

Walter B. Wilson. The list of the leading citizens
of Henryetta includes the name of Walter B. Wilson,
cashier and vice president of the First National Bank.
While one of the younger representatives of financial
interests, it would seem that his youth has been no bar
to his progress, for his career has been one of steady
advancement to a position which many older men might
envy. Since his arrival at Henryetta he has been con-
sidered a factor in the development and progress of the
city, and in his particular line is a man of recognized
ability who carries to a successful completion the under-
takings with which he identifies himself.

Mr. Wilson was born at Cissna Park, Iroquois County,
Illinois. April 18, 1888, and is a son of Dr. Calvin C. and
Anna H. (Brock) Wilson, the former a native of Indiana
and the latter of Illinois. Dr. Calvin C. Wilson was a
child when taken by his parents from Indiana to Illinois,
and in the latter state received good educational advan-
tages, for some years following the vocation of educator
and being a teacher in high schols. Later he adopted
the calling of medicine, and after graduation from the
Ohio Medical College practiced for a number of years
at various points in Illinois, but trouble with his hearing
caused him to abandon his profession and in 1902 he
brought his family to Henryetta. Here he became con-
nected with the White Mercantile Company, and con-
tinued in the employ of this concern until the great fire
of 1907, which practically wiped out Henryetta ’s business
district and which destroyed the establishment with Ahich
Doctor Wilson was identified. Later he joined the First
National Bank’s clerical force, and still continues to be
associated with this institution. He is one of the well
known and highly esteemed citizens of the community,
interested actively in its welfare, and for the past seven
or eight years has acted in the capacity of city treasurer.
He is a republican in politics. Doctor and Mrs. Wilson

have two sons: Walter B. ; and Charles L., a mechanical
engineer and now professor of mechanical engineering at
the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College, at Bryan,
or College Station, Texas.

Walter B. Wilson received a high school education at
Chicago, Illinois, and Greeneastle, Indiana, and was
fourteen years of age when he accompanied his parents
to Oklahoma. Here his first employment was as clerk
in the postoffice at Henryetta, and later he received his
introduction to banking with the Citizens Bank of
Henryetta. In 1909 he became cashier of the First
National Bank of Henryetta, and since then has also
succeeded to the vice presidency of this institution, of
which the other officials are: James M. Wise, president;
Joe Hillman, vice president; and V. V. Kingsbury and
O. D. Norred, assistant cashiers. The First National
Bank has a, capital and surplus of $60,000, and is ac-
counted one of the strong and reliable banking houses of
Okmulgee County. Mr. Wilson has an established place
in the confidence of its patrons and depositors and has
done much to make the institution a success. A young
man, he possesses good business sagacity, keen discrimina-
tion and laudable ambition, and these are elements which
have always had great force in the battle of life and the
ultimate winning of success. In his political views he is
a republican, believing that the principles of that party
contain the best elements of good government. Frater-
nally he is a Knight Templar and Shriner Mason, and his
religious affiliation is with the Presbyterian Church.

Mr. Wilson was married at Henryetta, in 1909, to Miss
Mary M. Wise, a native of Missouri, and daughter of
James Monroe Wise, president of the First National
Bank and one of the pioneer coal operators of Henry-
etta. They have two children: Walter B., Jr., and Gene-
vieve.

James Monroe Wise was born at Eugene, Vermilion
County, Indiana, May 25, 1849, and is a son of Jacob
and Mary (Taylor) Wise, the former born in Pennsyl-
vania and the latter near Eugene. He came to Indiana
at an early date, married near Eugene, and there he and
the mother passed the greater part of their lives. After
the close of the Civil war they moved to Paola, 'Kansas,
where both passed away, the mother when about sixty
years old and the father at the age of sixty-six years. He
was a farmer and proprietor of a hotel and a stanch
republican in his political views. There were five chil-
dren in the family: H. G., of Dallas, Texas; James Mon-
roe; Mary Margaret McCarthy, deceased; John F., of
Joplin, Missouri; and Mrs. Margaret Johnson, a widow
residing at Kirkwood, Missouri.

James M. Wise received his education in th£ public
schools of Indiana, and soon after going to Kansas
with his parents embarked upon his independent career.
For two or three years he worked in a commission house
at Paola, and through his energy, initiative and fidelity
won a partnership in the firm of B. C. Crow611 &
Company, but after several years disposed of his inter-
ests in this concern and went to Colorado. For five or
six years he followed the adventurous life of the
freighter, and also established a grocery business at Lead-
ville, in that state, but finally left Colorado, went to Bich
Hill, Missouri, and became interested in coal operations,
which have interested his attention to the present time.
Mr. Wise came to Henryetta in 1902 and here started the
first real coal mine, although there had been a small
operator who had preceded him. He became the founder
in that year of the Henryetta Coal and Mining Company,
of which he has since been president, and which has been
developed from a modest undertaking into a 700-ton
mine. While the greater part of his attention and abil-
ities have been given to the development of this industry,

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1935

lie is also largely interested in oil companies, and since
its organization has been the directing head of the First
National Bank. As a citizen he has been foremost in
the promotion of movements for the public welfare, and
few men have in greater degree the respect and con-
fidence of their fellow-citizens and business associates.

Mr. Wise was married in 1882 to Miss Hattie Scott, a
native of Denver, Colorado, and to this union there have
been born four daughters: Georgia, who is the wife of
Frank Tutt, of St. Louis, Missouri; Mrs. Mildred Bur-
ress, who resides with her father; Mary Margaret, who
is the wife of Walter R. Wilson, cashier and vice pres-
ident of the First National Bank of Henryetta; and
Miss Alice, who resides at home.

William C. Grove, who recently began his first term
of service as one of the county commissioners of Osage
County, is one of the oldest white residents of the Osage
country, and as a rancher and cattleman is known among
the prominent men of that industry throughout Kansas,
Oklahoma and Texas, and it is doubtful if any one
individual has handled more live stock in Osage County
than Mr. Grove. He has had a varied career, beginning
as a cowboy, later developed an independent business,
and has come to occupy a place of such influence in his
vicinity that it is proper to say that where he leads others
follow.

His birth occurred at the little Village of Mirabile
in Caldwell County, Missouri, June 8, 1872. His parents
were John Harvey and Mary Ann (Frederick) Grove.
His father and mother were both born near Canton,
Ohio, were taken when children to Missouri, grew- up
in the same neighborhood, and after their marriage and
when William C. Grove was six years of age they
moved to Franklin County, Kansas, where the mother
died in the following year. John H. Grove died in
Kansas March 30, 1912, and would have been seventy-
three years of age on the following 19th of June. Most
of his active career was spent as a rancher and he
was well known among horse men, and made a specialty
of handling fast horses, particularly trotting stock. He
was well adapted for that business, and made it a life
study. At one time he owned one of the noted trotters
in the country, ‘ ‘ Red Cloud. ’ ’ He owned a number of
other fast horses and some fine stallions. Early in his
career he served about three years with a Missouri
regiment in the Civil war, and in the early days had
experience as a freighter from St. Joseph, Missouri, over
the old Santa Fe trail to Santa Fe, New Mexico. He
made several of these trips, at first with ox teams and
later with teams of mules, and through these varied
activities gained a large acquaintance among frontiers-
men. He was a republican, a Mason, and a member
of the Christian Church. William C. Grove has one
brother, Harvey Elmer, who is now in the oil busi-
ness in Oklahoma.

After the death of his mother William C. Grove was
sent back to live in the family of an uncle in Missouri
for a year and a half, and then went to Kansas with
another uncle, and practically grew up in the midst
of the activities of the ranch and range. For five years
he was employed on the Diamond X Ranch with his
uncle, and his first acquaintance with Oklahoma began
in 1886, when he accompanied a cattle outfit into the
Cherokee Strip country. Later he was in Texas with
the well known Gamble cattle organization, and from
there came into the Osage Nation in 1892. With the
exception of a season spent in New Mexico, another in
Colorado, and one in Dakota, he has been continuously
identified with the Osage country ever since. At an
earlier time he had taken a large bunch of cattle over

Vol. V— 12

one of the trails leading out from Texas through the
intervening country to the northern pastures in Mon-
tana. He was still in the employ of the Gamble organiza-
tion when he came to the Osage Nation, and was with
that and other ranch outfits for a number of years.

After his marriage Mr. Grove located on a ranch
2% mile3 west of Hominy. This comprises 1,700 acres
under one fence, and is one of the largest and most
valuable cattle ranches in Osage County. He combines
farming with the live stock industry, and each season
runs from 100 to 500 head <)f cattle. He has handled
as high as 2,000 or 3,000 head of cattle in a single
year. Mr. Grove is also an extensive hog raiser, of
the Hampshire stock, and is a member of the National
Hampshire Hog Association.

His success as a business man has naturally brought
him into contact with local affairs, where his judgment
and action are held in high esteem. In politics he is
a lifelong democrat, has filled local offices as school
director and road supervisor, as councilman at Hominy,
and is now in his first term as county commissioner.
Though a white man himself, he has taken a very active
interest in the solution of the questions affecting the
tribal affairs of the Osage people, and was a strong
advocate of the present methods of handling the oil
situation.

On October 12, 1900, Mr. Grove married at Inde-
pendence, Kansas, Miss Agnes Herridge. She was born
in South Dakota, April 27, 1883, and came with her
parents to the Indian Territory about 1890. Her parents
are Edward and Julia (Lessart) Herridge, her father
a native of the State of New York, and now living near
Gray Horse in Osage County, while the mother died
at Pawhuska in 1906. Mrs. Grove’s mother was the
inheritor of Sioux blood on her mother ’s side and Osage
blood through her father. Mrs. Grove’s grandfather,
Benjamin Lessart, who was part French and part Osage,
founded a trading post at Denver, Colorado, in the early
days, and was also a rancher and cattle man, operating
in Dakota and over the Sioux Reservation.

Mr. and Mrs. Grove have four children : Muriel Wyoma,
Mary Lutisha, Harry Leslie and Frederick Herridge.
Mr. Grove in Masonry has taken thirty-two degrees in
the Scottish Rite, is affiliated with the Lodge at Harmony
and with the Consistory at Guthrie, and is also a member
of the Knights of Pythias and the Benevolent and
Protective Order of Elks at Pawhuska.

John W. Ricketts. Near the Cimarron River in the
southern part of Payne County is situated the vigorous
and attractive Village of Perkins, and that Mr. Ricketts
is one of its popular and loyal citizens needs no further
voucher than the statement that he is here serving in the
office of postmaster.

Mr. Ricketts claims the old Blue Grasj State as the
place of his nativity and is a scion of stanch old Southern
stock on the paternal side, his maternal ancestors having
been pioneer settlers in the State of Ohio. Mr. Ricketts
was born at Catlettsburg, Boyd County, Kentucky, on
the 14th of February, 1854, and is a son of John W. and
Jane (Johnston) Ricketts, the former of whom was born
in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and the latter of
whom was born in Ohio, where their marriage was
solemnized. The parents of Mr. Ricketts passed most
of their lives near the Ohio River, having resided for a
time in Kentucky and having later located on the river
in Southern Ohio, where the father died in 1900, when
about seventy years of age, he having served as a pilot
on the Ohio River in his young manhood and having
later become a prosperous farmer. His widow still
maintains her home in Ohio and celebrated in 1915 her

1936

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

ninety-fourth birthday anniversary, so that she is one
of the most venerable women of her native state, even
as she is a representative of a sterling pioneer family
of the historic old Buckeye commonwealth. Of the
children the eldest is Thomas C., who is now a resident
of Texas; Mrs. Caroline Shattuck, the next in order of
birth, is deceased; John W., of this review, is the third
child; Mary died at the age of four years; Mrs. Nancy
Baxter maintains her home in Ohio ; and Mrs. Dora
Johnston was a resident of Ohio at the time of her
death, her husband having represented that state in the
United States Congress.

John W. Ricketts was a child at the time when the
family home was established in Lawrence County, Ohio,
where he was reared to manhood and received the ad-
vantages of the public schools, the while he early began
to assist in the work and management of the home farm.
In 1886 he went to Minnesota, in which state he main-
tained his residence until Oklahoma Territory was thrown
open to settlement, in 1889, when he came to the new
territory, which was not formally organized until the
following year, and numbered himself among the pioneer
settlers of Payne County, where he secured Government
land and reclaimed an excellent farm, his homestead
place having been developed into one of the excellent
farms of the county and the property being still in his
possession. He served four years as carrier on a rural
free delivery mail route from Perkins, and on the 5th
of March, 1908, he was appointed postmaster at Perkins,
the office being of the third class. He has since held
this position and his continuous tenure of office indicates
the popular estimate placed upon his administration.

Upon coming to Payne County, in 1889, Mr. Ricketts
filed claim to the southwest quarter of section 1, town-
ship 17, range 2, east, and this is the well improved
homestead which he still retains, the farm being eligibly
situated one-half miles west of the Village of Perkins.

In politics Mr. Ricketts gives his allegiance to the
republican party, and his civic loyalty and progressiveness
have been manifested in his effective service in township
offices and as a member of the school board of his dis-
trict. He and his wife became charter members of the
Congregational Church at Perkins, and he is a trustee
of the same, besides which he contributed liberally to the
erection of the church building. He is a Master Mason
and maintains affiliation with the lodge at Perkins.

In Ohio, in 1872, Mr. Ricketts married Miss Sadie
R. Ferguson, who was born and reared in that state,
and who died on the home farm in Payne County,
Oklahoma, about the year 1892. Of the three children
of this union the eldest is William, who is a resident
of the City of Minneapolis, Minnesota; Homer is now in
Mexico; and Mrs. Mamie Banks is deceased. In 1901
was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Ricketts to Miss
Christine B. Harpold, and no children have been born
of this union.

Martin Rtan, D. D. S. Doctor Ryan has been a.
resident of Okmulgee County, Oklahoma, since 1906, and
was engaged in the practice of his profession in the
Village of Beggs, this county, until 1912, when he was
elected county treasurer and removed to Okmulgee, the
county seat, where he has since continued as the efficient
and popular incumbent of this important fiscal office, in
which he has given a most careful and acceptable ad-
ministration and in which he is now serving his second
term, through re-election in the autumn of 1914. His
being called to this office offers the most effective evi-
dence of the high place which is his in the confidence
and esteem of the people of the county, and he is known
as a loyal and progressive citizen of the state of his
adoption.

Doctor Ryan was born in Outagamie County, Wiscon-
sin, on the 30th of May, 1874, and is the youngest in a
family of eight children, of whom three are living. He
is a son of Daniel and Winifred (Powers) Ryan, both
natives of Ireland, where the former was born in County
Tyrone and the latter in County Clare. Daniel Ryan
came to the United States in 1846 and his marriage was
solemnized in the City of Boston, Massachusetts. In
company with his young wife he soon made his way to
the west and numbered himself among the pioneers of
Outagamie County, Wisconsin, where he reclaimed and
developed an excellent farm and where he and his wife
passed the residue of their lives. Mrs. Ryan passed to
the life eternal in 1903, at the age of seventy-two years,
and Mr. Ryan died in 1905, at the venerable age of
eighty-four years.

Doctor Ryan was reared to the sturdy discipline of
the home farm and profited duly by the advantages
afforded in the excellent public schools of his native
state. In preparation for the profession of his choice
he entered the Chicago College of Dental Surgery, in
which institution he was graduated as a member of the
class of 1895 and from which he received his well earned
degree of Doctor of Dental Surgery. After his gradua-
tion he was engaged in the practice of his profession
at Marion, Waupaca County, Wisconsin, until 1906,
when he came to Oklahoma Territory and established
himself in practice at Beggs, Okmulgee County, where,
as previously stated, he continued his professional en-
deavors until his election to his present office, in 1912.

In politics Doctor Ryan accords unwavering allegiance
to the democratic party and he has been one of its in-
fluential representatives in Okmulgee County. He was
reared in the faith of the Catholic Church, of which he
and his wife are communicants, and he is affiliated with
the Knights of Columbus, the Benevolent and Protective
Order of Elks and the Modern Woodmen of America.

In the year 1900 was solemnized the marriage of
Doctor Ryan to Miss Anna Laura Donahue, who likewise
was born and reared in Wisconsin, a daughter of Michael
Donahue. The six children of this union are: Clement,

Lucile, Martin, Jr., Earl, Carl and Mary.

R. B. F. Hummer. The popular and energetic young
city attorney of Henryetta, R. B. F. Hummer, has won his
way to his present position and standing entirely through
the medium of his own abilities and efforts. His career
is notably illustrative of the opportunities offered by
Oklahoma for advancement to the young and energetic
men of other sections of the country, who are possessed
of the ambition, initiative, determination and ability to
win. He is a native of Pennsylvania, and was born at
Penbrook, near the City of Harrisburg, Dauphin County,
January 21, 1886, his parents being John W. and Alma
(Yorty) Hummer, natives of Pennsylvania and still resi-
dents of Penbrook, where Mr. Hummer is engaged in
business as a painting contractor. There were four sons
and one daughter in the family.

After attending the public schools of Penbrook, R. B.
F. Hummer went to the state normal school, at Millers-
ville, Pennsylvania, and was graduated therefrom in 1909.
Both before and after graduation he had engaged in
teaching school, in order to pay his way through school,
and in the meantime devoted his leisure hours to the
study of law, having decided upon a career in that diffi-
cult profession. Eventually Mr. Hummer entered the
law school of Georgetown University, at Washington,
D. C., where he received the degree of Bachelor of Laws,
in June, 1913. Not long thereafter he determined upon
Oklahoma as the best field for the display of his abilities,
and accordingly came to this state and in December, 1913,

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1937

■e

igt

lisj

lie

ty,

is-

09.

id,

tie

li-

the

iesj

took the examination for admission to the bar. He passed
second in the class of seventy-five applicants, being beaten
for first place by H. H. Hagan, now of Oklahoma City,
a former classmate at the Georgetown University Law
School. Admitted to the bar at that time, Mr. Hummer
formed a partnership with E. E. Simpson, the firm of
Simpson & Hummer continuing in existence until the
senior partner was elected county attorney, when he
was forced to retire from the concern in order to' give
all *his attention to the duties of his office. Mr. Hummer
has since practiced alone and has been identified with
much of the important litigation that has come before
the courts in recent years. In the spring of 1915 he
came before the people of Henryetta as the democratic
candidate for the office of city attorney and was elected
by a handsome majority, for a term of two years. His
conduct in that office has shown that he possesses high
executive talents. Mr. Hummer is secretary of the Roos-
terfood Oil Company of Henryetta, and is counsel for
the Henryetta, Oklahoma & Western Railroad, the new
electric transportation line which will connect all the
towns of this thriving and prosperous mining community.
He has always been a stanch and unswerving democrat
and at this time stands high in the councils of his party
in Okmulgee County. While he is a Lutheran in religious
faith, owing to the fact that there is no church of that
denomination at Henryetta, he is active in the Baptist
Church and especially so in the Sunday school, in which
he teaches a class of young men. Fraternally he is a
thirty-second degree, Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner, a
member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, secre-
tary of the Loyal Order of the Moose, an Eagle at Henry-
etta, and a member of the Junior Order of American Me-
chanics at Penbrook, Pennsylvania. He is also a mem-
ber of the Oklahoma Bar Association. Mr. Hummer is
unmarried and one of the most popular young men in
social circles of Henryetta.

In speaking of Mr. Hummer a contemporary news-
paper recently said : ‘ ‘ The voters of Henryetta have

Seen demonstrated in the official acts of our city attorney,
R. B. F. Hummer, the wisdom they displayed in select-
ing Mr. Hummer for this position of trust and honor.
Mr. Hummer’s name is no misnomer, for in his official
and private actions he is regarded as one of the hustlers.
A man that to be contented must be occupied in some
work or accomplishment. R. B. F. Hummer previous to
his accepting the position of city attorney was recog-
nized as one of the foremost successful young lawyers of
this district, being of a studious nature, Mr. Hummer
was always prepared when making a court appearance
with the law and evidence in any way bearing upon an
action in which he was interested. He is one of the
attorneys who never failed in the service rendered a client
to give them adequate service and sufficient study so that
they had the advantage of a full knowledge of the law
in every ease undertaken by him.

“Mr. Hummer’s acts as city attorney have added to
his laurels as a successful practicing lawyer. He has
contributed no little in his official position toward com-
pelling a respect on the part of the criminally inclined to
a due respect of the law, and in prosecuting the city cases
he has shown himself a man and an attorney above re-
proach, being no respecter of classes. We unhesitatingly
commend Mr. Hummer to our readers both as an official
and an attorney, and close this short review with a hearty
wish for his advancement and a long continuance of our
present relations.”

Charles K. Cary. Something like thirteen years of
experience in the teaching profession was Charles K.
Cary ’s before he lent his attention to the study of

law. Such an experience is, of its very nature, bound
to add something of value to the equipment of a
conscientious man, and Mr. Cary may truthfully be said
to have been the recipient of every benefit that could
accrue to him in those years of faithful work. He began
in 1888 with a country school under his guidance. His
last connection with the profession was in 1901, when
he concluded a four years term of service in the office
of county superintendent of schools of Dewey County.

Mr. Cary was born in Livingston County, Missouri,
on March 9, 1870, and is the son of Edward G. Cary,
who was born in Northeastern Ohio, in the year 1846,
and who died in the vicinity of Kanima, Haskell County,
Oklahoma, in 1908.

Edward G. Cary was a preacher in the Methodist
Episcopal Church for many years. As a boy he did
not receive many advantages in an educational way,
but he had a good home and his mother taught him
much that could never be learned of books or school-
masters. When he was a boy of about eight years the
family moved to Iowa, locating in Decatur County, and
there Mr. Cary lived for many years thereafter. In 1868
lie moved with his family to Missouri, finally locating in
Livingston County, where the subject of this sketch
was born. He returned to Iowa in the fall of 1873, but
two years later removed to Washington County, Kansas,
for the purpose of entering government land. It was
here that he entered the ministry, later becoming a
member of the Northwest Kansas Conference of the
Methodist Episcopal Church.

For many years he was a pioneer circuit rider of that
part of the state, occupying the pulpit in many a rude
hamlet which has since grown to be a thriving city. He
later removed to Arkansas and still later to Haskell
County, Oklahoma, where his death occurred in 1908.
The many moves made by Reverend Cary was largely
the result of the policy of his church, which for many
years opposed long terms as pastor in one place.

Rev. Mr. Cary was a veteran of the Civil war, having
served a year and a half in the Third Iowa Cavalry.
He was in after years prominently identified with the
Grand Army of the Republic. In 1866 he married
Rebecca J. Exley, a native daughter of Iowa, born
there in 1848. She survives him, and is now living in
Smith County, Kansas.

To these worthy people were born seven children,
briefly mentioned as follows: Ralph C., the eldest, is
a resident of Western Nebraska. He is station agent
for his town, and is also a farming man of some prom-
inence in his community and the publisher of a thriving
newspaper. The second child was Charles K., mentioned
in greater detail in later paragraphs. John E. lives
at Laramie, Wyoming. Bertha married John A. Fay,
a clerk in the United States army, and they are now
in Seattle, Washington, where Mr. Fay’s regiment is
stationed. Lillian Grace married John Oliver, and they
live on his ranch in Western Nebraska. Leonard B.
is a copper miner and lives at Bisbee, Arizona. The
seventh and youngest child is Lila N., who married
William H. Foster, a farming man, and they live in
Smith County, Kansas.

Charles K. Cary was privileged to attend the country
schools in Northern Kansas up to the age of seventeen,
and in 1888 he began to teach school in his district. He
was so occupied until 1896. Up to the year 1895 he had
been filling positions in Northern Kansas, but in that year
he came to Dewey County, Oklahoma, to take a home-
stead. He filed on a government homestead of 160
acres, following which he returned to Kansas and spent
another winter in school teaching. Returning to Dewey
county late in that year he located in a spot near

1938

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

where the Town of Cestos is now established, teaching
a district school during the winter months. Mr. Cary’s
homestead claim was located ten miles west and three
miles north of the Town of Taloga. He was careful to
improve it in accordance with the demands of the land
office, and in time was able to ‘ ‘ prove up ” on his
claim. Soon after he did so he had an opportunity to
sell to advantage, having lived on the place about a
year and a half in all.

On January 1, 1897, Mr. Cary was elected to the office
of superintendent of schools for Dewey County, and he
served four years in that office, retiring on July 1,
1901, with a splendid record for efficiency and service in
the office. During that time Mr. Cary succeeded in
appreciably raising the standard of the schools of the
county, never too high in a new and undeveloped dis-
trict, and his efforts to that end were ably seconded
by all who came . under his jurisdiction. As. a builder
of educational standards he carried out a work in those
four years of service that will have a lasting effect
on the public school system of Dewey County.

But it had been Mr. Cary’s ambition for years to fit
himself for the profession of law, and he felt then that
he could not afford to defer his activities in that respect
any longer. In 1901 he entered the law department
of the University of Kansas, and in June, 1903, was
graduated with the degree LL. B. He was admitted to
practice in the Supreme Court of Kansas in the same
month of his graduation, and almost immediately there-
after established himself in practice in Taloga, where
he has since conducted a general civil and criminal prac-
tice. He has enjoyed a success that is well worthy of
his efforts, and he has a splendid reputation in profes-
sional and other circles as a lawyer of ability, and a man
with an assured future in his chosen field.

In 1907, at the statehood election, Mr. Cary was elected
to the office of county attorney for Dewey County. He
was a candidate on the republican ticket, though in
earlier years he had given his vote to the populist forces.
He served two full terms as county attorney, and retired
on January 1, 1913, declining to stand for nomination
a third time.

Mr. Cary has never ceased to manifest a healthy
interest in local school affairs, and he is now serving the
city as a member of its school board, in which position
by reason of his former experience in the teaching
profession he is able to render invaluable service to
his community. He and his family are members of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, and lie is a member of its
board of trustees. He is a Mason, and is a member of
Taloga Lodge No. 179, Ancient Free and Accepted
Masons, and Taloga Chapter No. 54, Royal Arch Masons.

On April 12, 1894, Mr.. Cary was united in mar-
riage in Smith County, Kansas, to Miss Lillian L.
Sheddy, daughter of William B. Slieddy, a well known
Kansan. One child has been born to the Cary family:
Daphne L., now a student in Southwestern College at
Winfield, Kansas.

Stanley Ctjshing Tyler. The exceptional climatic
conditions in Western Oklahoma have been responsible
for the presence here of many of the most energetic
and enterprising citizens. Continued ill health back in
his old homestead in Massachusetts, made it impossible
for Stanley Cushing Tyler to successfully prosecute a
business career, when about thirty-seven years ago he
came west and became identified with the vast open
range of the Texas Panhandle and No Man’s Land of
what is now the extreme western district of Okla-
homa. Here he has since lived, a leading man of affairs,
and now president of the First National Bank of Guymon,

general manager of the Guymon & Hansford Telephone
Company, and president of the Latham Dry Goods
Company.

Born June 4, 1857, at Lowell, Massachusetts, Stanley
Cushing Tyler is a son of Artemas S. and Angeline
(Cushing) Tyler. His father was also a native of
Lowell, Massachusetts, born November 2, 1824, of old
New England stock, and spent all his active career as a
banker. He died at Lowell, Massachusetts, October 14,
1901. He was at one time a member of the Massa-
chusetts General Assembly, having been nominated and
elected by both republicans and democrats. His first
wife, Miss Angeline Cushing, died in 1860, leaving two
children, Stanley Cushing and Artemas Lawrence, the
latter now deceased. His second wife was Ethelinda
Cushing, a sister of his first wife. There were two
daughters by this union, both deceased.

In his native City of Lowell, Stanley C. Tyler was
reared, and as his father was a man of affluence and
prominence, he had all the advantages of a good home
and the best of schooling. He attended the public
schools and a private institution, and at the age of
seventeen entered his father ’s bank. Ill health com-
pelled him to make a change of scene and he next tried
work in Boston with a wholesale drug house. He was
finally obliged to give up employment in the East alto-
gether, and in 1879 he went to Colorado, but in the same
year came to the Panhandle of Texas. Here he took
up the cattle business on the open range. It will be
recalled that thirty-five years ago there was no railroad
within hundreds of miles of the Texas Panhandle, the
buffalo had not disappeared, and even the Indians were
still occasionally troublesome. It was a great lonely
land of adventure and hardship, but one eminently cal-
culated to restore vigor to the constitution of any per-
son who could endure its primitive hardships. Mr.
Tyler regained not only rugged health but has prose-
cuted a flourishing business in this locality for many
years. He has never given up the cattle industry, though
years have compelled him to modify his efforts according
to changing conditions. In the early days he raised his
stock on the open range, and took it over the old cattle
trails across country to Dodge City, Kansas. From the
beginning his operations have included portions of No
Man’s Land, or the old Cimarron District of Oklahoma.
He still owns a 5,000 acre ranch in Hansford County,
Texas, forty-five miles south of Guymon, Oklahoma.

When the Rock Island Railroad was built through No
Man’s Land Mr. Tyler turned his attention to the
development of Guymon, and local citizens say that he
has done as much if not more than any other individual
to place that city to the front in the way of business
institutions and municipal improvement. He established
the First National Bank of Guymon, organized the Guy-
mon & .Hansford Telephone Company, and became presi-
dent and has remained in that office with each of these
concerns. Subsequently he organized the Texas County
Bank, which he subsequently sold. He also organized
the Guymon Electric Light and Power Company, built
the ice plant and installed Guymon ’s system of water-
works.

Mr. Tyler has had a happy home life, and for his wife
he returned to his native state and was married at Bos-
ton, January 30, 1884, to Miss Mary Elizabeth Ayers of
Boston, daughter of Oliver and Mary Ireland (Hooper) )
Ayers, both of whom were born in the State of New
Hampshire of Mayflower stock. Mrs. Tyler was born
September 18, 1860, in Boston, and was educated in
private schools. To their marriage have been born five'
children, three daughters and two sons, namely: Mary

Angeline, now the wife of Lewis E. Latham of Guymon;
Stanley Cushing, Jr., who died in infancy; Ethel Maria,

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1939

now the wife of James -Rutledge Henderson of Zulu,
Texas; Oliver Stanley, now a cattle man in Baca County,
Colorado; and Fanny Stanley, the wife of Samuel Alba
of Liberal, Kansas.

As a republican Mr. Tyler has interested himself in
political affairs, but more particularly with the practical
welfare of every community where he has lived. He was
at one time elected county judge in Hansford County,
Texas. He and his family are members of the Episcopal
Church. In Masonry he has attained the thirty-second
degree of Scottish Rite, is also a Knight Templar and
Shriner, and is district deputy grand master for the
First District of Oklahoma, consisting of Beaver, Texas
and Cimarron counties.

Feed L. Wenner. It was as a special correspondent
for Eastern newspapers that Fred L. Wenner, now secre-
tary-manager of the Guthrie Chamber of Commerce,
first became identified with this state. His acquaintance
and association with men of affairs in Oklahoma are
based upon twenty-five years of experience as a news-
paper man, public official, farmer and fruit grower and
business man. While he now gives much of his time
to the Guthrie Chamber of Commerce, he resides on his
fruit farm outside the City of Guthrie and it is probable
that he is the only active head of a city commercial
organization who makes his home on a farm.

He is of German descent, his paternal grandparents
and his maternal great-grandparents having come from
Germany. Fred L. Wenner was born at Tiffin, Ohio,
January 8, 1865, a son of Henry S. and Sarah (Kaull)
Wenner, who went to Ohio from Eastern Pennsylvania.
Henry S. Wenner was a pioneer carriage manufacturer
in that state.

The morning after he graduated from the high school
at Tiffin, Fred L. Wenner started out gathering news
as a reporter for the Tiffin Daily Herald. Since then,
for a period of more than thirty years, he has never
been permanently dissociated from the newspaper pro-
fession, and while engaged in that work has also kept up
writing for the press and for special purposes.

From reporter he became first city editor of the Tiffin
Daily Herald and later filled the same position with
the Tiffin Daily Tribune. In 1889 he was sent to Okla-
homa as a special correspondent for the New York
Herald, Cleveland Press and Chicago Times, and sent
back for publication in these metropolitan journals a
great many interesting articles that described the early
rush and settlement of the original Oklahoma Territory.
For a number of years he was employed as special cor-
respondent for the papers just named and for other
journals. For a year he was city editor of the Okla-
homa Daily State Capital at Guthrie and for two years
was editor and owner of the Kingfisher Free Press.

His work as a newspaper man naturally brought him
into close touch with public affairs and public men. From
1897 to 1902 Mr. Wenner was secretary to the territorial
governors of Oklahoma, serving under Governor C. M.
Barnes, Governor William Jenkins and Governor T. B.
Ferguson. From 1901 to 1903 he was secretary of the
Oklahoma Commission to the St. Louis World’s Fair,
and from 1903 to 1908 served as secretary to the school
land board for the Territory of Oklahoma.

On retiring from public office in 1908 Mr. Wenner
moved to a fruit and stock farm, and for the next five
years gave all his time to that business. In 1913 he was
made secretary and manager of the Guthrie Chamber
of Commerce, and now, as already stated, combines the
duties of his civic position with his life and activities as
a farmer and fruit raiser. For twenty-five years Mr.
Wenner has been a director in the Guthrie Building &
Loan Association. He is secretary of the Cimarron

Valley Fair Association and the Logan County Fruit
Growers’ Association.

Politically his associations have always been with
the republican party and for three years he was assistant
secretary of the state committee. He is a Scottish Rite
Mason and a member of the Knights of the Maccabees,
but has held no chairs in these bodies. He is also a
member of the Guthrie Country Club, and has been much
interested in church work as a member of the Presby-
terian Church, and in 1893 was one of the organizers of
the Oklahoma Sunday School Association, in which for
fifteen years he filled an office or was a member of the
executive committee.

On January 18, 1885, at Bloomville, Ohio, Mr. Wenner
married Ammy D. Myers, daughter of Rev. and Mrs. S.
P. Myers. Her father, who was formerly a minister of
the German Reformed Church, did pastoral work in Ohio,
Indiana and Illinois, subsequently affiliated with the
Presbyterian Church in Kansas and Oklahoma, and did
much important service as a pioneer home missionary
in Oklahoma. Mr. and Mrs. Wenner have five children :
Robert M., Henry S., David J., Mary E. and Fanny I.
All the children are living at home except, David J., who
is now a student in the State Agricultural and Mechani-
cal College, and Henry S., who in 1912 married Louise
Rouse, daughter of Dr. George Rouse of Charleston,
South Carolina.

Oscae C. Wybeant. The legal fraternity of Wood-
ward County numbers among its most able and thorough
members Oscar C. Wybrant, ex-county attorney and the
representative of large and important interests. Mr.
Wybrant was born August 4, 1870, in a log house on a
farm in Ralls County, Missouri, and is a son of William
and Eliza (Heskett) Wybrant.

William Wybrant was born August 13, 1840, in Noble
County, Ohio, a son of Hugh and Elmira Wybrant, the
former a native of Scotland and the latter of Ireland.
William Wybrant was reared on a farm in Ohio, and
was engaged in farming when the Civil war broke out.
He enlisted in an Ohio regiment of volunteers and served
as a wagonmaster in the forces of General Thomas, and
when the war was over returned to his Ohio home.
In 1867 he was married in Ohio, and in that same year
removed to Ralls County, Missouri, where he followed
agricultural pursuits until 1903, then coming to Okla-
homa and locating on Government land in Ellis County.
His death occurred April 23, 1905. Mrs. Wybrant was
born June 2, 1840, in Noble County, Ohio, a daughter
of John B. Heskett, a native of Virginia. Her mother,
who bore the maiden name of Cople, was born in Dela-
ware, her parents being natives of the Netherlands.
There were four sons and two daughters in the family,
of whom two sons and one daughter died in infancy,
while those surviving are: Oscar C. ; Roy Cople, born

September 18, 1878, a farmer of Ellis County, Okla-
homa, married in 1906 Miss Minnie Whitehurst and has
two children, — Paul and Fern; and Lucy, born October
9, 1880, was married in 1904 to Edward Bondurant, and
has one child, — Viola.

After attending the public schools of Ralls County,
Oscar C. Wybrant took a course in the Chillicothe
(Missouri) Normal School, and at the age of seventeen
years began teaching. His career as an educator covered
a period of nine years, during which time he applied
himself to the study of law, and in 1900 he was ad-
mitted to practice in the courts of Ralls County, Mis-
souri. He came to Oklahoma in 1902, locating at Wood-
ward, and here he has since built up a large and repre-
sentative professional business, practicing in all the
courts. In 1910 he was elected county attorney of
Woodward County, on the law enforcement ticket, and his

1940

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

services during liis first term were so satisfactory that lie
was re-elected to succeed himself iu 1912, serving in all
four years, with an excellent record for efficient per-
formance of duty. Mr. Wybrant is a republican. He
has served as a member of the school board, and at all
times has been eager to contribute his abilities to the
advancement of beneficial measures. He has been active
also in the Christian Church, of which he and his family
are members, and at present is superintendent of the
Sunday school.

Mr. Wybrant was married June 16, 1903, at Mutual,
Oklahoma, to Miss Margaret Frankie Roberts, who was
born April 4, 1876, in Hardin County, Kentucky, the
birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, daughter of David R.
Roberts, a full review of whose life will be found on
another page of this work in the sketch of Ed S.
Roberts. David R. Roberts moved to Kansas in 1884
and to Mutual, Oklahoma, in 1894, and passed away at
the latter place April 13, 1905. Mrs. Wybrant was one
of the pioneer school teachers of Woodward County, and
for ten years taught in the log schoolhouses which were
the forerunners of Oklahoma’s present excellent educa-
tional institutions. A woman of many attainments and
accomplishments, she still continues active in educational,
social and religious work, and was one of the organizers
of the first church in Woodward County outside of those
located in the towns. Mr. and Mrs. Wybrant are the
parents of one daughter: Alma Joy, born at Wood-

ward, March 25, 1904.

William Buck of Wetumka is one of the most highly
successful fullblood Indians in Hughes County. He has
spent his entire life in the old Creek Nation, and though
he was twenty years of age before he could speak the
English language, he has exercised such foresight and
energy in managing his affairs that he is now one of the
wealthy men of the county, and has made it all in farm-
ing and in judicial handling of real estate.

Mr. Buck is now about thirty-six years of age. He
was born half a mile west of the present- site of W etumka,
and his Indian name is Yekiche. His parents Daniel
and Mary (Poyarfe) Buck were both born in the Creek
Nation, were fullbloods, and neither could speak the
English language as long as they lived. Both died on the
farm where their son William was born, and the father
passed away November 8, 1915, at the age of seventy-
four, having spent his active career as a farmer and stock
raiser. Their four children were: Joseph, now deceased;
Tony, deceased; Roley, who gained his education in the
Haskell Institute at Lawrence Kansas; and William.

William Buck as a boy attended the local schools, and
finished his education in the boarding schools at Wetumka
and Eufaula. He gave up his schooling as soon as he
had learned to speak the English language and he soon
afterwards started in business for himself as a farmer
and real estate man. Mr. Buck now owns about 3,400
acres in the Creek Nation, and operates it all under his
direct management. His prosperity is also represented
by one of the finest homes of Wetumka, a residence which
he built in 1903

For a number of years before statehood he was a mem-
ber of the Creek Council, and as a citizen of Oklahoma he
votes the republican ticket and is alive and public spirited
in relation to all public affairs. He is affiliated with
the Woodmen of the World.

In 1907 Mr. Buck married Miss Lizzie Tiger, who was
also born in the Creek Nation. They have two children:
Lonnie, and Sapho, who died in 1909.

Lee Dorroh, M. D. The quality of large-mindedness
and resource required of the young man who would suc-

ceed in any of the learned professions in these days of
severe competition and strenuous effort seems to be an
integral part of the equipment of Dr. Lee Dorroh, the
pioneer physician of Hammon, whence he came in April,
1909, shortly after the founding of the town. Doctor
Dorroh was born at Fredonia, Caldwell County, Ken-
tucky, June 28, 1872, and is a son of William W. and
Mary (Easley) Dorroh. The family was founded in
America by the great-grandfather of the doctor, who
spelled his name O ’Dorroh, a native of Ireland, who
settled in North Carolina about the time of the war of
the Revolution.

William W. Dorroh was born at Fredonia, Kentucky, i
February 22, 1827, and in 1875 removed to within four
miles of Princeton, the county seat of Caldwell County,
Kentucky, where he passed the remaining years of his
life as a farmer and stock raiser and died in Septem-
ber, 1904. He was a staunch democrat and a consistent
member of the Baptist Church. Mrs. Dorroh was born
in Virginia, in 1830, and when nine years of age was
taken by her parents to Fredonia, Kentucky, where
she was reared, educated and married. She tfied at
Princeton, in February, 1891. There were six children
in the family, namely: Bobbie, who became the wife
of Charles W. Guess, a farmer of Princeton, Kentucky;
Frankie, who is the wife of J. J. Rorer, a farmer of
Fredonia; William T., who is engaged in farming in
Caldwell County; Annie, who is the wife of W. T.
Hurst, a carpenter and mechanic of Hopkinsville, Ken-
tucky; Dr. Henry C., a practicing physician and surgeon
of Hammon, and graduate of the Louisville (Kentucky)
Medical College, a sketch of whose career appears else-
where in this work; and Doctor Lee, of this review.

Lee Dorroh grew up in the vicinity of Princeton,
Kentucky, where he attended the district schools, and
subsequently finished the teachers’ course. In 1896,
1897 and 1898 he attended Bowling Green (Kentucky)
Normal School, from which he was graduated in the
latter year with the degree of Bachelor of Sciences, and
in the meantime, in 1895, had become principal of schools
of Caldwell County, acting in that capacity six months
of each year until 1899. In the spring of 1899 Doctor
Dorroh went to Angels Camp, California, where he
was employed in the mining industry in connection with
a quartz mill at that place, and continued to be thus
engaged until January, 1902, when he began his medical
studies as a student at the Louisville Hospital College
of Medicine, at Louisville, Kentucky. Graduated from
that institution in the class of 1906, with the degree of
Doctor of Medicine, he first practiced for eighteen
months at Fredonia, Kentucky, and then returned to
Angels Camp, California, where he took charge of the
hospital as surgeon for the Mica Mining Company for
one year. In April, 1909, Doctor Dorroh came to
Hammon, Oklahoma, shortly after the founding of the
town, and here has carried on a general medical and
surgical practice, his offices being located on Main Street.
Since 1910 he has been physician for the Red Moon
Indian Agency, and is also local surgeon for the Clinton,
Oklahoma & Western Railway. His professional connec-
tions include membership in the Roger Mills County
Medical Society, the Southwestern Medical Society,
the Oklahoma Medical Society and the American
Medical Association. He is the recipient of a pat-
ronage as financially remunerative as it is intellec-
tually satisfying and encouraging, and notwithstand-
ing his well known caution and respect for tradition is
not afraid of untrod paths or independent, individual
effort. Doctor Dorroh has interested himself variously
in enterprises of a business nature and is vice president
and a director of the Farmers National Bank of Hamr

The boy is Hugh, and the girl is Rebecca Kathryn who was the
actual inspiration for the line “Here's to the daughters, as fair as
the dawn. ' ’ She is, to the author, the real Oklahoma ‘ ‘ daughter ’ ’
since she is his only daughter.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1941

mon. A democrat in politics, he takes a lively interest
in civic affairs, and has served as health officer, and is
now a member of the school board. Fraternally, he
belongs to Hammon Lodge No. 435, Ancient Free and
Accepted Masons, of which he is treasurer.

Doctor Dorroh was married in October, 1906, at
Bowling Green, Kentucky, to Miss Ophelia Alvis, daugh-
ter of Asa and Mabel Alvis, the former of whom, a
farmer, is now deceased, while the latter still survives
and resides at Salem, Kentucky. Doctor and Mrs.
Dorroh have two children: Thelma Lee, born April 28,
1909; and Louise Camille, born December 14, 1910.

George Riley Hall. About a year before the original
Oklahoma opening there came into Indian Territory a
green country boy in search of adventure and fortune.
So far as known that kind of fortune represented by
heaps of gilt-edged bank stock and securities has never
been accumulated by George Riley Hall. He is never-
theless a very fortunate man, fortunate in his talents and
attainments, in his long and varied experience, and in
the warm and hearty friendship of many men whom it is
an honor to know.

He has found in Oklahoma another resource than
material wealth. This fortune is best described in words
of his own, a poem known as ‘ ‘ Land of My Dreaming, ’ '
which has brought him recognition, not only in his home
state, but throughout the country as a home-made poet
with a gift of language and picturesque ideas such as
men never acquire from books, but only from real life.
It is a poem that has been widely read and frequently
published, but it will not be superfluous to include it
here:

Land of the mistletoe, smiling in splendor
Out from the borderland, mystic and old,

Sweet are the memories, precious and tender,
Linked with thy summers of azure and gold.

O! Oklahoma, fair land of my dreaming,

Land of the, lover, the loved and the lost ;

Cherish thy legends with tragedy -teeming,

Legends where love reckoned not of the cost.

Land of Sequoyah, my heart ’s in thy keeping,

O, Tulledega, how can I forget!

Calm are thy vales where the silences sleeping,
Wake into melodies, tinged with regret.

Let the deep chorus of life’s music throbbing,
Swell to fuil harmony born of the years;

Or for the loved and lost, tenderly sobbing,

Drop to that cadence that whispers of tears.

Land of the mistletoe, here ’s to thy glory !

Here ’s to thy daughters, as fair as the dawn !
Here’s to thy pioneer sons, in whose story
Valor and love shall live endlessly on!

George Riley Hall was born at Rolla, Missouri, Feb-
ruary 1, 1865, a son of George Riley and Rebecca (Reece)
Hall. His mother was a daughter of Rev. Dr. Sherwood
Reece of Tennessee, who moved into Southwest Missouri
in 1851 and located in Lawrence County, where he con-
tinued his professional work as a Baptist clergyman and
physician. Mr. Hall’s grandfather, John Hall, was a
native of Kentucky and moved to Sarcoxie, Missouri, also
about 1851. George R. Hall, Sr., entered the Union
army in the fall of 1864 as a member of Company C,
Forty-eighth Missouri Infantry, served until the close
of the struggle and came out of the army so broken in
health that he soon afterwards died. He and his ydfe
were married in Missouri in 1854 and she died in 1888.
George R. Hall was a mechanic and farmer and had con-

siderable artistic talent which came down to his son.
Of the six children there are three now living, George R.
and two daughters who live in Texas.

George Riley Hall had about three terms of district
schooling. He is really self educated, and by much
application to those lessons found in the course of his
experience has attained a degree of culture such as many
men with college degrees are not acquainted with. He
became dependent upon his own exertions after his
father’s death, and after the death of his mother he
and his brother, Samuel J., the latter now deceased, came
into Indian Territory in 1888. He stopped on the
Canadian River, near Eufaula, and for a time tried cot-
ton raising, but without success. In the fall of 1890
he was appointed teacher in one of the neighborhood
Indian schools, near the present site of Henryetta, hav-
ing about a dozen wild Indian children under his super-
vision. He taught in neighborhood schools until 1895,
and thereafter" until 1900 was employed in the boarding
and academic institutions among the Indians, and in 1897
became president of the Creek National Teachers’ Nor-
mal School, in which he had previously served as vice
president. This high position in the educational affairs
of Indian Territory was a remarkable record for one
who had not the advantages of liberal education, and
had come here without special recommendations as a
teacher and with practically no friends or other influ-
ence to promote him on his career. Mr. Hall, while
teaching, acquired a considerable knowledge of the Creek
language and there is perhaps no man in Eastern Okla-
homa more favorably known among the Indians of the
older generation.

On leaving the schoolroom in 1900 Mr. Hall leased a
farm and for a time was actively identified with agri-
culture in Okmulgee County. Then, in 1902, he estab-
lished the Free Lance at Henryetta, which is the oldest
newspaper in the town and has become both a daily and
weekly. He has published it continuously since then
and has kept his home and plant on the same lot, at
211 South Fifth Street, one block south of Main Street.
He conducts it as a republican paper, and in fourteen
years he has made the Free Lance one of the most
influential organs of public opinion in Eastern Oklahoma.
He has never had the backing of wealthy men in this
enterprise, and has always fought his own financial bat-
tles. He has conducted the Free Lance remarkably clean,
and it has always stood high in the esteem of the other
papers of the state.

Ever since coming to Indian Territory Mr. Hall has
been a writer of poetry, and it was in 1906 that he
produced the charming verses above quoted. This poem
was widely published through the Associated Press,
largely through the influence of Mr. Hall’s friend, Alex-
ander Posey. A great many favorable comments were
passed upon the verses by papers throughout the United
States. Mr. Hall is a natural poet and has found in
literature and music his most satisfying pursuit. A few
months ago he bought ten acres in the heart of the
beautiful Tulledegan hills on the shore of the North
Canadian River, and this place he has improved for a
summer home and there he delights in the beauties of
landscape and finds his greatest inspiration for writing.

In January, 1902, he married Miss Kathryn Harris of
Fayetteville, Arkansas. She was a teacher in the Indian
schools up to the time of her marriage. It is in his
home and with his family that Mr. Hall spends all his
spare time, and it may be truely said of him that he is
in love with his family. He and his wife have four
children. Rebecca Kathryn was the actual inspiration
of the line above quoted, “Here’s to thy daughters as
fair as dawn, ’ ’ and she is to the author the real ‘ ‘ Okla-
homa daughter,” since she is his only daughter. The

1942

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

three sons are: George Milton, who died at the age

of seven weeks; Hugh; and Lawrence.

As a republican Mr. Hall served two terms as county
chairman of the Republican Central Committee, and has
also been active in state politics. He is past master and
charter member of Tulledegan Lodge No. 201, Ancient,
Free and Accepted Masons, at Henryetta, and he gave
the name to this lodge in honor of the beautiful place
which he had selected for his own summer home. He
is also a Knight Templar and Shriner and he and his
wife are members of the Christian Church. Mr. Hall is
also known as an unerring marksman and “sure shot”
with the rifle. Though he has spent more than a quarter
of a century in the Indian Territory District of Okla-
homa, and was here in the time marked by many scenes
of violence and when ‘ ‘ gun toting ’ ’ was a regular cus-
tom, it has been his good fortune never to have his own
hand stained by the shedding of human blood. He is a
man strong, virile and wholesome, temperate in all his
•habits, and with all his varied experience has not a gray
hair in his head.

Harry Lee Fogg. The first county judge of Canadian
County after statehood was Harry Lee Fogg. At the
tune of his election he was regarded as one of the rising
young attorneys of the El Reno bar, and his position in
the law is now regarded as one the highest in Western
Oklahoma. While his chief ambition has always been
within the limits of his profession, Judge Fogg has the
qualities of a leader of men, and is prominent in the
councils of the democratic party in the state.

Harry Lee Fogg is a native of Kentucky, born at
Mt. Sterling, September 15, 1878, a son of Thomas L.
and Kitty (Gillespie) Fogg. Both his parents were
Kentuckians by birth and have spent their lives in that
state. They now live in Montgomery County, where
Thomas L. Fogg is still active as a farmer.

Judge Fogg grew up on a farm, received his early
training in private schools, and before the completion
of his literary education entered a law office at Mt.
Sterling, where he trained himself in the law. He was
admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1901 when twenty-
three years of age.

His career as a practicing lawyer has all been passed
at El Reno, where his services have been retained in
some of the very important litigation before the local
courts. In the office of county judge of Canadian County
Mr. Fogg served with ability for three years. He has
been much interested in democratic politics ever since
coming to Oklahoma, and is now serving his second term
as a member of the State Democratic Central Committee.
His fraternal associations are with the Masonic Order
and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and
his religious faith is that of the Christian Church.

In 1905 Judge Fogg was married at El Reno to Miss
Blanche Fryberger, daughter of W. E. and Cora B. Fry-
berger. They are the parents of two children: William

Lee and Rupert Metcalfe Fogg.

Edwin Fishback. Among the older business men of
Bartlesville mention should be made of Edwin Fishback,
whose associations with that then small city began in
1904, and who for a number of years has been at the
head of a large and prospering businesses a plumbing
contractor. Mr. Fishback is well known in Washington
County, and his reputation for business ability and in-
tegrity is unassailable.

Born at Hall iu Morgan County, Indiana, September
27, 1881, Edwin Fishback is a son of Edwin and Nancy
Jane (Landfair) Fishback. His father was born in
Taylorville, Kentucky, and his mother in Ohio, and they
were married in Morgan County, Indiana. His father

grew up in Kentucky and at the age of twenty-three
removed to Indiana, and was a farmer in that state
until his death in 1881. The widowed mother, left with
two children, somewhat later married James A. Long,
and they removed to Labette County, Kansas, when
Edwin Fishback was ten years of age. Mr. Long died
in 1913, and Mrs. Long is still living. Edwin Fish-
back has a brother Charles F., who lives at Edna, Kansas,
and by the Long marriage there is a son A. L. of Edna.

Mr. Fishback lived with his mother until eleven years
ago. He was graduated from the Labette County High
School in 1903, and for a year found employment at
Wichita, Kansas, with a hydro-carbon light company.
In December, 1904, he arrived in Bartlesville, and the
next three years were spent as a plumbing employe of
W. T. Berentz. Since then he has been in independent
work as a plumbing contractor and has executed some
of the largest contracts installed in Washington County.
He knows his trade in all its details and has a record
of reliable and proficient performance which brings him
all the business he and several employes can attend to.
In 1911 Mr. Fishback built his shop on Chickasaw
Avenue, and in 1913 erected a comfortable home on
the same avenue.

In politics he is a republican, is a member of the
Baptist Church, and is affiliated with the Masonic Order,
the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Knights
of Pythias. On December 28, 1908, he married Mrs.
Jessie (Wood) Upham, widow of Anthony F. Upham,
who by her first marriage has a son Stanley.

William N. Fayant. Probably no one citizen has
exercised a more potent influence in the upbuilding of
the little community of Dustin in Hughes County than
William N. Fayant. Mr. Fayant came to Oklahoma
about fifteen years ago after a broad and successful ex-
perience in business and civic life in South Dakota. He
came South in search of a milder climate and was at El
Reno in 1901 at the opening for settlement of the south-
western part of the present state.

In the next year he located at Spokogee, now Dustin,
in Hughes County when that town was started and has
participated actively in every enterprise of importance
there since. His main business, to which he was trained
in early youth, has been the cattle industry and the retail
meat business. He has become extensively known all over
this section of the state as a cattle man, both buying and
shipping, and at the present time he has 200 head of
stock, and at different times has owned much larger
herds.

An important feature of his Oklahoma residence has
been his public service in behalf of his home town. He
was the first mayor of Dustin, and held the office three
consecutive terms. He also organized the first school
board, was elected its president, and was kept at the head
of local school affairs until 1914, when he had decided that
lie had served long enough and that others should assume
his share of the responsibilities. After retiring from the
school board he was again elected mayor, but after one
term declined further honors in that position. Politically
Mr. Fayant is a democrat. The first state legislature
appointed him one of the county commissioners of Hughes
County, and he was one of the three first selected to that
office and became chairman of the board, and was ap-
pointed by Governor Haskell to the first county election
board and served as its president four years. This and
nearly every other political honor came unsolicited. A
few years ago Governor Cruce appointed him a delegate
to the Southern Commercial Congress.

William N. Fayant was born at Tamaqua in Schuylkill
County, Pennsylvania, December 10, 1850, a son of Bar-
toloma and Elizabeth (Baker) Fayant. His father was

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1943

born in Alsace, France, in 1805, while the mother was
born near the Eiver Rhine in Germany in 1812. Both
came when young to the United States during the ’30s,
I and in 1839 they were married in Pennsylvania. In
1856 the family moved out to Wisconsin, and the father
died in 1883 and the mother in 1898 at Muscoda, Grand
County, Wisconsin. The father was a farmer and stock-
man, and in Wisconsin established a flourishing meat
business which is one of the oldest institutions of its
kind in that section of the state and is still conducted by
members of the family. In earlier years he was also a
contractor for the United States army, furnishing horses
chiefly, and that business took him to all parts of the
United States and the Territories. He also spent much
time in Florida, where some of his children were born.
His later years were passed in comparative retirement
and ease. His children were: Margaret, wife of John
Neff of Muscoda, Wisconsin; Victor, who now lives in
Chicago; Josephine, wife of Frank Neff of Muscatine,
Iowa; Francis, who was a member of the famous Iron
Brigade, Company K, Seventh Wisconsin Regiment,
served all through the Civil war, in one battle had a foot
shot off and died largely as a result of his wounds two
years after the war; Elizabeth, who became the wife
of Joseph Seiger of La Crosse, Wisconsin, and both are
now deceased; William N. ; Mary, who died in 1900 as
the wife of Jacob Huppler; and Theo of Iowa Falls,
Iowa. Besides those named two other children died in
infancy.

William N. Fayant lived with his parents until he was
twenty-one years of age, and at that time his father
turned over to him the meat business at Muscoda, Wis-
consin. A little later when gold was discovered in the
Black Hills of the Dakotas Mr. Fayant turned the busi-
ness over to his brother Victor and went out to seek
a fortune in that part of South Dakota. He was a miner
there until stricken with the mountain fever, when he
returned home, but later he moved out to Huron, South
Dakota, and became a pioneer business man, establish-
ing a meat market which he conducted successfully for a
number of years. He was also a member of the town
council at Huron and acquired a homestead there. In
1881 at Huron, South Dakota, Mr. Fayant married Miss
Susie Shirt, who was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
in 1854. After his marriage Mr. Fayant continued to
live at Huron until 1894, when on account of the cold
climate he went South, spent several years at Houston,
Texas, and then reached Oklahoma in 1901. During his
residence in South Dakota he became well known all
over the state not only as a buyer and shipper of cattle,
but also in a civic way. He built one of the first houses
at Huron, and on coming to Oklahoma he constructed the
first stone house at Spokogee, now Dustin, and has since
built three other stone business blocks on Main Street,
and still owns them. He also has several farms near
Dustin, owning outright 700 acres and having about
1,000 acres under lease. Fraternally he is affiliated with
the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and his church is
the Catholic.

Mr. and Mrs. Fayant have two children: Joseph W.
who is still at home, and Benjamin, who died at the age
of seventeen while a student in St. Joseph College at
Muskogee. Mr. Fayant now has a partner in his local
meat business at Dustin, Samuel A. Walker, and the firm
is known as Fayant & Walker.

Albert A. Ballard. About thirteen years ago Albert
A. Ballard first identified himself with the newspaper
business. Since that time he has advanced through
all the stages from general office man in a business
with which he was unfamiliar to his present post of

publisher and editor of the leading newspaper of his
town — the Seiling Messenger. Many vicissitudes beset
his path in the years he has devoted to the upbuilding
of his present enterprise, but he has won through them
all in a manner that speaks of a sturdiness of character
and an unswerving purpose, without which few really
great successes have ever been realized.

Mr. Ballard was born in Barnard, Lincoln County,
Kansas, on September 8, 1880, and he is the son of
Isaac A. and Dicy A. (Beement) Ballard. The father
was born in March, 1840, in Pulaski County, Kentucky.
The mother, too, was a native daughter of the same
place, and she was born on September 8, 1844.

The Ballard family is one that was established in
Colonial days in old New York, and one line of the
family pioneered it . to Kentucky in the early days of
settlement there. They established homes and became
prominent in the affairs of the state, accumulated wealth
and enjoyed a prosperity that is oft-times the portion
of pioneer families. The Beements, too, were early

settlers in New York, and with the Ballards settled in
Kentucky.

After the marriage of Isaac A. Ballard to Dicy Bee-
ment, in Pulaski County, Kentucky, they moved to
Illinois, and thence to Saline County, Kansas. In 1871,
still unsettled, they went to Lincoln County, Kansas,
and it was there the subject was born. The family
continued in residence there for some years, and it was
not until September 27, 1897, that they moved to
Oklahoma, settling \in Dewey County. Mr. Ballard,
though well advanced in years, was a pioneer to the
Dewey County district in the truest sense of the word,
and he helped to establish the Town of Beement, and was
largely instrumental in getting the postoffice for that
town. Today he has his home five miles west of the
Town of Cestos, on the site of the former Beement. He
has a homestead farm, and though now in the seventy-
eighth year of his life, he is active and energetic, and
farms forty acres of his tract, which comprises the
regular homestead allotment of 160 acres.

The children of Mr. and Mrs. Ballard were seven in
number, and may be mentioned briefly at this point.
The eldest, Sarah M., is deceased. She married O. B.
Dryden, a farmer, who survives her and lives at Vici,
Oklahoma. Martin O. is a farmer and lives at Silt,
Colorado. The next two, Edwin and Alfred, died young.
The fifth child is Albert A., of this review. Kittie died
in Fresno, California, September 21, 1914. She was
the wife of John B. Vincent, a grocer now in business
in Oakland, California. Grover C., a farmer and rural
mail carrier, is located at Reason, Oklahoma.

Albert A. Ballard attended the country schools of
Barnard, Lincoln County, Kansas, up to the age of
sixteen years. His educational advantages, it will be
seen, were not of the best, for the district school in
any locality is apt to lack much that is desirable in
the training of youth, and when he had finished that
schooling he turned his attention to the farm, and for
six years applied himself diligently to farm work under
his father ’s direction. He was, therefore, twenty-two
years old when he made his first attempt at anything
beyond farm work, and he made the attempt in the
office of a Geary, Oklahoma, publication. That was in
November, 1902. In February, 1903, he went to Seiling,
Oklahoma, where he soon became manager of the old
Seiling Guide. He was in that position for two years,
during which time W. G. Smith was editor of the paper.
Mr. Ballard then went to Hitchcock and was employed
in an important capacity on the Hitchcock Vanguard
for a year. In February, 1906, the town was wiped
out by a fire. Mr. Ballard saved enough equipment

1944

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

from the ruins of the plant to make it possible to bring
out a news sheet on schedule, but the following month
moved the remains of the plant to Selling and joined in
the work of producing the Seiling Messenger. The
work was successful, but three years later it seemed
expedient to consolidate with the Seiling Guide, the
name of Messenger being retained, and Mr. Ballard is
now editor and publisher of the paper.

He is the owner of the plant on Main Street, and
also has a nice residence property in the town. The
Messenger is an independent sheet, voicing no political
sentiment, and circulates widely in Dewey and surround-
ing counties, with a good sized foreign list as well.
It serves well the best interests of Seiling and its people,
and is a clean, well managed and healthy publication,
wielding an influence for good in those communities
where it circulates.

Mr. Ballard is an independent republican. He has
served as town clerk here, and has also been a mem-
ber of the local school board. He is a member of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, and is superintendent of its
Sunday School. He is affiliated with the Oklahoma Press
Association, and fraternally is identified with the Modern
Woodmen of America, being clerk of Seiling Lodge No.
7345.

On May 7, 1901, Mr. Ballard was married in Wood-
ward, Oklahoma, to Miss Sarah E. Hatfield, daughter
of J. A. Hatfield, a well known contractor and builder
in Bennington, Kansas. Mr. and Mrs. Ballard have one
child, Sibyl Berenice, born October 3, 1907, and now
attending the local schools.

Prof. Jefferson D. Campbell. A man of fine intel-
lectual attainments and of thorough executive ability,
Professor Campbell has been a resident of Oklahoma
since 1902. His career for many years has been identified
with educational affairs, and to his work in Oklahoma
he brought a long experience both as an educator and
public official in his native State of Missouri. He has
taught and supervised the instruction of a host of young
people, many of whom have now grown to manhood and
womanhood, and his position as an Oklahoma educator
at the present time is in the important and exacting
office of county superintendent of schools in Okmulgee
County. He is now serving his second term and his
administration has been characterized by a general rais-
ing of the standards of the schools of the county and
the working out of effective systems for unity and
symmetry in the school service.

Born near Paris, Monroe County, Missouri, January
11, 1863, Professor Campbell is a son of Morton and
Mary (Northern) Campbell, both of whom were born
and reared in Kentucky, where they married. They then
came to Missouri, and the mother died there in 1874 when
Professor Campbell was about eleven years old. His
father, who died in 1885, had a long and unusually inter-
esting career. He was one of the adventurous argonauts
who crossed the plains and became pioneers in the gold
fields in California in 1849. After a year he returned
home, but later made a second trip to California by way
of the Isthmus of Panama. Prior to that he had served
in the Mexican war and for four years was in the Con-
federate army during the Civil war, becoming a non-
commissioned officer. The papers granting him a Govern-
ment pension as a veteran of the Mexican war came to
him only a few days prior to his death. In a business
way he was long numbered among the prosperous agri-
culturists and stock raisers of Vernon County, Missouri,
was influential in community affairs and was an able and
high-minded citizen. Politically he was identified with
the democratic party and served many years in the office

of justice of the peace. Incidentally it should be noted
that his brother William was for many years on the
bench of the District Court in their native State of
Kentucky. Morton Campbell was the father of six sons
and three daughters, and of the number three are still
living.

After the death of his mother in 1874 the home was
broken up, and Professor Campbell spent much of his
early youth in the home of a devout English couple.
When only twelve years of age he began working on a
farm by the month and thereafter not only earned his
own living but paid his way through school and college.
He attended the public schools of Missouri and in 1892
graduated from the Missouri Normal School at Clarks-
burg. Later he attended the University of Missouri
at Columbia. Thus by his own efforts and in the inter-
vals of farm work and school teaching he gained a
liberal education, and has long been recognized for his
proficiency as a teacher and his ability to impart to
others the knowledge and character which he ' himself
possesses.

For about twenty years he was in successful work as
a teacher in his native state, and in him the profession
has been dignified and honored. For four years was
county superintendent of schools in St. Clair County,
Missouri. This and other offices were forced upon him
by his friends and his party associates, and for four
years he served as county clerk, and for another six
years was a member of the county board of education.
His service as county clerk of St. Clair County was at a
peculiarly interesting period in the local history of that
county. In the early days of railroad construction in
Missouri, St. Clair County had bonded itself for a large
sum to pay for a proposed railroad. The bonds were
sold and the promoters of the enterprise used the funds
without showing any net results in the way of a railroad,
and with a deep sense of indignation at the swindle the
people of St. Clair County thereafter persistently refused
to pay the county bonds when they became due, and in
consequence the county judges had to hold court in con-
cealment, and every judge elected studiously kept out of
the way of officers from the United States courts. Pro-
fessor Campbell was one of such officials, and in those
days the county officers held what was called “brush
court,” and he and the county attorney virtually con-
ducted the entire business of St. Clair County, and with
great credit to themselves.

When he came to Oklahoma in 1902 Professor Camp-
bell assumed the position of principal of the high school
at Mounds, Creek County. He was also for two years
mayor of that town. From there he went to Beggs, in
Okmulgee County, and became principal of the high
school. His work as an educator in that county con-
tinued until 1912, at which time evidence of popular
appreciation of his services was shown when he was
elected county superintendent of schools. A still stronger
testimonial to his ability was given him in 1914 when
he was re-elected for a second term of two years. The
county will always owe him a debt for the splendid service
he has given in upbuilding its school system, which is not
excelled by any other county in the state.

Politically Mr. Campbell has always been in line with
the principles and policies of the democratic party. He
is a member of the Masonic fraternity, and he and his
wife are active in the Christian Church. They have a
fine family, and move in the best social circles of the
county. In 1884 Professor Campbell married Miss Fre-
donia May Teaney. A native of Tennessee she was a
child when her family moved to Missouri, where she was
reared and educated, being a daughter of James and
Mary (Lambert) Teaney. Mrs. Campbell gave four

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1945

years of her early life to the work of the schoolroom.
Mr. and Mrs. Campbell have six children: Lena Mabel,

James M., Fannie L., William Clyde, Dorothy and Gor-
don L. Lena Mabel followed the example of her father
and mother and was a popular teacher until the age of
twenty, and is, now the wife of Arthur M. Miller and
they reside in Okmulgee County. James M. is serving
as deputy county clerk of Okmulgee County, and Fannie
L. is also a teacher in the county schools. The younger
children are still at home.

Frank W. Brooks. The highly successful character
of the commission form of government has been due in
many cases to the efficient personnel of those selected
by the citizens to take charge of their municipal affairs.
A case in point is that of Frank W. Brooks, water com-
missioner of Enid, who, with the mayor and the com-
missioner of streets and alleys, constitute the governing
body of the city. Enid has been under a commission
form of government since 1908.

Mr. Brooks was made superintendent of waterworks
at Enid April 12, 1907, and had charge of the local water
plant as superintendent until his election in April, 1913,
as water commissioner. Mr. Brooks has thus had super-
vision of this important public utility throughout the
most important period of its development and extension.

Few cities in the Southwest have a better system of
waterworks, either as to source of supply or system of
distribution, than Enid. The source of supply is thirty-
two deep wells, reaching down below the surface about
fifty feet into an apparently inexhaustible underground
stream flowing through gravel strata. Each well is con-
nected directly with the main pipe line, leading from two
great twin pumps. For 400 feet each way from the
engine house the water is carried through a tunnel
5 feet wide and 6% feet high, 31 feet below the surface.
The wells are located 1% miles northwest of the city.
The cost of sinking the wells, constructing the tunnel and
installing the engines at the main plant was $40,000.

This is an excellent example of municipal operation
and ownership. Every one of the 15,000 inhabitants of
Enid has an interest in the waterworks plant. The city
was bonded for $240,000 in order to construct and equip
the waterworks, and it is claimed that the enterprise
is more than worth what it cost. In 1907 there were
431 meters in use, while at the present time the number
has increased to 1,831. For the year ending in June,
1914, these consumers paid a total of over $18,000 for
water service, and the expenses of running the plant
for the same year were over $11,000. Thus the profit
over operations was about $6,000, though that was not
sufficient to pay the interest on the waterworks bond.
The fourteen miles of water mains in 1907 have increased
to thirty-one miles. During one year the extensions
required twenty -two carloads of pipe. There are 359
fire hydrants, and service for these is supplied free,
whereas under private ownership the charge would ap-
proximate probably $10 per hydrant. The water depart-
ment has eight employes, six of them being engineers
and firemen, with two others employed in the general
water service.

Frank W. Brooks is a native of Ohio, and when nine
years of age moved out to Nebraska in 1875 and
grew up in what was then a raw western state. His
education came from district schools, and his early life
was spent on a farm. His first independent enterprise
was as a liveryman at York, Nebraska, and for several
years he was also a salesman in the hardware and agri-
cultural implement trade. On September 16, 1893, in
company with his brother Jerome, Mr. Brooks made the
race into the Cherokee Strip. The brothers secured

adjoining quarters in section 15, three miles southeast
of Enid. Frank W. Brooks lived there and developed
a farm until 1905, though for several years his chief
business was as traveling salesman. His brother still
owns and operates the farm near Enid. Mr. Brooks left
the road to assume the superintendency of the water-
works plant at Enid, and his long and thorough experience
in that department made his choice for the office of water
commissioner one that was based upon the utmost con-
sideration of fitness.

Mr. Brooks was married February 27, 1888, at York,
Nebraska, to Miss Annie Bennett, a native of Illinois.
They have a family of six children: Clarence L., who is

employed by the Alton Mercantile Company at Enid;
Lois M., a vocalist at York, Nebraska; Hazel, a stenog-
rapher in the Telephone Company at Enid ; Laura, a vocal
teacher; Bessie, a member of the high school class of
1915 at Enid; and Harold. Mr. Brooks is affiliated with
the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Modern
Woodmen of America, is secretary of the local chapter
of the United Commercial Travelers at Enid, is a
republican in politics, and a member of the official board
of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Charles W. Goree. The unequivocal verdict of ap-
probation passed upon Mr. Goree in the City and County
of Okmulgee is shown forth most conclusively in his
incumbency of the office of county clerk and in the fact
that he is the only democrat who has been elected to
this office in the history of the county. He is one of
the appreciative and loyal citizens of Oklahoma, a man
of marked public spirit, and is well entitled to specific
recognition in this history.

Mr. Goree was born at Lumpkin, Stewart County,
Georgia, on the 10th of November, 1867, and is a son
of William A. and Louvisa (Hardie) Goree, the former
of whom was born in Virginia, of Irish lineage, and the
latter of whom was born in Georgia, her ancestry tracing
back to staunch English origin. The Goree family was
originally established in France, and from that country
representatives of the name early immigrated to Ire-
land, with whose history the name has been identified
for many generations. The paternal grandparents of
the subject of this review immigrated from the Emerald
Isle to the United States and established their home
in Virginia, where they passed the residue of their
lives.

He whose name initiates this review was a child at
the time of his parents' immigration from Georgia to
Navarro County, Texas, where he was reared and edu-
cated, his father being now a resident of Lubbock, that
state, and his mother having died at Chillicothe, Harde-
man County, Texas, in August, 1908, at which time she
was "sixty-seven years of age.

Charles W. Goree attended the public schools of the
Lone Star State until he had profited duly by the ad-
vantages of the high school, and in the autumn of 1886
he entered the college at Summer Hill, Texas, in which
he was graduated as a member of the class of 1890.
Thereafter he was for thirteen years an ambitious and
successful teacher in the schools of Texas, where he con-
tinued to maintain his home until 1904, when he came to
Okmulgee County, Oklahoma, where he continued his
effective services as a representative of the pedagogic
profession for the ensuing four years. Thereafter he
was engaged in the grocery business at Okmulgee until
the autumn of 1912, when he was elected county clerk.
His careful and efficient administration resulted in his
re-election in the fall of 1914, and, as previously stated,
he has the distinction of being the only democrat elected
to this important office in Okmulgee County. In addi-

1946

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

tion to giving most punctilious attention to liis official
duties Mr. Goree maintains a general supervision of his
well improved dairy farm, eligibly situated a short dis-
tance west of the city. In honor of his collegiate alma
mater he has named this well improved place Summer
Hill Dairy. He is affiliated with the Independent Order
of Odd Fellows and both he and his wife hold member-
ship in the Baptist Church. Mr. Goree is the eldest in a
family of eight children; Texanna, the next in order
of birth, is the wife of Rev. John A. Jones, of Chilli-
cothe, Texas; Mrs. Mary Lovett is deceased and is sur-
vived by three children; William H. has for the past
fifteen years been in the employ of the great meat-
packing firm of Armour & Company, at its establishment
in the City of Forth Worth, Texas; Roland E. has the
active management of the dairy farm of the subject of
this sketch; Lena became the wife of Richard Rhyne
and was a resident of Alvord, Texas, at the time of
her death; Frederick E. has been associated with the
building of the Government canal across the Isthmus of
Panama, where he still remains in the employ of the
Government, as a stenographer; and Orren C. is a resi-
dent of the City of Dallas, Texas.

At Corsicana, Texas, on the 10th of June, 1891, was
solemnized the marriage of Charles W. Goree to Miss
. Mary Elizabeth Stroder, who was born and reared in
Texas and who was a schoolmate of her husband when
they were young. She is a daughter of Alexander and
Catherine Stoder, who are still residents of Texas. To
Mr. and Mrs. Goree have been born ten children, the
first of whom, Katie, died at the age of 2% years;
Gladys is a popular teacher in the schools of Okmulgee
County; Iona is deputy in the office of the county treas-
urer; Mattie and Thomas Bryan are, in 1916, students
in the Okmulgee High School; and the younger children
of the gracious home ci*cle are Verna, John Gordon,
Maggie May, Charles Stroder, and Sidney Frederick.

In 1904 Mr. Hodges came to Oklahoma and here his
first service was in connection with a restaurant at
Muskogee. He next became a solicitor for the Muskogee
Democrat, and he continued his work in this capacity
after the consolidation of the paper with the Muskogee
Times. Since 1909 he has been manager of the Okmulgee
Daily Democrat, and since January, 1915, he has been
owner of a half -interest in the large and important
publishing business in which his associate is James J.
Moroney, of whom specific mention is made on other
pages of this work, the firm publishing not only the
Okmulgee Daily Democrat but also the Okmulgee Prog-
ress, the Mid-Continent Oil and Farm News, and the
Morris News, at Morris, Okmulgee County. Mr. Hodges
is also the owner of a half -interest in the Wagoner Demo-
crat, published at the county seat of Wagoner County.

Mr. Hodges has been a most enthusiastic worker in
behalf of the cause of the democratic party, and, as
previously stated, is chairman of its central committee
for Okmulgee County. He is affiliated with both the
York and Scottish Rite bodies of the Masonic fraternity,
and also with the Benevolent and Protective Order of
Elks. He and his wife are earnest members of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, at Okmulgee, and he
is serving on its official board.

On the 28th of June, 1909, Mr. Hodges wedded Miss
May Stinnett, who was born in Kentucky but reared and
educated in Texas and Oklahoma, she being a daughter
of P. B. Stinnett, who is still a resident of the Lone
Star State. Mr. and Mrs. Hodges have a fine little son,
Bert C., Jr.

Hon. William N. Barry. One of the very capable
members of the House of Representatives in the Fifth
Oklahoma Legislature is William N. Barry of Okemah,

Okfuskee County. Mr. Barry was elected in 1914 and
had previously been close!;? identified with public affairs
in his home county, where he is proprietor of a very
successful business, The Okemah Hardware Company.
While faithful to his constituency, Mr. Barry has brought
a sound business judgment to the work of the Fifth Legis-
lature, and has exercised an important influence on cur-
rent legislation. In the House in the Fifth Legislature
he has served as chairman of Committee on Elections
and as a member of committees on public service cor-
porations, municipal corporation, dentistry, enrolled and
engrossed bills.

He is one of the younger members of the legislature,
but is comparatively an old resident of his section of the
state. He was born in Lafayette County, Mississippi,
September 9, 1879, a son of Jesse R. and Ellen Elizabeth
(Nichols) Barry. His father was born in South Caro-
lina and his mother in Alabama, but they both came to
Mississippi as children and in the house where they
married they spent the rest of their days. The mother
died in Lafayette County, Mississippi, August 12, 1906,
at the age of fifty-seven, and the father on December
10, 1914, aged seventy-six. He spent all his active career
as a farmer, but during the Civil war he was a private
soldier in the Confederate army. He also held the office
of county supervisor and exercised considerable influence
in local politics. In the family were eight daughters
and two sons.

After growing up on the old farm back in Mississippi
and gaining a public school education, at the age of
twenty he started out to make his fortune in a new
country. In 1901 Mr. Barry went to Texas and for
a year or so employed his energies on a farm, but in
August, 1903, arrived at Okemah, Oklahoma, where he
became clerk in a local hardware store and thus learned
the business which he has since followed so successfully.
From Okemah he went to Paden, another town in Okfus-
kee County, in 1907, and there engaged in the hardware
business with John D. Richards as a partner. On Jan-
uary 1, 1911, he returned to Okemah and has since estab-
lished and conducted a very large business under the
name Okemah Hardware Company.

Always interested in public affairs, he was elected one
of the first commissioners of Okfuskee County after
statehood, representing District No. 1, and was re-
elected in 1910. He served two terms, or about five
years after statehood. In 1914 he was elected to repre-
sent his home county in the House of Representatives.

Mr. Barry is a democrat, a member of the Masonic
Order and the Knights of Pythias. On December 9, 1907,
he married Eunice I. Busby, who was born in Missis-
sippi and came to Oklahoma with her parents, Mr. and
Mrs. J. D. Busby, who located at' Okemah about the
time the town was founded. To their marriage have
been born three children, all of them natives of Okfuskee
County. Their names are Eleanor E., Lois I. and Wil-
liam N. Jr.

Judge Thomas Lewis Rogers. As the contents of
these historical volumes will be esteemed by future gen-
erations in proportion as they include within their pages
the records of men most closely identified with the old
territory and the new state, it is especially suitable to
the design of the publication to include a record of the
late Thomas Lewis Rogers, who died at his home in
Pawhuska, January 1, 1909, at the age of seventy-one
years, four months and twenty-one days.

Judge Rogers was prominent both as the descendant
of an eminent Cherokee-Osage family and in his own per-
son as a successful farmer and stock raiser. For many
years he lived at his home, seven miles southeast of
Pawhuska. His relations to the Osage Nation were

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1947

noteworthy and most commendable to both his head and
his heart.

In the preliminary negotiations leading up to the
acquirement of a permanent reservation for the Osages,
Judge Rogers prominently participated as a member of
the Osage council selected to treat with the Government
and with the Cherokee Nation for the lands comprising
the Osage Nation, as organized in 1872. For several
terms he served on the Osage council and for many
years was supreme judge of the nation itself. In
Masonry he had attained the thirty-second degree, being
a member of the Pawnee Chapter and Commandery,
Guthrie Consistory and the Oklahoma City Shrine. His
home lodge at Pawhuska participated officially in his
burial, and his body was also followed to its last resting
place by many friends and brothers in the Benevolent
and Protective Order of Elks. The following is a
tribute paid to him at that time : ‘ ‘ He was a firm

believer in fraternal orders and longed to see those who
were near and dear to him under the benign protection
of one of the great fraternal orders. In many ways
he was a remarkable man. He was a man of great
culture and refinement although reared under adverse
circumstances. So genial was his hospitality and so rare
his qualities of entertainment that he has often been
called • Prince of the Osages. ’ His friends were legion,
and many a heart saddens at the news of his death.
May his like increase; for it may be truly said of him,
‘the world is better for his having lived.' ”

The family of which Judge Rogers was so worthy a
representative was founded in Indian Territory by Cap-
tain John Rogers, his grandfather, who came to the
Cherokee Nation from his home in Georgia as early as
1829, being a member of what is known as the ‘ ‘ Old
Settlers,” as distinguished from the. emigrants who
came in the early ’30s. With his son, Thomas Lewis
Rogers, Sr., he established the first salt industry west
of the Mississippi River at the Rogers homestead on
Spavinaw Creek. Without tools, machinery or equipment
of any kind they dug their wells and built rude but
practicable furnaces for boiling the water and extract-
ing salt, selling their product in large quantities through-
out Indian Territory, Missouri and Kansas. Among the
pioneer enterprises of the Rogers, father and son, in
this field was tpe plant which they established at Grand
Saline, which was the forerunner of the extensive industry
conducted at that point.

Thomas L. Rogers, Sr., married Ellen Lombard, a
woman who was half French and half Osage Indian, and
it is through her that Judge Rogers obtained his citizen-
ship in the Osage Nation. Before the Civil war the
Rogers homestead on the Spavinaw was a famous resort
of the settlers for miles around, good cheer, comfort and
old-time southern hospitality abounding in their most
typical forms. Especially at Christmas and during the
holiday season was the house “wide open” and warm
with the best spirit of the day.

This homestead was located about four miles from
the confluence of the Spavinaw with the Grand River,
in what is now Mayes County, Oklahoma. In that home-
stead the late Judge Thomas L. Rogers was born, August
11,1 1 837. At the opening of the Civil war he was in
the Confederate service as a member of Company G,
commanded by Captain Butler, in General Stan Watie’s
Cherokee regiment. He spent most of his time as a
scout on the frontier of the Indian Territory. He was
also engaged in several severe battles, particularly the
engagement at Big Cabin. The war so depreciated the
value of his homestead and business properties that at the
close he found employment as clerk in a large general
store, being subsequently engaged in the more lucrative

and independent occupation of buying and selling cattle.
It is illustrative of the faithful and generous character
of the late Judge Rogers that the profits of his business
were not Selfishly expended upon himself, but went
toward the support of his widowed mother and the edu-
cation of the younger members of the family.

In 1870 he married Miss Nancy Martin, member of
one of the most prominent of the Cherokee families.
In 1871 he located on the Big Caney, and in 1872 on
Bird Creek in the northwestern part of the Cherokee
Nation, adjoining the Osage Nation, soon after the lands
in that locality were acquired for settlement by the
Osages. Previously the lands had been leased from
the Indians by white cattle raisers. Judge Rogers lived
in that locality for fifteen years, then moved to Paw-
huska, where he remained six years, and then went to
the home southeast of Pawhuska, where he resided
eighteen years, finally returning to Pawhuska a few
years before his death. A tract of land southeast of
Pawhuska became his regular homestead and remained
so for many years and under his industry and skill was
rated as one of the finest agricultural and stock farms
for miles around. There he erected a splendid stone
residence of ten rooms and provided every facility for
conducting his large and varied operations. For several
years he handled horses and cattle on an extensive scale
'and though still operating a farm he moved to Paw-
huska, where he built another fine modern residence on
East Main Street. During his first period of residence
in Pawhuska he engaged successfully in general mer-
chandising, at first in partnership with his kinsman, Hon.
W. C. Rogers, the noted chief of the Cherokees, and later
with John R. Skinner. His service in the negotiations
by which the territorial limits of the Osage Nation
were determined and the high post he filled in the legis-
lative and judicial affairs of the nation have already
been mentioned. Because of such activities his death
marked the departure from the world of a man who
had demonstrated not only unusual capacity, but the
finest and warmest traits of heart and soul.

Mrs. Nancy (Martin) Rogers, his wife, was born on
Cabin Creek, Cherokee Nation, October 30, 1848, a
daughter of John and Martha (Chambers) Martin. Her
father, John Martin, was a native of Georgia, born June
II, 1 819, and was one of the emigrants to the Indian
country of 1829. Both he and his wife were Indians
to about a sixteenth degree. As a citizen of the
Cherokee Nation he became one of its prominent men.
John Martin’s father, Jack Martin, served as first
supreme judge of the nation. John Martin was a slave
owner before the Civil war and served faithfully and
bravely as a Confederate soldier. He died November
20, 1871. The mother of Mrs. Nancy Rogers was born
in Georgia, a member of the Cherokee Nation. Her
father, Jack Chambers, was of Irish and Cherokee stock,
the father being an Irishman and the mother a full-
blood Cherokee. The girlhood of Mrs. Rogers was spent
in the Cherokee Nation as a daughter of one of its lead-
ing and prosperous citizens. After attaining a thorough
education in its public schools she completed her school-
ing at Neosho Academy in Missouri, and was married
t,6 Judge Rogers, February 26, 1869.

The four children born to Judge and Mrs. Rogers
were: Elnora, who died at the age of four years; Mrs.
Bertha Leahy, wife of T. J. Leahy; Mrs. Martha Leahy,
wife of William T. Leahy; and Thomas L. Rogers, Jr.
Judge Rogers had been married previously in 1862 to
Ellen Coody, and the only child of that marriage, Arthur
Rogers, died about four years ago in Oklahoma. Mrs.
Judge Rogers was married September 18, 1915, to D.
A. Ware. Mr. Ware is one of the old settlers in this

1948

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

section of Oklahoma and has been a resident of the state
for a quarter of a century.

George E. Tinker. To the white citizens who have
spent practically all their lives among the Indian tribes
of Oklahoma, George E. Tinker, a mixed blood Osage
Indian, is a man of particular interest. He has lived
among the Osages since his birth and has sustained
some valuable relations to the city and country around
Pawhuska. Even before he gained his majority he was
active in politics, and lias been one of the public spirited
leaders of his people, and has also contributed a service
as a newspaper man, is interested in local history in this
part of the state, and it is doubtful if any citizen of
Osage County is better known and more highly esteemed.

His birth occurred at the old Osage Mission in Kan-
sas, September 24, 1868. His parents were George and
Genevieve (Eevard) Tinker. His father was a native
of New England, but was reared in Humboldt, Ohio, and
in the very early days made the trip across Kansas and
on to California as. a blacksmith with a large party who
were journeying to the western gold fields with wagons
and ox teams. Subsequently he returned to Kansas and
located as a blacksmith among the Osage tribe in Neosho
County. Mr. Tinker’s mother also went out to Cali-
fornia in 1850 and lost her first husband there, William
Champlain. She had two children by that husband. In
1856 she returned to the states by way of the Isthmus
of Panama and New York, and was married to Mr.
Tinker at the Osage Mission in 1866. In 1870 they
accompanied the tribe to the Osage country of Indian
Territory, and spent the rest of their days in what is now
Osage County. The father was for many years a Govern-
ment blacksmith among the Indians and followed his
trade all his active life. He died in June, 1880, at the
age of sixty-seven, and his widow passed away in May,
1912, at the age of eighty-eight. George E. Tinker
is the only child of his father and mother, but has three
half-sisters living: Emeline, widow of Edward Eevard

of Pawhuska ; Eliza A., widow of Julian Trumbley of
Pawhuska; and Mary, widow of Thomas Leahy of Los
Angeles, California.

Since he was two years of age George E. Tinker has
always lived on the Osage Eeservation or in what is now
Osage County of Oklahoma. Through the first two
grades he attended the Government Indian School main-
tained at Pawhuska and spent eight months during the
winter of 1883-84 in the Osage Mission. Since reaching
manhood he has been more or less actively interested in
farming, and has a considerable property in and around
Pawhuska.

The first weekly paper published in Pawhuska was the
Wah-Shah-She News, which was founded and conducted
by Mr. Tinker for two years. He also published the
Osage Magazine. His interest in local history has led
him to make researches and preserve a great many facts
and data concerning the Osage people.

All his life he has been affiliated with the democratic
party, and in the early days was keenly interested in
Osage politics. He was the first chairman of the first
democratic organization in Osage Eeservation, and was a
delegate to every territorial and state convention since
the opening of the old Cherokee Strip in 1893. His first
important distinction came to him when he was only
nineteen years of age, in his election as prosecuting
attorney for the Osage Nation, an office which . he
capably filled for two years. He was also for six years
a member of the Osage Council.

Fraternally Mr. Tinker is a member of the Knights
of Pythias in all its .branches ; is a charter member of
Wah-Shah-She Lodge No. 110, Ancient, Free and Ac-
cepted Masons, at Pawhuska; has taken thirty-two de-

grees in the Scottish Eite, being a member of the
consistory at Guthrie; is affiliated with the Temple of
the Mystic Shrine at Oklahoma City, and is a member
of both the Eoyal Arch Chapter and the Knights Templar
Commandery at Pawhuska.

On January 1, 1886, Mr. Tinker married Sarah Ann
Swigerty, who was born in Northeastern Kansas in 1867.
They are the parents of a fine family of six children:
Clarence L., who is now a lieutenant in the regular army
of the United States and at present stationed at Hono-
' lulu ; Genevieve, who is now Mrs. Leonard Dyer, married
March 8, 1916 ; Anna, wife of Myer F. Euffner of Osage
County, and their two children are named Victoria and
Leona ; Nicholas A., who lives in Montana ; George E ,
Jr., who attends college in Denver, Colorado, but is now
at home; and Villa, at home and attending school.

G. E. Griggs, M. D. Sueeessrul ana progressive small
town and country doctors in Oklahoma are numerous.
Some of them have taken post-graduate degrees, while
the others keep abreast of modern things in the profes-
sion through reading, close observation and association
with medical societies and other sources of learning.
Typical of this class of doctors is Doctor Griggs, who
grew up principally on a ranch in Texas, but whose
ambition to take up and successfully follow a profession
never abated. For eight years he has been engaged in
practice as a physician and surgeon at Harrah, and
these have been growing, prosperous years, and he enjoys
a fine practice.

A Texan by birth, Doctor Griggs was born in Panola
County, April 25, 1877, a son of William B. and Carrie
(Eoquemore) Griggs. His father, who now lives in
Callahan County, Texas, is a native of Georgia, but has
lived in Texas since the close of the Civil war. The
mother, who was born and reared in Texas and is still
living, is the daughter of Georgia parents who came to
Texas prior to the Civil war.

As a boy Doctor Griggs attended the public school at
May, Texas, for a few years, and then spent ten years
of employment on farms and ranches. In 1903, largely
with such means as he had himself supplied, he entered
the Dallas Medical College at Dallas, and in 1907 gradu-
ated M. D. from the Southwestern Medical College of
that city. He at once removed to Oklahoma and has
since been established at Harrah.

In 1909, at Harrah, Doctor Griggs married Miss
Minnie Martin, whose father was one of the pioneer
farmers in that community. Their one daughter, Eobbie
Lee, is now three years of age. The brothers and sisters
of Doctor Griggs are: Dr. E. L. Griggs, a successful

physician and surgeon, specializing in surgery, at Baird,
Texas; W. W. Griggs, who is fourteen years of age and
lives with his father in Callahan County, Texas; Mrs.
Odran Green, wife of a farmer near Baird, Texas; and
Mrs. Lyns Bamsey, whose husband is a dentist at Cross
Plains, Texas.

Doctor Griggs is a member of the Canadian Valley
Medical Association, and fraternally is affiliated with
the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Modern
Woodmen of America, and is medical examiner for the
camp of the latter at Harrah. He is also a member of
the town board of trustees, and was an active and influ-
ential member of the Harrah Commercial Club before
that organization ceased its activities. His progressive
citizenship shows its many points, and he has worked
untiringly and unselfishly to advance movements relating
to the public schools, good roads and other needed
facilities.

James Monroe Addle. The average Oklahoman has
had a greater range of experience and more opportunities

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1949

I of adventure than the citizen of the older states. One

I expects something unusual and exceptional in the career

(I of nearly everyone who claims this state as his home.

| But even among Oklahomans James M. Addle, who is

1 well established as a lawyer at Bristow in Creek County,

I stands above the ordinary line of achievement and ex-

I perience. Mr. Addle during the past forty years has

I been identified with almost every important section of

I the great developing work. He has been a miner, a

I pioneer in new countries, a soldier, and perhaps in Okla-

I homa where he has had his home for the last twelve years,

I he has enjoyed a quieter routine than befell his lot

I after he left his eastern home when a young man.

He was born at Meadville, Crawford County, Penn-
I sylvania, October 8, 1851, a son of A. M. and Margaret

I (Shartle) Addle. His parents were of Dutch stock and

I both natives of Pennsylvania, where they spent all their

I lives. His father was a stone mason and brick layer by

I trade, and from his trade he developed a business as a

I contractor. There were two sons, William Henry and

| James M., and the former, now deceased, was also an

attorney. James Monroe Addle spent the first twenty-
one years of his life in his native City of Meadville.
He acquired his education in the local schools and spent
two years in that fine old institution of Meadville, Alle-
gheny College. He took up the study of law with the
firm of Parley & Hotchkiss at Meadville, and was ad-
mitted to the bar there April 10, 1872.

He soon afterwards started out on his life of adven-
ture and wander. His first destination was San Antonio,
Texas, from there he went to Wichita, Kansas, and it
would be difficult to enumerate all the scenes and places
of his activities and experience since then. He visited
the states of California, Wyoming, Idaho and Mon-
tana, and from Shoshone County, Idaho, he came to
Oklahoma in 1904. He was a prospector and miner in
Idaho, California, Montana and New Mexico, also prac-
ticed law and has fared among many different peoples
and in many out of the way places. Mr. Addle was a
member of the rough rider regiment during the Spanish-
t American war.

In politics he is a democrat. On May 5, 1873, he
married Clara O ’Brien, who was born in Armstrong
County, Pennsylvania. There were two children of the
marriage, Maude, now lives at Meadville, Pennsylvania,
and Kitty died in 1875.

Jacob Simpson Bearden. In many ways the agricul-
tural, business and financial interests of Okfuskee County
reflect the ability and enterprise of Jacob S. Bearden,
who is one of the pioneers of this section of the state
and was one of the first to take an interest in and supply
capital and other resources to the starting of the new
Town of Okemah. When he located in Okfuskee County
about twenty years ago he engaged in merchandising,
and around his store grew up a little village, which in
his honor was named Bearden, and he has always been
greatly concerned with the growth and improvement of
this village. The town takes much pride in its fine school
buildings, and is one of the flourishing smaller com-
munities.

For a number of years Mr. Bearden has been best
known as a banker, and for the past three years has been
president of the First National Bank of Okemah. This
bank has a capital of $25,000 and surplus of $5,000, and
is one of the United States denositories in Oklahoma. By
a statement issued in the closing months of 1915, the
aggregate resources of this bank are shown to be upwards
of $175,000, and deposits of over $100,000 reflect not only
the integrity of the bank but also the prosperity of the
surrounding community. The principal officers of the
bank are: .7. S. Bearden, president; E. R. Strain, vice

president; O. P. Bearden, cashier; and G. E. Clowers,
assistant cashier.

In many ways Jacob S. Bearden has had a remarkable
career. He had few of the opportunities for culture
which are usually given to modern boys, and he never
mastered the rudimentary elements of learning, although
he has apparently suffered no special handicap as a
keen and vigorous business man. His success could be
traced chiefly to hard work, the overcoming of difficulties
and a steadfast honor and integrity in all of life’s rela-
tions.

He was born in Marshall County, Alabama, May 5,
1858, a son of Jacob and Caroline (Hess) Bearden. His
parents were born and were married in Georgia, and
afterwards moved to Alabama where the father died
when Jacob S. Bearden was four years of age. The
mother spent her last days with her son Jacob S. in
Tecumseh, Oklahoma, and died there in 1892 at the age
of fifty-eight. In the family were three sons and three
daughters.

Jacob S. Bearden grew up in Alabama, and at the
age of twenty-two was married there in 1880 to Miss
Norcenia King. Immediately after their marriage they
moved to Pope County, Arkansas, where Mrs. Bearden
died in the spring of 1882, without children. For his
second wife Mr. Bearden married Mrs. Jodie (King)
Bearden, a sister of his first wife and widow of his
brother Richard.

Mr. Bearden came into Oklahoma and located at Tecum-
seh in 1890., and secured a claim at the opening of the
Kickapoo Indian Reservation, but later sold out. His
claim was 2% miles from Shawnee. In 1893 he made
the run to Perry at the opening of the Cherokee Strip.
His second wife died at Tecumseh in 1893. Many years
ago Mr. Bearden moved to Okfuskee County and estab-
lished his store at Bearden. Up to that time he had
followed farming, but soon proved a success as a mer-
chant. In 1902 he located at Okemah at the beginning
of that town and established a branch store there, but
after a few years sold a two-third interest of the busi-
ness at Bearden to the firm of Strain & Cowgill, which
still continues the business there.

A number of years ago Mr. Bearden took stock in the
Wewoka First Natiorial Bank, which was the first bank
established there, and later opened the State Bank at
Bearden, in which he owned most of the stock. At
Okemah he acquired an interest in the Farmers & Mer-
chants State Bank arid after considerable negotiations,
buying and selling, he consolidated that bank with the
Citizens State Bank, and was its active manager until
1912, when he sold and bought the First National Bank,
and for the past three years has been its president. In
many ways Mr. Bearden has worked effectively to build
up his little home City of Okemah. He is the owner of
the Broadway Hotel there, a modern fifty-room hostelry
which supplies adequate comforts to the traveling public.
He is also owner of a cotton gin at Morris, and has
approximately 500 acres of farming land in Okfuskee
County. Mr. Bearden has been a lifelong democrat,
though his interest in politics has usually extended only
to local affairs. He is a Knight Templar Mason, is
affiliated with the Woodmen of the World, and is a mem-
ber of the Methodist Episcopal Church South.

At Wewoka on March 2, 1895, Mr. Bearden married for
his present wife Mrs. Rose Langford Dunn. She wras
born in Parke County, Indiana, April 18, 1858, and when
about seven years of age her parents removed to Moultrie
County, Illinois, where she lived until her marriage to
James K. Polk Taylor. He died seven years later, leav-
ing one child, Quincy Taylor, who is now a resident of
Bearden, Oklahoma. Mrs. Bearden married for her sec-
ond husband Nathaniel Dunn at Sullivan, Illinois. They

1950

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

removed to Caney, Kansas, and from there into the Choc-
taw Nation of Indian Territory about 1910 where Mr.
Dunn died. There were two children of that union : Roy
Dunn of Bearden, and Opie, who has taken his step-
father ’s name and is known as O. P. Bearden, being
cashier of the First National Bank of Okemah. Mr. and
Mrs. Bearden are the parents of one daughter, Yelva,
and there was also a twin sister of Yelva, Vera, who
lived only three months. Mr. Bearden also has one
daughter by his second marriage, Emeline, wife of H. L.
Strain, of Bearden.

Hon. Alpheus Henry Brown. Few men have been
longer and more actively identified with the Osage country
than Alpheus Henry Brown, with whose name is asso-
ciated the distinction of having served as one of the
principal chiefs or governor of the Osage Nation.
Governor Brown knows Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas
like an open book, having followed cattle herds all over
this country in the early days, and is considered a walk-
ing encyclopedia of information concerning his own
country and its people.

By the accident of birth Alpheus Henry Brown was
born in the State of California December 11, 1859, but
has spent the greater part of his life in old Indian
Territory and Oklahoma. His parents were William
Scipio and Mary Jane (Stratton) Brown. His mother
was a one-eighth Osage Indian and also partly of French
descent, and it was through her that the Brown family
established their Osage citizenship.

His father was one of the conspicuous western fron-
tiersmen, and at thei time of his death at his home in
Caney, Kansas, in June, 1905, it was said there was
probably not another man in the State of Kansas who
had had as varied a career as miner, merchant, stock
grower and farmer or had seen more of the world than
W. S. Brown, who was best known over this southwestern
country as ‘ ‘ Osage Brown. ’ ’ On account of his many
prominent associations with the Osage country, it is
appropriate that his life should be told somewhat in
detail.

Born in Wyandotte County, Ohio, May 11, 1831, he
was the son of Judge Henry Brown, a prominent citizen
of Ohio. Against the wishes of his father and mother,
at the age of seventeen he started West and began his
career of adventure. He worked on a farm in Iowa two
years, then bought some oxen and took a contract to
break prairie on the reservations of the Crow Indians
in Minnesota. After three seasons returning to his old
home in Ohio, he was soon started again toward the
West, this time for the California gold fields. He went
around by the Isthmus route, and arriving on the Pacific
side almost without money had to get on board a vessel
going to San Francisco as a stowaway, and being dis-
covered was compelled to work his passage by shoveling
coal. Not long after he reached Sacramento, worked
as a driver for a time, and then with a party engaged in
mining on the Yuba Biver. This enterprise was cut
short by a flood, but he had received as his share of the
proceeds gold to the value of $4,000, which he deposited
in a Sacramento Bank, which soon afterwards failed.
Thereafter he had varied experience, making money in
mining, buying cattle and horses in lower California and
driving them to the mines, losing his property by the
treachery of Indians and white people and other accidents
and circumstances, and was again and again reduced to
poverty and started out with renewed determination to
build up. He also went with a party on a prospecting
tour to Australia, and returning had various adventures
in South America, crossing the Andes and descending
the Amazon River, and returning to the Western Coast,
and was finally back in California. In 1856 he bought

an improved farm in Napa County, and the following
year married Miss Mary J. Stratton. A few years later
. he opened a new ranch on Eel River, but the following
winter his land was ruined by landslides and his cattle
and horses driven off by Indians or starved by bad
weather. His varied adventures and experiences in Cal-
ifornia would require too much space for detailed telling,
and it will be necessary to pass over several years to
1864, when he sent his family back to Ohio with his
sister and her husband. He remained behind to dispose
of his property, and then started across the mountains
on snow shoes, and arrived in Ohio just in time to be
drafted for service in the Union Army. He hired a
substitute, and was soon substantially settled as an Ohio
farmer. At the end of three years he sold out, moved
to Iowa, engaged in woolen manufacturing until a declin-
ing market set him back again, but having made con-
siderable money in land speculation in 1869 he removed
to Missouri and bought two farms in Bates County. He
then removed to Baxter Springs in Kansas, and acquired
a large herd of cattle in Texas. Unable to find a range
for his stock, his wife then suggested a way out of the
difficulty. She had been born on the Osage Indian Re-
serve, had attended the old school at Osage Mission, and
these facts coupled with her small inheritance of Osage
blood enabled her to secure a headright in the Osage lands.
Mr. Brown then removed his family to the Osage
Agency, and they were soon enrolled as members of the
tribe. The Clierokees were at that time leaving the
Osage lands, and Mr. Brown bought one of their claims,
and thus having ample grazing lands he was soon pros-
pering in the cattle business. About a year later he
took his family out to California, where he bought a
ranch, and was planning to make his permanent home
there, when his wife was taken ill and died. This be-
reavement caused him to change his plans, and he took
his children back to Ohio and left them with a deceased
brother ’s widow, whom he subsequently married. In
1875 he moved to Texas, lived in that state four years,
and then returned to Kansas and located a ranch on the
Big Caney River in the Osage country. There he had.
a farm of 450 acres of improved land besides 30,000
acres of fenced pasture, and at times his cattle num-
bered as high as 5,000 head. For a time he had his home
in Independence, Kansas, but finally removed to Caney,
from which point he superintended his ranches in the
Osage country, twelve miles southwest of that city.
Thereafter he lived at Caney, being identified for many
years with the cattle business, until the close of his
career at the age of seventy-four. Concerning his char-
acter one of the papers at Caney said: “W. S. Brown
was an excellent man. He possessed a big heart and a
man in need found in him a true friend, so long as
he did right. He was a member of the Presbyterian
church, ’ ’ and surrounded by his family he passed away
in communion with his Maker. His children, all by his
first marriage, were : Alpheus H., Charles W., Edward S.,
Rosa, wife of John Cunningham, and Ernest E.

Of these children all now reside at Caney, Kansas,
except Governor Brown. Some of the moves and ex-
periences of his early boyhood have- already been sug-
gested in the sketch of his father. He completed his
public school education at the age of fifteen, and after-
wards spent two years in school at Lawrence, Kansas.
After leaving school he became closely associated with
his father in the cattle business, but in the memorable
hard winter of the ’80s, when the live stock industry all
over the country was practically paralyzed, he and his
brothers were compelled to shift for themselves. After
that he spent about fifteen years of venturesome life in
the Rocky Mountains, much of the time engaged in min-
ing. He has thus evidently inherited many of the pioneer

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1951

qualities of his father, and has always lived as close
to the frontier as the rapid development of modern times
would permit. He has twice made the trip from the
Middle West to the Pacific Coast by wagon, and endured
many hardships in the West. At one time he was out of
provisions for four days. He has been more or less
closely identified with the Osage country for forty years,
and after his marriage settled down permanently in what
is now Osage County. Governor Brown has about 700
acres in fine farming land, the old homestead being about
twenty miles southeast of Hominy, in which town his
family reside.

A democrat in politics, Governor Brown was elected
the first county • commissioner after statehood. For
about two years he was chief or governor of the Osage
Nation, and held that office until he and the other mem-
bers of the Osage Council were removed by the secre-
tary of interior for refusing to sign the oil leases. The
courageous stand taken by Governor Brown at that time
reflected highly on his integrity and his sense and fair-
ness and justice to the Indian people, and subsequent
developments have proved the correctness of his course.
Fraternally he is affiliated with the Independent Order
of Odd Fellows.

On August 12, 1901, Mr. Brown married Miss Belle
Cowen, who was born in Eeno, Kansas, July 2, 1879,
but was living in Arkansas at the time of her marriage.
Her parents are John and Sarah (Ebright) Cowen, both
natives of Pennsylvania. Her father came to Kansas in
1875, and was married in that state in 1877. He died
at the home of Governor and Mrs. Brown October 8,
1914, at the age of seventy-six, while his widow is still
living in the Brown home at Hominy. Mrs. Brown’s
father homesteaded a claim in Kansas in the early days,
and for many years was engaged in the cattle business.
Mr. and Mrs. Brown have two children: William Scipio
and Frank Bichard.

George E. McKinnis. Since the Pottawatomie Beser-
vation was opened for settlement twenty-five years ago,
one of its most active and energetic citizens has been
George E. McKinnis. In various directions Mr. MeKin-
nis has been the real leader of progress in his home City
of Shawnee, and if one went over the history of develop-
ment in that section of the state very closely, he would
find a great many things to credit to the public spirit
and disinterested service of this genial business man.

So far as the future is concerned of Shawnee as an
educational center, Mr. McKinnis was more than anyone
else responsible for securing the location of the Oklahoma
State Baptist University at Shawnee. Oftentimes alone
in his fight he managed the campaign which brought that
institution to the city in 1910, and he is now treasurer of
the university. He is one of the charter members of
this institution, its first secretary and treasurer, and has
been a director of the board of trustees ever since the
school was established.

In business circles Mr. McKinnis is known both as a
banker and real estate operator. He was born in Wayne
County, Missouri, November 23, 1869. His ancestors on
the paternal side came originally from Scotland to North
Carolina during colonial times. His great-grandfather,
Alex McKinnnis, was one of the early settlers, going to
North Carolina in 1770, and he served with distinction
and honor in the Bevolutionary war and the War of 1812.
His father, .1. A. McKinnis, a farmer and country
preacher, was born in Tennessee, May 27, 1832, and had
a long and active career. He died December 28, 1915,
at Alvin, Texas. J. A. McKinnis was married in Macon
County, Tennessee, to Miss Drucilla Donoho, who was
born in Tennessee in 1838 and died in Major County,
Oklahoma, in 1897. In 1859 the family removed to

Vol. V— 13

Wayne County, Missouri, but in 1872 went back to
Macon County, Tennessee, and in 1884 J. A. McKinnis
established his home among the early settlers of King-
man County, Kansas. In 1893 he again moved with the
advancing tide of civilization into Western Oklahoma
and established a home in Major County, then Woods
County. By profession he was a minister of the Baptist
faith and preached the gospel and helped to establish
churches in many isolated communities during his active
.career. He took a homestead in Major County, Okla-
homa, where he lived for about eleven years and employed
himself mainly as a farmer. For the benefit of the coast
climate he moved to Alvin, Texas, in 1908 and remained
there until his death, December 28, 1915. In politics
he was a republican. During the war between states he
served three years in the Federal army. He was wounded
in .the great battle of Shiloh. In the Chickasaw Bayou,
one of the important engagements in the Vicksburg
campaign, he was captured, later was exchanged and
rejoined his command and continued to serve until he
was mustered out.

George E. McKinnis, his next to the youngest son,
when an infant, removed with his parents to Macon
County, Tennessee. Here he gained his first instruction
in the public schools of that state and continued his
education in the public schools of Kingman County,
Kansas. He took a literary and public-speaking course
in Ball’s College at Harper, Kansas, having been a
student there in 1889-1890. Early in life he gave some
promise as a public speaker, and when only eighteen
years old was elected lecturer of the Farmers Alliance
in Kingman County, Kansas. The early part of his life
was mainly devoted to farming and railroad work, work-
ing on the farm during the crop season, and on the
railroad the time he could spare from the farm.

September 16, 1890, the opening day for Pottawatomie
reserve, he went to Teeumseh, in Pottawatomie County,
Oklahoma, and soon afterwards was employed as manager
of the McKinnis & Beard Lumber Co. He served in this
capacity until the company closed out its business at
that point. Along with his ability as a practical man
of affairs, Mr. McKinnis has associated service and
qualification in various other lines. From his first busi-
ness at Teeumseh he became principal of the public
schools there, and served until 1895. He was a member
of the first school board in Pottawatomie County, then
known as County “B. ” He removed to Shawnee in the
fall of 1895 and accepted prineipalship of the high
school. He served two years as principal and one year
as superintendent of the city schools. He did much to
forward the cause of public education in the primitive
period of about twenty years ago.

From his work as a schoolman Mr. McKinnis engaged
in the real estate and loan business, and now for several
years has conducted one of the oldest established and
most reliable offices in that line in Central Oklahoma.

He was one of the organizers of. the State National
Bank of Shawnee, and has been director and vice presi-
dent ever since its organization in 1902. At various
times he has been associated with other banking interests
and is now secretary of the Fidelity Building and Loan
Association, which is one of the best institutions of its
kind in the Southwest.

Another thing that should be remembered to his credit
was his presidency of the Shawnee Commercial Club at
the time the Missouri, Kansas and Texas and the Santa
Fe railroads were brought into Shawnee. He is still an
active and influential member of that organization of
business men.

In the social and civic life of Shawnee, Mr. McKinnis
has always taken an active and prominent part. He has
donated liberally of his means and time to the move-

1952

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

ments that stand for the elevation of his community. It
was under his administration as chairman of the Park
Commission of Shawnee that the system of street im-
provement organizations were launched, which did much
to make Shawnee one of the most beautiful cities in
Oklahoma. He was president and manager of the Chau-
tauqua Association of Shawnee, 1902-1910-1916.

Politically, Mr. McKinnis is a republican. He has
always been consistent and regular, and was elected
delegate to the national convention at Chicago, 1916.

He served as postmaster of Shawnee from 1903 to 1907.
Under his administration and through his efforts country
rural free delivery service was established in Pottawa-
tomie County. He was secretary of the first Republican
Club in Pottawatomie County in 1891.

He was reared in the Baptist Church, of which his
father was a devoted minister. He has several times
been honored by the Baptist state conventions ; he was
elected and served three years as its auditor. As a
Sunday-school worker Mr. McKinnis’ ability is familiarly
recognized. He has filled every important office of the
interstate denominational work except that of secretary.
He was its president in 1907-1908.

In 1897 Mr. McKinnis was married, at Shawnee, to
Miss Mamie Dixon of Paris, Texas. Mrs. McKinnis is
known throughout the state as one of Oklahoma’s promi-
nent club workers. She is now president of the Fifth
District. They are the parents of one son, George E.,
Jr., born July 23, 1901, who is now attending the local
high school.

Thomas H. Flesher, M. D. Many of the men in the
medical profession today are devoting themselves in a
large measure to the prevention of disease as well as its
cure. In this way their efficiency as benefactors has
extended much beyond the scope of the old-fashioned
practice when the doctor was related to his patients
only as an individual and in times of sickness. One of
the prominent young physicians and suigeons of Okla-
homa, Dr. Thomas H. Flesher has been largely dis-
tinguished for his work .as a sanitarian at Edmond.

It is undeniable that without proper methods of sanita-
tion and the conservation of health through proper
safeguards and under the supervision of a scientific
director, Edmond could not have gained the popularity
it possesses as a college town. During the best period
of its development, and when as many as 1,800 young
men and women are spending their summers there in
the Central State Normal School, Doctor Flesher has
been city superintendent of health, and his recommenda-
tions to the city officials and the people forestalled
disease to a wonderful degree. Besides being a success-
ful practitioner and a town booster, this is one of the
principal things that mark him as one of Edmond ’s
leading citizens.

Dr. Thomas H. Flesher was born in Reedsville, Ohio,
February 10, 1876, a son of Francis M. and Mary Frances
(Thorn) Flesher. His father was for thirty years a
steamboat engineer on the Ohio River, and during the
Civil war was in the Government service in that capacity.
He removed to Iowa in 1887 and died the following year.
The maternal grandparents of Doctor Flesher were from
West Virginia and early settlers of Ohio. Doctor Flesher
has three brothers and three sisters: M. B. Flesher, a

lawyer at Okemah, Oklahoma, and a graduate of the
University of Michigan; Dr. W. E. Flesher, a dentist at
Frederick. Oklahoma, and in 1915 president of the Okla-
homa Dental Society; E. C. Flesher, engaged in the mill-
ing business at Edmond; Mrs. W. E. Edie. wife of a
Methodist minister at Burr Oak, Iowa; Mrs. W. B.
Bryant, wife of a merchant at Edmond; and Mrs. L. A.
Bryant, wife of a farmer at Frederick, Oklahoma.

Left fatherless at the age of twelve years, Doctor
Flesher was hampered by lack of funds in pursuing his
education and much of his training in public schools was
delayed by the necessity of work. He persevered and
eventually acquired not only a liberal literary education,
but a thorough training for his profession. In 1896 he
graduated with a teacher’s' degree from the Central
Normal University at Humeston, Iowa,, and in 1901
received his degree Doctor of Medicine from the Keokuk,
Iowa, Medical College and College of Physicians and
Surgeons. Doctor Flesher began his practice of medi-
cine in Edmond in 1901.

Besides his service as city superintendent of health,
he was president of the Oklahoma County Medical Society
in 1913, and at the present time is vice president for
Oklahoma of the Southwestern Medical Association, an
organization covering five states. He is a member of
the Oklahoma State Medical Society and of the American
Medical Association, and a life member of the Surgeons ’
Club of Rochester, Minnesota. Doctor Flesher has done
post-graduate work in the Chicago Polyclinic and in the
famous hospital clinics at Rochester, Minnesota. He is
secretary of the Republican Club at Edmond, and a
member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In Masonry
he is affiliated with Edmond Lodge No. 37, Ancient Free
and Accepted Masons, the Scottish Rite Consistory of
Guthrie and India Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Okla-
homa City. He also belongs to the Modern Woodmen of
America and the Yeomen at Edmond.

Thomas Lafayette Mullins. The vocation of
auctioneering in recent years has become more of a
profession than a business, and the individual who would
win success in this field must possess qualifications of a
peculiar nature. He must in the first place be a good
judge of values, and must be able to give an elaborate
and intelligent description of the articles placed in his
care. There are no references upon which he may rely,
for every thought must be extemporaneous, and he must
guide himself accordingly, and it is essential that
he be able to intermingle comedy if the occasion de-
mands. Among the men in Oklahoma who have made
a success of this vocation because of the possession of
the qualifications noted, is Thomas Lafayette Mullins, of
Walters, ex-sheriff of Cotton County, who, before enter-
ing his present line of endeavor, had gained excellent
results from his labors in the field of agriculture.

Mr. Mullins belongs to a family which originated in
Ireland and probably came to America prior to the War
of the Revolution, being pioneer settlers of Kentucky.
He was born at Bear Creek, Cedar County, Missouri,
April 25, 1872, and is a son of William and Susan
(Janes) Mullins, the former born in Kentucky, in 1831,
and the latter in Tennessee, in 1839. As a young man,
William Mullins removed from Kentucky to Lawrence
County, Missouri, where he took up a homestead, subse-
quently moved to Bear Creek, Cedar County, and finally
to Dade County, in the- same state, where he followed
farming and stoekraising until his death, in 1903, Mrs.
Mullins having passed away in 1881, at Bear Creek.
During the Civil war Mr. Mullins served as a member of
the Home Guards, in the Union army. There were four
children in the family : George, a farmer, whose death oc-
curred in 1909, at Ash Grove, Green County, Missouri;
Thomas Lafayette, of this review; Robert, who is an
auctioneer, and resides at Geronimo, Oklahoma; and
Louis, who is a farmer and agriculturist and resides
at . Temple, Oklahoma.

Thomas L. Mullins attended the public schools of
Bear Creek and was reared on his father’s farm until
1881, in which year his mother died and he went to live
at the home of his uncle, R. F. Wetion, on whose farm

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1953

he worked for three years. He then started out on his
own account and for five or six years worked out among
the agriculturists of Green County, Missouri. In 1890 he
went to Marshall County, Kansas, where he continued
his labors as a farm hand until 1901, and in that year
came to Temple, Oklahoma, and drew a homestead at the
opening. This he proved up and resided upon until 1905,
when he removed to the Village of Temple, and started
his work as an auctioneer. His advent in Walters occurred
in 1912, and since that time he has successfully built up
a large and profitable business in his chosen line, con-
ducting large sales and handling all kinds of property
for his clients. While he devotes his attention almost
exclusively to this line of work, Mr. Mullins still has
extensive farming interests, being the owner of 440 acres
of land, on which his tenants do diversified farming and
stockraising. Mr. Mullins is a republican and has been
an active worker in his party. While a resident of Temple
he served as constable and city marshal, and in 1912
became the candidate of his party for the office of
sheriff of Cotton County, to which he was elected, and
served two years in an entirely capable and satisfactory
manner. With his family, he belongs to the Baptist
Church. Mr. Mullins’ fraternal connections include mem-
bership in Temple Lodge No. 210, Ancient Free and
Accepted Masons, and Guthrie Consistory No. 1, of the
thirty-second degree in Masonry; Temple Lodge of
the Modern Woodmen of America; Walters Lodge of the
Royal Neighbors of America, and the Temple lodges of
the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Fraternal
Order of Eagles.

Mr. Mullins was married at Marysville, Kansas, in
1896, to Miss Hattie McLeod, who was born in Marshall
County, Kansas, daughter of the late Capt. Archie P.
McLeod, who served in the Union army during the Civil
war and subsequently became a Kansas farmer. Two
children have been born to this union: Clarence, born
July 19, 1903, who is attending the public schools at
Walters; and Hattie Muriel, born August 26, 1913.

James C. Menifee. No matter how dynamic the
force of progress along all material lines of human
endeavor, still agriculture and horticulture - must ever
figure as the base of industrial and general prosperity,
and fortune is he whose ability and tastes enable him
to achieve success in connection with any department of
the great elemental art of husbandry. Though the
natural resources of Oklahoma are varied and opulent,
it is through agriculture and other utilization of the
willing soil that civic and material development and
upbuilding have mainly been compassed, and in Creek
County it is pleasing to direct attention to Mr. Menifee
as one of the prominent, substantial and representative
exponents of such basic industry, though his activities
have been of varied order and have marked him as a
man of versatility in business, even as he is known as
one of the loyal, appreciative and public-spirited citi-
zens of Sapulpa, in the vicinity of which city he is
giving special attention to fruit culture.

Mr. Menifee was born in Holt County, Missouri, on
the 6th of September, 1860, and is a son of John M.
and Eleanor M. (Scott) Menifee, the former of whom
was born in Kentucky, a scion of an old and prominent
Southern family, and the latter of whom was born in
the State of Indiana, their marriage having been solemn-
ized in M'ssnuri, where the respective families settled in
the early ’50s.

John M. Menifee became a prosperous farmer and
stock grower in Holt County, Missouri, and finally
turned- his attention more particularly to the propaga-
tion of fruit, /of which line of enterprise he became one

of the most prominent and successful exponents in that
county, where he developed a fine fruit farm of 100
acres. When in advanced years he sold this valuable
property and he and his devoted wife joined their son,
James C., subject of this sketch, in Oklahoma, where
both passed the remainder of their lives and where in
death they were not long divided, Mr. Menifee having
passed away on the 6th of June, 1910, at the age of
seventy-five years, and his wife having died on the
following day, at the age of seventy-one years, the
memories of both being reverently cherished by all who
came within the compass of their kindly and benignant
influence. John C. Menifee was staunchly loyal to the
Union during the climacteric period of the Civil war,
though living in a state where the preponderating
sympathy was for the cause of the Confederacy.. He
did all in his power to uphold the Union arms but his
physical condition was such that he was unable to enter
military service. Both he and his wife were zealous
members of the Presbyterian Church, earnest in sup-
port of temperance, and tolerant and considerate in
their association with all with whom they came in con-
tact in the various .relations of life. Of their three
children the subject of this sketch was the second in
order of birth; Bettie W, the first born, became the
wife of William Ward and is now deceased; and Robert
L. is now a resident of the City of Fresno, California.

James C. Menifee was reared to adult age in Holt
County, Missouri, where he early began to assist his
father in the work of the home farm and where he
gained thorough familiarity with the varied details of
successful fruit culture. In the meanwhile he did not
neglect to profit fully by the advantages afforded in
the common schools of his native county, and he con-
tinued to reside at the parental home until his removal
to what is now the State of Oklahoma, save that he
passed one year in Montana, when eighteen years of age.

In 1892 Mr. Menifee came to Indian Territory and
established his permanent residence at Sapulpa, the
present metropolis and judicial center of Creek County,
Oklahoma, and that he is distinctively entitled to pioneer
honors is assured when it is stated that the now popu-
lous and metropolitan city was then represented by a
railroad station, a general store and a few dwellings of
primitive order. Mr. Menifee has always been a man
of action, and thus, soon after his arrival in the
embryonic city he here opened a general store, this being
the second mercantile establishment of the diminutive
but aspiring village. In 1893 he formed a partnership
with P. B. France which continued for three years,
when Mr. Menifee bought Mr. France’s interests. With
the development of the city and surrounding country
the business of Mr. Menifee constantly expanded in
scope and importance, though his trade in the earlier
years was largely with the Indians, many of whom came
from points as far as sixty miles distant to purchase"
goods, which they frequently carried away by the wagon
load. At that time Sapulpa was the western terminus
of the Frisco Railroad line and thus became a trading
and shipipng point of much importance, and the town
was a place of interest and rendezvous on the part of
many Indians who came to it to gain their first sight
of a railway train. During the ten years that he was
engaged in the mercantile business Mr. Menifee con-
trolled a large and profitable trade and was recognized
as one of the leading business men of Sapulpa, the
while his fair dealings and impregnable integrity gained
to him the unequivocal confidence and good will of both
his white and Indian patrons and he became known to
the white settlers and the Indians throughout a wide
radius of country. After he had learned that Sapulpa

1954

HISTORY OP OKLAHOMA

was to be made a division headquarters for the Frisco
Railroad Mr. Menifee showed his confidence in the
future importance and growth of the town by making
judicious investments in local real estate, and its appre-
ciation in value eventually enabled him to realize large
profit in the sale of much of the property thus acquired.
Since his retirement from the mercantile business he
has given his attention principally to the handling of
real estate and agricultural enterprise, in both of which
lines he has been definitely prospered. In Sapulpa he
is the owner of valuable business and residence prop-
erties, and since 1912 he has maintained his residence
on a fine rural estate one mile north of the city, where
he has developed one of the excellent fruit farms of
the county, his thorough knowledge of this line of enter-
prise having made him specially successful in exploiting
this important line of enterprise, along which he is still
continuing his effective development work, which is a
definite lesson and incentive to others.

In politics Mr. Menifee does not consult expediency
but votes in accord with his earnest convictions and is
a staunch supporter of the cause of the prohibition
party. He and his wife are zealous members of the
Presbyterian Church, and he served as elder of the
church of this denomination in Sapulpa until his removal
to his farm.

It is worthy of special note that at the annual fair
of the Creek County Agricultural Society in the autumn
of 1915 Mr. Menifee captured second premium in the
department of general exhibits from individual farm,
and this is the more noteworthy in view of the fact
that he had resided on and given his personal super-
vision to his farm for the brief period of somewhat
less than three years.

In the year 1883 was solemnized the marriage of
Mr. Menifee to Miss Alice S. Dulin, who like himself
is a native of Holt County, Missouri, where she was
born on the 13th of November, 1861, a daughter of
Smith and Mary Elizabeth (Embree) Dulin, the former
of whom was killed in an engagement at Helena,
Arkansas, while serving as a soldier of the Confederacy
in the Civil war, and the latter of whom now resides in
the home of Mr. and Mrs. Menifee, who accord to her
the deepest filial solicitude, as did they also to her
mother, Mrs. Nancy Ann Embree, who passed her
declining years in their home and who was summoned
to the life eternal in June, 1915, about one month prior
to the one hundredth anniversary of her birth. This
venerable womain retained to the last wonderful control
of her mental faculties, and her memory was such that
she was able to give most graphic and interesting
reminiscences of the years long past. Mr. and Mrs.
Menifee became the parents of three children, of whom
the first born, India, died at the age of three years;
Miss Bettie W. remains at the parental home and is a
popular factor in the social activities of the community;
and Newell D. is engaged in the insurance and abstract
business in the City of Sapulpa.

John G. Copenhavee. In those years now pleasantly
distant when Northern Oklahoma was untouched by
railroads, John G. Copenhaver gained his first acquain-
tance with what is now Osage County by work as a
freighter, engaged in hauling goods from Kansas Point
to some of the early trading posts in the Osage and
Cherokee nations. For fully a quarter of a century he
has been prominently identified with Osage County, is
one of the enterprising men who have done much to
stimulate and raise the standards of agriculture and
stock raising in this section, and is now living retired
in the enjoyment of a well earned prosperity with his

home in Big Heart, Osage County. Mr. Copenhaver has
taken much interest in political affairs, and is now serv-
ing as a justice of the peace.

An Indiana man by birth, he was born at Clinton on
the Wabash River in Vermilion County, Indiana, in 1852.
His parents were Thomas J. and Mary E. Gordon Copen-
haver, both natives of Indiana, his mother being also born
in Vermilion County. In 1869, when Mr. Copenhaver was
seventeen years of ‘age, the family moved out to Wilson
County, Kansas, where his father took up a homestead,
followed farming and stock raising for many years, and
died in 1890 when about forty-five years old. The
mother died February 19, 1916, at the old home which
they took up as a government claim in 1869, when past
eighty years of age. Thomas J. Copenhaver served for
4% years as a Union soldier, enlisting at the beginning
of the war in the Eighteeenth Indiana Regiment, sub-
sequently veteranizing, and continuing until the close of
hostilities in 1865. Most of his service was as regimental
quartermaster. He was a stanch republican, and he
and his wife active members of the Christian Church.
All of their four sons and four daughters are still living,
namely: John G. ; Catherine, wife of George Woodard
of Wilson County, Kansas; A. J., of Fall River, Kansas;
Annie, wife of Alexander Nelson of Ramona, Oklahoma;
M. S., who lives with his mother on the homestead;
O. P., of Drumright, Oklahoma; Mrs. Eunice of Wood-
son County, Kansas; Mrs. Elsie Cooper, of Greenwood
County, Kansas.

Though John G. Copenhaver resided with his parents
until his marriage, he had already acquired an .extensive
experience as a farm boy, a student in local schools,
and in employment in those occupations which are char-
acteristic of a new state. On August 29, 1877, he mar-
ried Miss Mary E. Scott, who was born in Illinois in
1856 and was brought to Kansas in 1871 with her
parents.

After his marriage Mr. Copenhaver located on a farm
in Wilson County, Kansas, and lived there until his
removal to the vicinity of Pawhuska in 1890. He has
been a resident of Osage County ever since, and most of
his active career has been spent in farming. For the
past six years he has lived retired. During his early
manhood Mr. Copenhaver gained the experience already
noted as a freighter. In 1872 he was employed by the
Coy Brothers and Ogeese Captain, who operated an ex-
tensive trading post at Hominy Falls about seven miles
north and west of Tulsa, and this firm had the first store
built on the Osage Reservation. Mr. Copenhaver was
employed chiefly in hauling goods to this trading post
from Fort Leavenworth and later from Fort Scott, Kan-
sas. The distance he had to cover between Fort Leaven-
worth and the trading post was fully 300 miles. In
later years Mr. Copenhaver gained considerable note as
a stock raiser, and at times had between 200 and 300
head of cattle and from forty to fifty head of horses. A
pleasing distinction which is associated with his name
is that he was the first to introduce Holstein cattle into
Osage County. That was about twenty years ago.

Mr. Copenhaver was one of the organizers of the
republican party in Osage County, and for more than
twenty years has been identified with the Knights of
Pythias fraternity. He and his wife are the parents
of three children. Thomas J. lives in Independence,
Kansas, and is married and has three children. Wil-
liam J. lives at Big Heart and is also married. Jacob
resides at Independence and is married and has one child.

Judge Chaeles B. Wilson, Je. Deep and accurate
knowledge of law, native shrewdness and ability,- and
unswerving integrity have made Judge Charles B. Wil-

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1955

son, Jr., of the Tenth Judicial District, an excellent
lawyer and an admirable judge; high personal character,
firm convictions of the right, a kind heart and strong
sense of duty has made him a valuable citizen. A con-
scientious public servant, of high purpose and sincerity,
he has long stood as one of the ablest representatives of
the dignity of the law in Chandler and Lincoln County.
The Tenth Judicial District of Oklahoma comprises the
two counties of Lincoln and Pottawatomie.

Judge Wilson has long been known in Central Okla-
homa as a successful lawyer and one of the strong and
active figures of the democratic party. He was engaged
in the active practice of law for sixteen years, and has
lived in Oklahoma since the first opening in 1889. He
was born in Clinton, Henry County, Missouri, August 2,
1872, and is a son of Charles B. Wilson, Sr., a pioneer
lawyer of Chandler and, a native of Missouri, where he
was reared and educated. He is now retired from the
active practice of law and belongs among the class of
honored old-timers of the Southwest. The maiden name
of the mother was Kate Thurston, who came of a family
of Virginia people. Charles B. Wilson, Sr., and wife
had two children: Charles B. Jr., and Ann Wilson,

now of St. Joseph, Missouri. The father is a democrat,
and is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church
South and a man honored and rhspected in all his
relations.

Judge Wilson spent his early life in Clinton, Missouri,
was educated in the Clinton high schools and was seven-
teen years of age when he became identified with Central
Oklahoma. He studied law under the direction of his
father at Chandler, and was admitted to the bar in that
city in 1899. For several years he was junior member
of the firm of Wilson & Wilson, and this was a firm
which controlled a large and successful practice and in
ability was ranked second to none in the Tenth District.
Judge Wilson was formerly a member of the firm of
Hoffman, Robinson & Wilson, and each of the three
members have seen active service in judicial positions,
either as county or district judges.

Judge Wilson has an eminently clean record in all his
business and civic relations. One of his strongest char-
acteristics is his faculty for making and retaining strong
friendships. Judge Wilson has taken fourteen degrees
in Scottish Rite Masonry and is also affiliated with
Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Knights of
Pythias and the Modern Woodmen of America. He is
a man of strong physical and mental address and his
dignity and impartial conduct on the bench is matched by
the strength and cordial manners of the lawyer and
gentleman. In 1915 he was appointed a member of
Division No. 5 of the Supreme Court Commission of the
state appointed by the governor.

Robert Dunlop. Ranked as one of the leading and
most successful oil operators of Oklahoma, with proper-
ties scattered over all the important producing sections
of the state, Robert Dunlop, of Newkirk, is also greatly
interested in agricultural ventures, and during a long
and active career has served his state in positions of
responsibility and trust, in which he has demonstrated
the possession of excellent executive powers as well as
high ideals of public service.

Mr. Dunlop was born at Garnett, Anderson County,
Kansas, September 6, 1869, and is a son of Alexander
and Mary (Whitson) Dunlop, natives of Scotland, the
former born at Dunlop Place, February 3, 1826, and the
latter at Kelso, March 24, 1832. The parents were strict
Scotch Presbyterians and were married in 1865 in Law-
rence, Kansas, after the return of the father from his
service in the Civil war, in which he fought as a private
of the One Hundred and Forty-eighth Regiment, Illinois

Volunteer Infantry. The parents of Mr. Dunlop’s mother
came to the United States in 1849 and her mother died
in New York shortly afterward. In 1850 Mr. Dunlop
moved to Quebec, Canada, and in 1856 to Fort Leaven-
worth, Kansas. The father of Mr. Dunlop settled first
on the first homestead awarded to a white man in
Howard County, Kansas, this being to George Hitchens,
a late distinguished pioneer of that state. It is now
occupied as the home of Mr. Dunlop’s two brothers,
George and James, and is located in the vicinity of Long-
ton, Kansas.

Mr. Dunlop attended the public and high schools of
Howard County, finishing a business education in the
latter, and began life for himself in Oklahoma, working
on the homestead of an uncle in Payne County. The
next year, 1890, he did ranch work in the Osage Nation,
and in 1891 entered the Iowa Indian country at its
opening. He found no land that suited him there,
however, and did not make any settlement. Having as
a cowman traversed a large part of the territory em-
braced in the Cherokee Strip, he took part in the opening
of that territory in 1893 -and took a homestead in what
is now Kay County. This in due time he patented and it
became the nucleus of the 320 acre farm which now is
one of his most valuable possessions. It is situated in
the heart of one of the finest farming regions of the
state, and the section of which it originally was a part
ranks as the best in Oklahoma. On the land are suc-
cessfully grown wheat, oats and alfalfa, and Mr. Dunlop
for many years has had his men employ the best and
most scientific methods of agriculture. As one of the
leading and original settlers of the county he took an
active part in a good roads movement that resulted in
the establishment of a system of roads that were not
surpassed in any of the original counties. In 1902 he
was elected treasurer of Kay County and this position
he held until 1907, the year of statehood, when he became
a candidate on the democratic ticket for state treasurer,
but was defeated for the nomination by James A. Mene-
fee of Anadarko by 289 votes. He served during the
administration of Governor C. N. Haskell as a member
of the board of trustees of the Insane Asylum at Fort
Supply, and sought to have an appropriation of $1,500,-
000 made early in the state’s career for the proper care
of the insane. He contended then and has since main-
tained that the new government should first make ade-
quate provision for its unfortunate wards.

In 1910 Mr. Dunlop was elected state treasurer of
Oklahoma, carrying, in the primary election over M. E.
Trapp, of Guthrie, sixty-one of the seventy-six counties.
His policy as state treasurer was a strict adherence to
the rule established in other states that compels all
departments of state government collecting money for
the state to deposit the money immediately in the state
treasury, but in this policy he was unsuccessful, owing
to laws that permitted various departments to handle
state moneys. The question of whether or not all state
funds shall be deposited with the state treasurer has
been an unsettled issue, due principally to the policy of
administrations of maintaining the school land office as
a separate state institution entrusted with the duty of
handling school funds, and his views were virtually
passed in 1915.

Mr. Dunlop’s activities since retiring from office have
been in furtherance of his agricultural and oil and gas
interests. He lias a farm in Kay County of 320 acres,
with 300 acres in cultivation. In partnership with E. B.
Howard, of Tulsa, he owns 600 acres of oil and gas
bearing land in the eastern part of the state. He is a
director in the Spreading Adder Oil find Gas Company,
the Coleman Farms Oil and Gas Company, the Sipo Oil
and Gas Company, the Kay Vernon Oil and Gas Co., the

1956

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Kay Wagoner Oil & Gas Co., the Flora Hope Oil & Gas
Co., and the Dunlop Oil & Gas Co.

Mr. Dunlop was married in 1904, at Blackwell, Okla-
homa, to Miss Flora Christian, of Blackwell, who was a
native of Holden, Missouri, a graduate of the Emporia
(Kansas) State Normal School, and a teacher for several
years prior to her marriage. She died in the following
year, leaving one daughter, Flora, aged ten years, who
resides at Newkirk with her father. Fraternally Mr.
Dunlop is a member of the Masonic Lodge, his Ancient
Free and Accepted Masons membership being No. 57, at
Tonka wa, Oklahoma; his Knight Templar membership
being in Ben Hur Commandery, at Ponca City, Oklahoma ;
his chapter membership being with Hope No. 41, at
Howard, Kansas, and his shrine membership being with
Akdar Temple, Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is a member also
of the Knights of Pythias, of the Country Club at New-
kirk, and of the Capital City Gun Club of Oklahoma
City.

Mr. Dunlop has been one of the state ’s most progres-
sive citizens for many years. His success is compensa-
tion for the early day hardships he endured when, as a
poor young man, he followed the herds of cattle over the
raw prairies of the unsettled country and had visions
of the establishment of a rich and resourceful common-
wealth ; and when, alone with his gun, he traveled over
the wide and wild areas of the unsettled Cherokee Strip
that now is one of the state ’s most prosperous regions.

Steve Durham. Harper County has its livest and most
progressive newspaper in the Buffalo Eepublican. This
paper was the product of and was founded by L. B. H.
Durham, but it is now the property and under the
editorial management of his son, Steve Durham, whose
history from the beginning to the present has been
closely associated with printer’s ink and newspaper work.

In fact, Steve Durham was born in a printing office.
On June 9, 1888, he first saw the light of day in his
father’s print shop at Seward, Kansas. His parents are
L. B. H. and Bebecea Jane (Warren) Durham. His
father was born March 11, 1862, at Chandlersville, Illi-
nois, a son of E. B. and Jane (McDaniel) Durham. The
grandfather was born in Pennsylvania, but his wife was
a native of Scotland.

When L. B. H. Durham was eleven years of age he
was bound out as an apprentice in a printing office, and
thus he, too, has had a long and active experience in the
newspaper business. In 1876 he went to Stafford County,
Kansas, and as one of the pioneers of that section estab-
lished the Independent at Seward. He was editor and
owner of this paper for two years. During that time his
son Steve was born in a newspaper office, which was
also the home of the family. In 1889 he removed to
Colorado, and for six years conducted newspapers at Villa
Grove and Saguache. Beturning to Stafford County,
Kansas in 1898 Ee established the Stafford Leader,
remained at its head two years, conducted the Sun for
one year at Sylvia, Kansas, and in 1901 removed to old
Augusta, Oklahoma, where he published the Herald for
a short time.

In 1902 the elder Mr. Durham established the Bepub-
lican at Supply, Oklahoma, conducted it three years, and
in 1910 he bought the Buffalo Eepublican, which is the
pioneer newspaper of Harper County. He continued its
active editor and owner until December 1, 1915, at
which time he transferred its management to his son
Steve.

On August 16, 1883, in Stafford County, Kansas, L. E.
H. Durham, married Miss Bebecca Jane Warren, daugh-
ter of . James B. and Sarah (Caldwell) Warren. Her
father was a native of Pennsylvania and her mother of
Scotland, and thus Steve Durham from two sources has

Scotch ancestors. Mrs. L. B. H. Durham was born
July 10, 1863, at Plum Creek, Pennsylvania. She be-
came the mother of three sons: William E., who was
born May 20, 1884, and is now a farmer in Stafford
County, Kansas; Albert L., who was born October 8,
1886, and is a farmer in Harper County, Oklahoma; and
Steve Durham, whose birth date has already been given.
The latter was educated in public schools, and prac-
tically grew up in a newspaper office, became familiar
with the details of a printing office at an early age, in
fact his earliest recollections are associated with such
things, and he is a practical printer and newspaper man
by experience as well as by vocation. The Buffalo Ee-
publican is his first venture on his own account and he is
making it a very live and wholesome paper.

John W. Cornell. One of the well known figures
in the journalistic world of Western Oklahoma is John
W. Cornell, editor and manager of the Clinton News, of
Clinton, one of the most alert, enterprising and interest-
ing organs of the democratic party in Custer County.
Mr. Cornell is a Kansan by nativity, born in Saline
County, December 24, 1878, and is a son of Charles and
Clara (Anderson) Cornell.

John Cornell, grandfather of John W. Cornell, was
born in Sheffield, 'England, from whence he emigrated
as a single man to the United States, and settled as a
pioneer of Marshall County, Illinois, in the vicinity of
the Town of Sparland. There he carried on agricul-
tural pursuits throughout his life. He was married
there to an Illinois girl and they became the parents
of two sons: John, Jr., who died at the age of twenty-

five years; and Charles. Charles Cornell was born on
the home farm in Illinois, in 1850, and during the Civil
war fought in an Illinois volunteer infantry regiment
in the Union army. Shortly after the close of the war
he removed to Saline County, Kansas, where he engaged
in farming and stockraising and continued therein until
1907, when he went to Newton and secured employment
in the storehouse department of the Santa Fe Bailroad.
He was residing at Newton at the time of his death, in
1911. Mr. Cornell was a member of the Independent
Order of Odd Fellows, and a good and public-spirited
citizen, and his known integrity and probity won him
many friends and the high regard of a wide acquaintance.
He married Miss Clara Anderson, who was born at
Salina, Kansas, and who survives him and lives at
Kansas City, Kansas. They became the parents of five
children: John W. ; James Bobert. who is a commercial

traveler out of San Francisco, California; Blanche E.,
who is the wife of Earl Bishop, engaged in the packing
business at Kansas City, Missouri; B. E., who is con-
nected with the Los Angeles Bank and Trust Company,
at Los Angeles, California; and Ivan E., who is manager
of the Harvey Bestaurant, at Guthrie, Oklahoma.

John W. Cornell attended the public schools of Saline
County, Kansas, and was graduated from the Gypsum
(Kansas) High School with the class of 1899. His first
position after leaving school was that of bookkeeper in
the Gypsum Valley State Bank, where he remained one
year, and in 1900 came to Oklahoma, locating at Cleo,
as bookkeeper for the Cleo State Bank. He next con-
tinued his banking experiences as bookkeeper for the
Watonga Bank, of Blaine County, Oklahoma, and in
1902 became the organizer of the Bank of Eagle City,
Oklahoma, an institution of which he was cashier for a
period of seven years. Mr. Cornell became one of the
organizers of the Farmers State Bank, at Thomas, Okla-
homa, in 1909, and continued to be identified with that
concern for four years, but in 1913 resigned the cashier-
ship to start editorial work as a member of the staff of
the Thomas Tribune, a paper which retained his services

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1957

for two years. In March, 1915, he resigned and came
to Clinton, where in partnership with S. R. Hawkes',
the present postmaster of Clinton, he bought the Clinton
News, of which he has since been editor and manager.
The offices and plant are located in the Dipple Building,
on Frisco Avenue, and are modern in every respect, not
only including machinery of the latest manufacture for
the printing of an up-to-the-minute newspaper, but for
first class job work of all kinds as well. Under Mr.
Cornell’s editorship the News has won a reputation for
veracity and reliability. While the paper is 'a demo-
cratic organ, an effort is made to place matter before
the public in an impartial manner, and to print the
whole news at all times. Mr. Cornell, himself an active
and stalwart democrat, has held several positions of
public trust, having served on the school board while a
resident of Eagle City, and as mayor for two terms
while living at Thomas. He is a Mason of high rank,
belonging to Thomas Lodge No. 265, Ancient Free and
Accepted Masons; Thomas Chapter No. 53, Royal Arch
Masons: Weatherford Commander, Knights Templar;
and India Temple, Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of
the Mystic Shrine, at Oklahoma City.

In 1904, at Gypsum, Kansas, Mr. Cornell was united
in marriage with Miss Halle Whitmore, daughter of the
late J. W. Whitmore, who was a cattleman, and to this
union there have been born two children: Helen and

William Kenneth, both of whom are attending the
public schools of Clinton.

C. H. Westgate. For thirty years Dr. C. H. Westgate
has been in the practice of his profession as veterinary
surgeon, and has the largest and best equipped veterinary
hospital in Kay County, Oklahoma, in the City of Black-
well. Doctor Westgate has lived in Blackwell since 1906,
and was already well established and with a good reputa-
tion in professional circles when he came there. His
faith in the future of Kay County led him to invest in
farm and town property, and he is now one of the large
tax payers of that section. His veterinary hospital is
housed in a large building 24x50 feet, containing offices,
store rooms, garage, operating facilities and everything
needed for the care and treatment of domestic animals.

Dr. C. H. Westgate was born near Mendota in La Salle
Cofinty, Illinois. His birthplace was the pioneer farm
of La Salle County. It had been settled by his grand-
father, Abner D. Westgate, ninety years ago, in 1826,
and that part of Northern Illinois was still a wilderness
and before the City of Chicago came into existence as a
village. Abner D. Westgate was the first to improve a
farm in La Salle County. David Westgate, Sr., was
also born on that homestead and died there at the age of
seventy-two. David, Sr., married Martha Gibbs, who
now lives with her daughters at Aurora, Illinois. She
was the mother of seven children. George H. is a horse
dealer at York, Nebraska, and next to him comes Dr.
Charles H. LetRia, who is a graduate physician from
Rush Medical College at Chicago and is in practice of
medicine at Aurora. Frank A. is a practical farmer and
occupies the old homestead at Mendota. Frank A. lives
in La Salle County.

Doctor Westgate was reared on the old farm,' developed
a good physique by farm work, and the schools at
Mendota supplied him with a thorough education. For
four years he served as chief of police at Mendota and
made a record as a courageous officer.

In La Salle County, Illinois, August 6, 1888, Doctor
Westgate married Jessie Wallace, whose grandmother,
Elizabeth Wallace, lived to the remarkable age of one
hundred and two years. Both Mrs. Westgate ’s parents
are now deceased. Mrs. Westgate was one of twelve
children, five sons and seven daughters. To their mar-

riage have been born the following children : Lloyd

A., a popular man in the United States postal mail
service; Morth B. and David W. Doctor Westgate has
an attractive modern eight-room residence, furnished in
good taste and with everything needed for comfortable
living. He owns three other good homes in Blackwell,
and has two valuable farms in Kay County. Among the
little possessions which he cherishes is the old deed writ-
ten on parchment covering the title of the land in Illinois
granted by the Government to his grandfather ninety
years ago.

Doctor Westgate is a fine speciman of physical man-
hood, stands six feet in height and weighs 200 pounds
and has the bearing and address of an army officer.
He is interested in local manufacturing, and has a wide
connection with men and affairs both in Oklahoma and
elsewhere. He owns a fine automobile, and uses it both
for business and for the recreation of himself and
family.

H. T. Hansford. The manager of the Municipal Bath
House at Guthrie, perhaps more widely known as the
Guthrie Hercules Sanitarium, Mr. Hansford deserves the
credit foT making this splendid institution known far
and wide and appreciated for the curative value of the
waters and the efficiency of the service not only in Okla-
homa but over the entire Middle West.

Mr. Hansford was a Kansas banker for many years,
but in 1908 he moved to San Antonio, Texas, and be-
came interested in lands in Southwest Texas and also
in promotion and capitalistic affairs. It was while at
San Antonio that he became familiar in a business way
with mineral waters and the conduct of sanitariums. In
1913 he was attracted to Guthrie by the curative prop-
erties of the mineral waters at that point. During 1914
he made arrangements and secured a lease from the
Park Board Commissioners, beginning January 1, 1915,
for the Municipal Bathhouse and Sanitarium. His lease
runs for a term of ten years, and since taking charge
he has really been responsible for the growth and
development of the institution. This is a very elaborate
enterprise, and is recognized as the most complete in
general equipment and service west of the Mississippi
River.

It cost $100,000 to construct the fireproof building
and install the splendid equipment. The building itself
is one of the handsomest examples of architecture found
anywhere in Oklahoma. Constructed on the mission
style, its attractiveness is enhanced by its broad verandas
and loggias, and the splendid expanse of glass, which
indicates that sunlight and fresh air are combined with
the curative properties of the waters which are supplied
from five different mineral wells. There is a competent
staff of attendants, and the building has facilities for
furnishing thirty different types of baths. The equip-
ment for hydrotherapeutics cannot be excelled by any
institution in America. The building was erected by
the City of Guthrie. The waters from these mineral wells
are recognized as specifics in the treatment of a number
of physical disorders, and are helpful agencies in assist-
ing in the restoration to health of persons suffering from
many ailments of the vital organs and nervous diseases.

Since Mr. Hansford took charge of the sanitarium its
patronage has more than doubled, and its patients come
from all parts of the United States, Mexico, Canada, and
even from the Hawaiian Islands.

Mr. Hansford was born February 6, 1869, at Morrison,
Whiteside County, Illinois, a son of Thomas J. and Lydia
A. (Eads) Hansford, both of whom were natives of
Kentucky. His mother was a relative of the famous
engineer who designed and built the Eads Bridge at St.
Louis. Thomas J. Hansford served in the Union army

1958

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

during the Civil war, and he died in 1875 from disease
contracted during his military service. H. T. Hansford
at that time was six years of age, and from boyhood
he has relied upon his own efforts and enterprise to
advance him through life. He came out to Kansas and
finished his education in the college at Horton in that
state, and also took a business course at Fort Scott.
For several years he was in the insurance business, and
was then elected cashier of the Kansas State Bank at
Fort Scott, a position he filled until 1908, when he left
for Texas, and his experiences there finally brought him
to Guthrie.

Mr. Hansford is not only a man of great energy and
enterprise but has a magnetic personality, has a host of
friends and is recognized as a genial entertainer and one
who shows a true Southern hospitality in all his relations.
Fraternally he is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite
Mason.

Trudo Jones Webb. While one of the most difficult
of professions, that of medicine is likewise one that
brings the greatest service and value to humanity, and
while its practitioners seldom occupy the conspicuous
positions in the world they perform a work of more
direct and greater value to individuals than can be
claimed for any other calling. A young man of excep-
tional native qualifications and thorough training, Doctor
Webb has already gained recognition and reputation
for skill and successful work as a physician and sur-
geon, and after several years of practice in Northwest
Texas has been located at Tiptop, Oklahoma, since 1911.

He was born at Lockhart in Caldwell County, Texas,
April 30, 1883. His grandfather James Webb was born
in Tennessee, and while serving in a Tennessee regiment
with the Confederate army was killed in the Civil war.
He was a Tennessee farmer, and his family had settled
in that state during the early days. F. M. Webb, father
of Doctor Webb, was born at Winchester in Franklin
County, Tennessee, in 1850. When he was a boy his
parents removed to Southeastern Texas and he has lived
in that state ever since, a farmer and stock raiser, and
since 1890 has been established at Romney in Eastland
County. He is an active member of the Methodist Epis-
copal Church and a democrat in politics. F. M. Webb
married Alice McGinnis, a native of Texas. They have
a large family of children, a brief record of them being
as follows: Sophronia, wife of W. P. Grubbs, who owns
several farms and lives at Carbon, Texas ; Dr. Trudo J. ;
Brice, who is a farmer at Romney, Texas; Eva, wife of
Iva Bostick, a farmer at Romney; Mack, a druggist at
Tipton, Oklahoma; Elsie, wife of Mr. Elliott, a retail
meat dealer at Sweetwater, Texas; Lou, who married A.
Blackwell, now postmaster at Romney; Terry, Lillian
and Beatrice, twins, and Bernard, all living at home and
attending the public schools at Romney.

. Doctor Webb was educated in the public schools at
Romney, where he lived from the age of seven, and had
the usual life and experiences of a farmer boy up to the
age of eighteen. In preparation for his chosen profes-
sion he attended the medical department of the Uni-
versity of Nashville two years and spent three years at
the Memphis Hospital College. He graduated M. D.
April 29, 1904, and did his first practice at Hale Center,
Texas, where he remained eight months. From 1905 till
the fall of 1911 he was located at Texico, on the line
between Texas and New Mexico, and in the fall of 1911
removed to Tipton, Oklahoma, where he has since ac-
quired a profitable general medical and surgical practice.
His offices are in the Tipton Drug Store and Postoffice
Building on Main Street.

While living at Texico Doctor Webb served as health
officer. He is a democrat, is affiliated with Tipton Lodge

No. 417, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and with
the Woodmen of the World at Tipton. On August 5,
1907, at Fort Worth, Texas, he married Miss Adelia
Nichols, whose father is W. H. Nichols, of Texico, New
Mexico.

Augustus Wood Henderson. With the construction
of the Midland Valley Railroad through Osage County
and the laying out of the Townsite of Avant in 1909,
one of .the first settlers and business men to locate in
the new community was Augustus Wood Henderson, who
bought some lots and in the midst of a corn field erected
the building in which the Bank of Avant has since been
housed. Since then Mr. Henderson has been actively
identified with local affairs chiefly as a real estate man,
and is one of the local capitalists. Mr. Henderson is one
of the characters of the Kansas-Oklahoma frontier, and
has lived in close touch with the Indian peoples and
the pioneer • communities of the Southwest the greater
part of his life. A distiuction which will at once serve
to identify him with early Oklahoma history is that he
was a member of Payne’s Colony of Oklahoma Boomers
during the decade of the ’80s, and several years before
Oklahoma Territory was first opened to settlement.

He was born at Marion Center in Indiana County,
Pennsylvania, December 21, 1850, a son of John McKin-
ley and Elizabeth Black (Wood) Henderson, both of
whom were natives of Pennsylvania, his father of West-
moreland County. John M. Henderson learned the trade
of tailor at Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and was em-
ployed at his trade- until 1856, when he removed to
Henry County, Illinois, and was engaged in farming in
that rich district of the Prairie State until 1865. He
then moved to Eastern Kansas, settling on a farm seven
miles from Olathe in Johnson County, where he continued
to reside until his death in 1890. His first wife, and
the mother of Augustus W. Henderson, had died in Illi-
nois in 1863 while he was away in the army. He served
in the One Hundred and Twelfth Illinois Mounted In-
fantry, was wounded at the Battle of Richmond, Ken-
tucky, and after spending some time in the hospital was
discharged in the fall of 1864. Not long afterward
he returned to Pennsylvania and married for his second
wife Miranda Brady. There were four children by- the
first wife and five by the second. The older son, William
Henry Harrison Henderson, was wounded while fighting
with the Union army, and died from the results after he
returned home. Augustus W. Henderson is now the
only one living of his mother’s children, and there is
one son by his father’s second wife.

Since he was fifteen years of age Mr. A. W. Henderson
has lived in the West and has witnessed almost the entire
development of the states of Kansas and Oklahoma.
Most of his education came from the country schools of
Illinois, and his career of adventure began when he was
eighteen years old, with his enlistment in 1868 in the
Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry for service under General
Custer against the Indians. He was with his command
during the winter of 1868-69, and was discharged from
the army in the spring of ’the latter year. In 1871 Mr.
Henderson left home and the next three years were spent
at Wichita, Kansas. He was married while living there
to Cordelia C. Gillman, who was born near Monticello,
Iowa, and died at Coffeyville, Kansas, in the spring of
1879. Her only child was Beulah L., who died at Alva,
Oklahoma in 1901, after her marriage to W. C. Fergu-
son, by which union there was one child Carmalete.

After the death of his first wife Mr. Henderson, who
had already gained an extensive experience on the cattle
ranges of Central and Western Kansas, moved to the
Sac and Fox Agency in Oklahoma, and was in the

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1959

employ of the trader John Whistler during 1879-80.
He continued in the cattle business until 1882, and it
was during that time that he first became identified with
the Payne Boomers. In 1882 he engaged in the saloon
business at Honeywell, Kansas, but in the same fall
removed his business to Kiowa. In the fall of 1893, with
the opening of the Cherokee Strip, he took up a claim
and about the same time established at Alva a saloon and
cold storage plant, and he continued to be identified with
that business until the admission of Oklahoma as a
state in 1907 and the consequent closing of all the
saloons throughout the territory. He soon afterwards
moved to Osage County and has since been a factor in
the upbuilding of Avant.

In 1900 at Oxford, Kansas, Mr. Henderson married
Carrie A. McCann. She brought him one daughter,
Edith L., who is now the wife of James L. Beeler, who
is now conducting the bottling works at Alva which rep-
resents Mr. Henderson’s original enterprise in that city.
Mr. and Mrs. Henderson also have an adopted son, Fred
Sweet Henderson, who is now a farmer in Major County,
Oklahoma.

Among the interesting experiences of Mr. Henderson
there should be recalled one which followed his entry into
the Panhandle of Texas during the fall of 1887 while
the Santa Fe Railroad was being built across that
territory. He located at Miami, and was soon after-
wards involved in the local struggle for the location of
a county seat for Roberts County. For a time there
were two sets of county officials in Roberts County, and
owing to the fact that both of the nominal sheriffs ap-
pointed Mr. Henderson deputy sheriff, he was really the
only legally constituted and qualified person in the
county government. Politically Mr. Henderson is a
democrat and has fraternal affiliations with the Knights
of Pythias, the Fraternal Order of Eagles and the
American Horse Thief Association. During his early
days on the plains Mr. Henderson for about fifteen years
allowed his hair to grow long until it fell over his
shoulders like an Indian, and there is a photograph still
extant which shows him in this picturesque costume.
During the many years that Mr. Henderson conducted
a saloon at Alva it is only a matter of justice to record
that he never had a fight on his premises and no man
was ever arrested at his bar.

Steven P. Hannifin. Among the enterprising and
ambitious citizens of the enterprising and ambitious
City of Devol, Oklahoma, none has labored more ener-
getically in the interests of the community than has
Steven P. Hannifin, proprietor and editor of the Devol
Dispatch. During the two years that he has conducted
this newspaper, he has developed it into one of the
successful journalistic efforts of Cotton County, and at
all times has given over its columns to a stanch support
of Devol and its industries and institutions.

Mr. Hannifin was born at Waterloo, Wisconsin, July
23, 1895, and therefore is but twenty years of age, but
it would seem in his case that youth has been no bar to his
success. He comes of good old Irish stock, his grand-
father, Steven Hannifin, for whom he was named, having
been born in County Kerry, Ireland, in 1805. Shortly
after his marriage, the grandfather emigrated to the
United States, settling at- Waterloo, Wisconsin; where
he continued to be engaged in agricultural pursuits
until his death, in 1902, when he was ninety-seven years
of age. On the maternal side, Mr. Hannifin ’s grand-
father was Patrick Griffin, a native of County Clare,
who on his arrival in this country located at Waterloo,
Wisconsin, but later moved to the City of Madison, in
that state, and there died. He became a man of

prominence and influence, and for several terms repre-
sented his district in the Wisconsin State Legislature.

D. L. Hannifin, the father of Steven P. Hannifin, was
born on his father’s farm in Wisconsin, June 12, 1863,
and was brought up to agricultural pursuits, in which
he was engaged in his native locality until 1907, being
the owner of a handsome and valuable farm located one
mile north of Waterloo. In the year mentioned he
removed to Randlett, Oklahoma, where he established
himself in the furniture and undertaking business, and
continued at that place until 1913, when he added his
name to the list of business men of Devol. Here he
has continued in the same line to the present time,
having a modern establishment and a large and repre-
sentative patronage. In political matters a strong
democrat, while a resident of Wisconsin Mr. Hannifin
served in the legislature during the sessions of 1902
and 1904. Mr. Hannifin was married to Miss Etta
Griffin, who was born in 1870, at Waterloo, Wisconsin,
and they have had only one child: Steven P.

Steven P. Hannifin commenced his educational train-
ing in the public schools- of Waterloo, Wisconsin, and
was twelve years old when he accompanied his parents
to Randlett, Oklahoma, where he graduated from the
high school in the class of 1912. At that time he secured
a position with the Bank of Randlett, where he worked
for one year in the capacity of bookkeeper, but his
inclinations indicated journalism as his field of effort,
and in 1913 he came to Devol and purchased the Devol
Dispatch, of which he has since been the proprietor and
editor. This newspaper, a democratic organ, was estab-
lished in 1909 by M. A. Forgy, and it was purchased by
Mr. Hannifin in 1913. It circulates in Cotton and the
surrounding counties and has also a respectable foreign
list, its list of readers constantly growing because of the
able management and clean policies of its owner. The
plant, modern in every particular, with equipment for
high class job printing, is located on Wichita Avenue.
Mr. Hannifin has “made good” in his chosen field of
effort, and is eminently deserving of the support which
is being given him by his subscribers and advertisers.

Mr. Hannifin ’s political views make him a supporter
of democratic principles. He is a member of the Wood-
men of the World, at Devol, and his religious faith is
that of the Roman Catholic Church. He is unmarried.

Edward L. Cruzan. A resident of Oklahoma for more
than a quarter of a century, Edward L. Cruzan has
become widely known in a number of lines of endeavor,
having been successively occupied as agriculturist,
preacher, chiropractor and merchant. At the present
time he is head of the prominent firm of Cruzan & Son
Hardware Company, dealer in agricultural implements,
wagons and vehicles and binder twine, a concern at
Cushing which has been developed to large proportions
by excellent management and honorable business methods.

Mr. Cruzan was born near the Town of West Union,
in Adams County, Ohio, May 10, 1862, and is a son of
Proverbs B. and Catherine (Blackburn) Cruzan, the
former a native of Indiana and the latter of Ohio. He
was a farmer by vocation and for a number of years
carried on operations in Adams County, Ohio, but in
1882 moved to the West, settling on a farm in Chau-
tauqua County, Kansas. That locality continued to be
his home until 1889, when he moved with his son,
Edward L., to Oklahoma, and here passed away near
Cushing, at the age of sixty-five years. During the
period of the Civil war, while living in Ohio, he attempted
on three occasions to enlist for service in the Union
army, but was each time rejected, owing to an injury
he had received in youth and which made him ineligible

1960

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA '

for military duty. There were six children in the family,
namely: Willie, who died in childhood; Mrs. Elizabeth •

McKee, who is deceased; Thomas J., who resides near
Cushing; Edward L.; U. S. Grant, who lives on his farm
five miles from Cushing; and Nora, who is the wife of
Horve Custer, of Pauls Valley, Oklahoma.

Edward L. Cruzan was reared on his father’s farm in
Adams County, Ohio, and there received his education in
the public schools. He was twenty years of age when
he accompanied his parents to the West, and in the fall
of 1889 came to Oklahoma, purchasing one-quarter sec-
tion of land nine miles southwest of Stillwater, a
property on which he resided until 1906, then disposing
of his interests and moving to another tract on Euchee
Creek, ten miles northeast of Cushing. Mr. Cruzan con-
tinued to be engaged in agricultural operations until
the winter of 1914, when he retired from that line of
endeavor, disposing of his interests therein and coming
to Cushing, where he founded his present business of
Cruzan & Son Hardware Company, succeeding the Cush-
ing Trading Company. He has directed the affairs of
this concern with judgment, acumen and foresight, and
has attracted a large trade in shelf and heavy hardware,
agricultural implements, wagons, binder twine and gro-
eries, making a specialty of the Deere agricultural
machinery. Aside from this business Mr. Cruzan has
practiced during the past four years as a chiropractor,
and has gained success and reputation as a devotee of
the science of adjusting the joints, especially those of
the spine, by hand, for the curing of disease. For about,
six years he was also a preacher of the Holiness faith,
but in more recent years has been a member of the
Presbyterian Church. Mr. Cruzan is a republican in his
political views and at various times has been elected
to public office, having been particularly active in educa-
tional affairs as a member of the school board. Since
coming to Cushing he has been busily engaged with the
establishment of his business, but has found time to
take a lively and helpful interest in civic affairs.

Mr. Cruzan was married in 1887 to Miss Ida A. Stout,
who was born July 17, 1866, in Indiana, daughter of
Samuel and Eliza Stout, and they are the parents of five
children: Virgil, who is a farmer; Carl B., who is his

father’s business associate in the firm of Cruzan & Son
Hardware Company; and the Misses Golda Belle, Ethel
and Naomi.

John S. Irwin, of Bartlesville, is one of the big men
of Oklahoma. He deserves that reputation not on one
count, but on many. He is a banker, a leader in oil
development and operations, a big farmer, owning a large
estate of farms and managing them under his personal
supervision. Not only are his interests in a financial
and material way of a large scope, but his mind and
character are developed on an equally broad scale. His
friends say that one of his dominating characteristics
is his liberality. His business success can no doubt be
attributed to the fact that he possesses a boundless
energy and if he ever loses a minute no one has ever
been found to convict him of the loss. He is readily
approachable, affable, kindly and genial, yet those who
seek him on business or for some other reason say that
he is one of the hardest men to find in the state. He
is seldom in his office, but is always where his services
are most needed at the time, giving his personal super-
vision to every detail, and that is just as likely to be
out on one of his farms as in his office.

He is Seotch-Irish, of the typical stock of Western
Pennsylvania, and the fact that he has lived his life
often in close touch with the hardships of circumstance
as well as with prosperity has undoubtedly made him
unusually sympathetic with misfortune. Those who

know him best say that he thinks little of himself, but
all for his family and his friends, and has helped many
a struggling man over some of the hard rocks of the
road.

He was born in Butler County, Pennsylvania, Feb-
ruary 10, 1867, a son of Samuel and Martha J. (Me-
Candless) Irwin. His parents were fine old Scotch-Irish
people and spent most of their lives in Butler County,
Pennsylvania, where his father died at the age of fifty-
eight and his mother at sixty-four. Samuel Irwin was
a gallant soldier in the Union army during the Civil war,
and his period of service covered practically the entire
period of struggle between the states of the North and
the South. It was due to the hardships incurred during
his military career with a Pennsylvania infantry regi-
ment that his early death abbreviated his useful career.
He and his wife were members of the United Brethren
Church. There were four sons and four daughters in
the family, and all the sons have been useful and suc-
cessful men, though undoubtedly John S. Irwin has had
the faculty of doing things and thinking quickly and
acting energetically to a degree superior to them all.
A brief record of these children is: Mary, wife of John

G. McKissiek of Oklahoma; John S. ; Robert, a manu-
facturer of engines in the State of Oregon; Eva, wife
of Loyal Aggs of Washington County, Oklahoma; James
M., of Bartlesville; Samuel C., a resident of Copan,
Washington County, Oklahoma; Carrie, wife of Clyde
Wicks of Butler County, Pennsylvania; and Belle, of
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Native judgment, common sense and the faculty of
going ahead and doing things and profiting by experi-
ence have been the factors chiefly responsible for John
S. Irwin’s success. He had very little book learning,
though during the first twenty-one years spent on the
old homestead farm in Pennsylvania he attended the
public schools about as regularly as most boys. A few
months before he reached his majority, in 1867, he came
west to Sumner County, Kansas, and from there went
to Colorado', spending two seasons in the cattle business.
Eventually he became associated with that group of
stockmen whose operations extended from Southern Kan-
sas by lease right from the Cherokee Indians into the
old Cherokee Strip of Indian Territory. His individual
operations were at a point south of the present Village
of Caldwell. He was among the cattlemen affected by
the ruling of the Government department to vacate the
strip, and all his improvements were confiscated. Thus
Mr. Irwin had two years of experience as a pioneer in
one of the most prosperous sections of Oklahoma prior
to its opening to settlement.

In 1892 Mr. Irwin married Miss Ollie H. Suddarth,
and for the following two years was a Kansas farmer.
He then returned with his family to Pennsylvania and
turned to an entirely new vocation, the oil industry. In
that as in other things he succeeded because of his
temperamental courage and instinctive good judgment.
He acquired a complete knowledge of all the technical
details of oil development and from Pennsylvania went
to West Virginia and was a factor in oil operations in
that state until 1904. In that year he came to Okla-
homa. His previous years had brought him alternate
success and vicissitudes and when he arrived in Okla-
homa he had practically nothing and in fact owed some
debts. Some of his early associates in this state tell
some very interesting stories that show Mr. Irwin ’s
positive character and ability to convince others of his
resourcefulness as a worker. It is said that he could
get money from the banks when even men with much
larger visible resources failed, and he did this not by
any subterfuge or covering up the real circumstances
of the case, but by explaining in a straightforward

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1961

manner that he had no money and did not know whether
he would ever be able to repay the loan or not, but in
some way he had the power of giving others the confi-
dence which he seemed to feel in himself. He seldom
encountered much difficulty in securing an outfit of
rigs to start drilling in a new district, and such supplies
were furnished him on credit as freely as they would
have been given to others for cash. With eight years
•of experience in the oil business of Pennsylvania and
West Virginia, he soon proved a factor in the oil develop-
ment of Northern Oklahoma. For the past ten years he
has been one of the most influential men in developing
the oil and gas fields of Oklahoma, and in that time has
drilled over 200 wells and more than 100 of them proved
producing properties. At the present time he is president
of the Matoaka Oil Company, which controls several
producing wells in Washington County, and is also
president of the Hester Oil Company, with wells in
Greer County.

He is a stockholder in two of the national banks of
Bartlesville, and since 1912 has been active in buying
and improving Oklahoma lands, both as a farmer and
stock raiser. One of his ranches comprises 1,700 acres
and is situated at the head of Candy Creek in Osage
County. He owns a fine farm six miles south of Bartles-
ville comprising 500 acres. In the vicinity of Oglesby,
in Washington County, is another farm of 200 acres, and
there are several other small farms owned by him. He
goes at his farming and stock raising with the same
energy that he takes into other business affairs, and
never neglects a single detail. In 1915 he had 300 head
of cattle and sixty head of horses, and it has been his
ambition and his policy to bring the standard of his
stock up to the highest possible excellence. Not only
in the management of his extensive private affairs but
also in the work of building and developing Bartlesville
does he deserve special mention. He has done things
himself and has been influential in getting things done
that are of material benefit to this community. He was
associated with William A. Smith in the erection of the
fine store and office building on Third Street known as
the Irwin-Brin Building, Mr, Smith having sold his
interest to L. N. Brin. With two other progressive Bar-
tlesville business men, Burlingame and Maire Bros., he
was associated in the erection of the Empire Building,
and also in the erection of the Maire Hotel, the Elks
Building and the Bartlesville Country Club Building.

Politically he is a republican. Both he and his wife
are very prominent in the Methodist Episcopal Church,
of which his wife is a member, and only those in close
touch with the church know the exact quantity of his
liberality in supporting its various enterprises. He is
affiliated with the Benevolent and Protective Order of
Elks, is both a York and Scottish Rite Mason, having
attained the thirty-second degree of Scottish Rite and
is also a member of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine
and belongs to the Country Club. Mr. Irwin is proud
of his family and the mainspring of his tremendous
energy and working ability is found in his devotion to
his home. He and his wife have four children, all of
whom were born in Kansas except the youngest, who
was born in West Virginia. Ima, the oldest, is the wife
of Don Tyler of Bartlesville, and they have one child,
Helen Louise. The three younger children, still at home,
are Iva, Ivan and Ruth.

John T. McWilliams. The flourishing Town of Tip-
ton in Tillman County was founded as the result of the
enterprise of the late W. A. McWilliams and its present
site was originally comprised in the half section of land
owned by that pioneer, and his son, J. T. John T. Mc-
Williams has himself been identified with the town from

' its beginning, and is now one of the leading merchants
and property owners and a vigorous and public spirited
citizen.

The McWilliams family came over from' Ireland many
years ago, and were pioneer settlers in the State of
Arkansas. In White County of the latter state John T.
McWilliams was born October 6, 1876. His father, the
late W. A. McWilliams, was born in Columbia County,
Arkansas, in 1854, and died at Tinton, Oklahoma, October
3, 1911. He was a resident of White County, Arkansas,
up to 1884, then removed to Hico, Texas, and in 1901
brought his family to what is now Tipton, where they
were the first permanent settlers. At the opening of
the Kiowa and Comanche reservation he brought a bunch
of cattle to Lawton and in September, 1901, drove his
stock to Tipton though at that time there was no village,
no habitation, and nothing but a broad expanse of un-
cultivated and unoccupied wilderness. In Arkansas and
Texas W. A. McWilliams was a substantial farmer, and
continued farming and stock raising combined with mer-
chandising at Tipton. He acquired the half section of
land on which the town has been built. He was likewise
influential in democratic politics, was a deacon in the
Baptist Church, and was affiliated with the Woodmen of
the World. His first wife was Frankie Manning who
died in White County, Arkansas. She was the mother
of John T. McWilliams and Lollie, who died at the age
of fifteen. W. A. McWilliams married Lizzie E. Black-
well of White County, Arkansas. She is now a resi-
dent of Tipton, and is the wife of J. M. Baker.
Mr. Baker owns a half section of land near Eldorado,
Oklahoma, has an interest in a cotton gin, a drug store
and other business interests, though he is now largely
retired from active pursuits.

John T. McWilliams attended the public schools at
Hico, Texas, grew up on his father ’s farm, and his pre-
vious training and native vigor enabled him to take an
active part in affairs as soon as he came to Tipton. Here
he was first engaged in farming, and was associated with
his father in the diversified cultivation of the soil and
in raising stock and also in merchandising. Before the
town site had been regularly laid out his father estab-
lished a general merchandise store, and the land sur-
rounding that nucleus was sold in small parcels and lots
to the new comers as they arrived, and thus gradually the
town came into being and its growth has since con-
tinued until it is a populous and busy center. Mr. Mc-
Williams now manages and owns most of the original
business established by his father, his mother having a
quarter interest. The store is situated on Main Street
at the corner of Broadway, and its new building was
erected in 1910. It is a prosperous trading center, draw-
ing trade from Tillman and Jackson counties, and the
farmers come in for a number of miles from every point
of the compass to lay in their supplies at this old and
reliable house.

Mr. McWilliams is also a director in the Farmers State
Bank at Tipton, has served on the town council, and is
an active democrat. Fraternally he is affiliated with
the Masonic order, Tipton Lodge No. 417, Ancient Free
and Accepted Masons, and with Tipton Camp of the Mod-
ern Woodmen of America. In 1898 at Hico, Texas, he
married Miss Maudie Watson. Her father, J. W. Wat-
son, now occupies his farm five miles southeast of Tipton.
There are three children of their marriage: Oran, now in
the eighth grade of the public schools; Ona, in the
seventh grade; and Aaron, in the .fourth grade.

Pirl B. Myers, M. D„ is of German descent, although
his paternal great-grandfather was born and reared to
maturity in Switzerland, whence he immigrated to the
United States in the early part of the nineteenth cen-

1962

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

tury. Frederick Myers, grandfather of the doctor, was
likewise born in Switzerland and he was a mere boy at
the time of his parents’ removal to this country. The
family settled in the vicinity of Patton, Missouri, and
there engaged in farming operations. Eiley Myers, son
of Frederick Myers, was born on his father’s farm near
Patton, in 1851, and he was summoned to the life
eternal in July, 1914. At the age of thirty years Eiley
Myers located in Barton County, Missouri, and one year
later he established his home at Edgewood, that state.
In 1883, however, he was again farming near the old
homestead at Patton and there he continued to reside
during the remainder of his life. He was a republican
in his political affiliations and he served his community
as justice of the peace for a number of years. He was
prominent in local affairs and was held in high esteem
by all who knew him. He married Mary Sharrock, who
was born at Patton, in 1855, and to them were born
seven children: Marcella died at the age of twenty

years; William C. is a farmer near Patton; Perry J. is
an electrician for the interurban railway at Coffeyville,
Kansas; Nick is a resident of Stillwell, Kansas, where
he is telegraph operator and agent for the Missouri
Pacific Eailway Company; Emma is the wife of W. C.
Evans, a merchant at Doe Eun, Missouri; Pirl B. is the
subject of this sketch; and Eayford E. is a teacher in
the public schools of St. Louis, Missouri: Mrs. Myers
survives her honored husband and now resides at Patton,
where she is a member of the Methodist Episcopal
Church.

At Patton, Missouri, August 5, 1887, occurred the
birth of Dr. Pirl B. Myers. He passed his boyhood and
youth on his father ’s farm and was educated in the pub-
lic schools of Patton, where he graduated in high school
in 1906. He then went to Coffeyville, Kansas, and there
worked at the trade of carpenter for one year. In the
spring of 1907 he came to Oklahoma and worked at the
trade of boilermaker in the oil fields near Tulsa until
fall, when he was matriculated as a student in Barnes
University, at St.- Louis. He was out of school during
the year 1909-10 and during that time worked as car-
penter at Garden City, Dodge City and Kingsley, all in
Kansas. He then returned to college and June 17, 1912,
was graduated with the degree of Doctor of Medicine,
receiving the same from the American Medical College,
which is combined with Barnes University. June 9, 10
and 11 he passed the state board medical examination
for the State of Oklahoma and immediately entered upon
the active practice of his profession at Bernice, where
he remained for two months. He came to Lookeba, in
Caddo County, October 29, 1912, and here he has since
resided. He controls a large and lucrative medical
practice and has been very successful in his work. His
offices are located on Main Street. He is a member of
Caddo County Medical Society an'd of the Oklahoma
State Medical Society. In politics he is a democrat
and in religious faith is a Methodist. Fraternally, he
is affiliated with Lookeba Lodge, No. 456, Independent
Order of Odd Fellows, of which he is past noble grand ; •
Patton Lodge No. 10680, Modern Woodmen of America;
Lookeba Camp, No. 919, Woodmen of the World; and
with the Oklahoma National, an old life insurance com-
pany. Doctor Myers is popular with all classes of people
and he is looked upon as one of the rising young physi-
cians of this section of the state.

August 31, 1911, at Kinsley, Kansas, was celebrated
the marriage of Doctor Myers to Miss Myrtle Smith, a
daughter of O. E. Smith, who owns a section and a half
of fine wheat land just south of Kinsley. Doctor and
Mrs. Myers have one child, Neal, born December
25, 1912.

George M. Tredway. For practically twenty-five
years Mr. Tredway has been intimately associated in a
commercial way with the people and affairs of the old
Osage Nation, and it is doubtful if any white man
stands higher in the esteem of those citizens than Mr.
Tredway. For a number of years he has been one of
the leaders in commercial affairs at Hominy in Osage
County, and is perhaps best known at the present time
as cashier of the First National Bank of that city. The
First National Bank is an organization now ten years
old, and Mr. Tredway has been with it during most of
its existence. As a bank it is a solid institution, well
managed, and its officers are all .conservative bankers.
The president is Prentiss Price, and the vice president
Daniel B. Maher, and these three men comprise a notable
group in the handling of financial affairs in Osage
County. The bank is capitalized at $25,000, has a sur-
plus of $30,000, deposits of over $200,000, and its aggre-
gate resources according to a recent statement shows
more than $300,000.

How Mr. Tredway first came to be identified with this
section of old Indian Territory is an interesting little
story. He was born at Madison, Wisconsin, April 22,
1872, a son of William and Margaret (McLaughlin)
Tredway, the former a native of New York and the latter
of Pennsylvania. His father enlisted from New York
and rose to the rank of an officer in the United States
navy during the Civil war, and at the close of the war
was married at Washington, D. C., and soon afterward
went out to Wisconsin, where he followed farming until
his death, and his widow still lives there. Of their three
children, John D. is now living in Seattle, Washington,
and Mary is the wife of Joseph W. Hanley of Eoberts,
Wisconsin.

After getting his education in the public schools of
his native state, George M. Tredway went to visit a
relative in St. Louis, and at the same time looked for a
business opening. His uncle was at that time president
and the active head of the wholesale grocery house of
the Greeley-Burnham Grocer Co., and one of the valued
customers at the time young Tredway was making his
visit was Mr. Campbell of Nowata, Oklahoma. Mr.
Campbell was asked as to the prospects for an opening
in a business way in the Southwest for the nephew,
and Campbell told the young man to go to Bartlesville,
Oklahoma, and inquire for Colonel Bartles. Thus in
1890 he came into Indian Territory on the recommenda-
tion of Mr. Campbell, presented himself before Col. Jacob
H. Bartles, and was almost immediately put to work.
He was soon afterwards sent by Colonel Bartles to his
branch store in Pawhuska, operated under the firm name
of Barndollar, Bartles & Gibson. Young Tredway was
also to give his asistance during the regular distribution
of payment and rations among the Indians. He lived
at Pawhuska and was connected with the mercantile
business until 1895, and since then has had his home at
Hominy. Here he was connected with Eead & Bopst,
Indian traders, until they sold out to W. C. Wood &
Company, and he continued with the new firm until
February, 1904. At that time he associated with Pren-
tiss Price, Fred Drummond and Percy Dixon, formed
the Hominy Trading Company, Incorporated, with Mr.
Tredway as treasurer and one of the active managers.
Several years later he sold his interests in the trading
company, and then engaged in the real estate business
and the leasing of Osage lands. He also became iden-
tified with the First National Bank as assistant cashier,
and on the death of the late Howard M. Maher suc-
ceeded to his position as cashier. Mr. Tredway is also
treasurer of the Osage Gin & Light Company. He and
Mr. Price conducted a large business in the leasing of

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1963

farm lands in this part of Oklahoma, and has carried on
extensive farming operations.

In politics Mr. Tredway is a democrat. He was
elected the first treasurer of Black Dog Township and
has always shown a vigorous and public spirited attitude
in local affairs. He is a member of the Presbyterian
Church, and in Masonry is affiliated with the Consistory
of the thirty second degree Scottish Bite Masons and
is a Knight Commander of the Court of Honor, was
one of the charter members and the first master of
Hominy Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, is
a member of the Knight Templar Commandery and the
Temple of the Mystic Shrine. Through his intimate
commercial relations with the Indians through the f>ast
twenty-five) years he has acquired a fluent command of
the Osage tongue. He prizes a large collection of Indian
relics, and all the more for the fact that he has bought
none of them, all of them being given to him as marks
of appreciation and friendship by different members of
the tribe.

In 1895 Mr. Tredway married Miss Sally B. Hughes,
who was born in Missouri, a daughter of John B. Hughes
of Sedalia, that state. They have two daughters,
Margaret and Frances, both of whom were born at their
home in Hominy.

Milton B. Cope. The present postmaster of El Beno,
Milton B. Cope, is a lawyer by profession, and is one
of the men who can claim the honor and whose name will
go down in history as members of the first State Legisla-
ture of Oklahoma. Mr. Cope has been identified with
the Oklahoma bar nearly fifteen years and throughout
his professional career has been more or less closely
identified with public life.

Milton B. Cope was born in Wilkes Barre, Pennsyl-
vania, March 3, 1877, a son of Chester and Permilla
(Steele) Cope. On his father’s side he is of Dutch
descent, while his mother’s family was Seotch-Irish.
Both his parents were born in Pennsylvania, and when
Milton B. was thirteen years of age they came west in
1890, first locating in Brooks County, Kansas. Ten years
later, in 1900, they located in Canadian County, Okla-
homa, but in 1902 removed to Gotebo, in Kiowa County,
where they now reside. Chester Cope has always fol-
lowed farming as his vocation.

It was on a farm that Milton B. Cope spent his boy-
hood and gained discipline for mind and body. His early
education was acquired in the common schools, and in
1895 he was graduated from the Stockton Academy, now
the Northwest Kansas Normal at Stockton. It was at
Stockton that he began the study of law, in one of the
law offices of that place, and in 1901 was admitted to
the Oklahoma bar before the Supreme Court.

Mr. Cope served as deputy county attorney of Canadian
County from 1901 to 1904, and in 1907 was elected a
member of the first State Legislature. In the proceed-
ings of that body which put into effect the organic
constitution of the state, his name is frequently men-
tioned, and in many ways he left the impress of his
influence on the first body of statutes of Oklahoma State.
In 1908 he was re-elected to Office, and served two terms
in the Legislature. As a lawyer his practice has been
of gratifying proportions almost from its beginning.
From 1907 to 1913 he was associated in practice with
James I. Phelps.

Mr. Cope was appointed postmaster of El Beno by
President Wilson, May 22, 1913. Most of his time is
now given to the affairs of an office which in extent of
receipts and business transactions is one of the largest
in Oklahoma. Mr. Cope has for a number of years been
one of the democratic leaders and in 1912 was chairman
of the Canadian County Democratic Central Committee.

Fraternally his membership is in the Masonic Order, the
Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Modern
Woodmen of America. He is a member of the Christian
Church.

In 1905 Mr. Cope married Miss Ethel Bradley of El
Beno.

George W. Canfield. The men who have given of
their energy, ability, enthusiasm and ambitious vigor in
the development of a community are entitled to the
gratitude and respect of their fellow citizens. In every
undertaking there must be a beginning, and the indi-
vidual who lays the foundations for what may in future
years become a large, prosperous and flourishing city,
must be possessed of the courage of his convictions,
unlimited faith in the future of the community he selects
as the scene of his activities, and the ability to direct
the affairs thereof. When, in 1900, he purchased the
townsite of Yale, George W. Canfield looked far beyond
the narrow horizon of that day and in his mind’s eye
saw the possibilities of this rich and fertile section of
country. His judgment has been vindicated, for today
this is one of the most promising localities of Central
Oklahoma, and he has prospered by his foresight and
acumen, being the owner of some of the richest oil land
in the world and the head of the Yale Wholesale Grocer
Company, a concern which has been developed to splendid
proportions under his personal direction.

Mr. Canfield was born at Mattoon, Illinois, February
1, 1863, and is a son of Jesse and Catherine (Bausman)
Canfield. His father was born in Virginia and his
mother in Pennsylvania and they were married in Ohio,
following which they first moved to Indiana and later
to Illinois. In 1869 they again turned their faces toward
the West, following other pioneers to Cherokee County,
Kansas, where Mr. Canfield secured a claim, subsequently
becoming one of those to lay out the Town of Columbus.
Later he returned to Carroll County, Arkansas, and then
went to Madison County, in that state, where he died in
1888, at the age of forty-nine years. Mrs. Canfield sur-
vived her husband many years and passed away at Jen-
nings, Oklahoma, at the age of sixty-nine. During the
greater part of his life Mr. Canfield was an agriculturist,
but he was also successfully engaged in the sawmill
business and conducted a gristmill. He was a republican
in politics. There were eight children in the family,
as follows : W. E., who is enga ged in business operations

at Yale in partnership with his brother; Miss Ida, who
lives at Yale; Anna C., who is deceased; George W. ;
Charles, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Laura Bradshaw,
of Kingston, Arkansas; Jesse, of Fort Lauderdale,
Florida; and Willis, a hardware merchant at Yale.

George W. Canfield received a country school educa-
tion and remained with his parents until twenty-two
years of age, at which time he left home and spent one
year in cotton picking on the Arkansas Biver. Beturning
to Kingston, Arkansas, with a capital of $7.50, he started
a grocery store in a small way, and subsequently added
a modest stock of drugs. His business prospered and
after three years he sold his store and came to Okla-
homa, being first located at Soonersville, near Cushing,
later at Jennings, and finally at Yale. In 1910, with
others, he purchased the townsite of Yale, and two years
later iaid out the town in company with his brothers,
W. E. and Willis Canfield, Dr. E. G. Newell, E. F. Knowl-
ton and G. M. Weems. This community has since been
his home and the scene of his almost phenomenal success.
With his brother, W. E., he soon bought the State Bank
of Yale and continued in the banking business for two
years, and when he retired from that enterprise started
the Yale Wholesale Grocer Company, of which he has
been manager and president to the present time. A

1964

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

modest concern in 1907, in 1915 this company did a
business amounting to $400,000, with a branch office at
Drumright, Oklahoma, its statement of March 1, 1914,
showing the following figures: Liabilities: Accounts

payable, $40,223.48; bills payable, $11,339.83; cash on
deposit, $703.72; capital. stock, $75,000.00. Total, $127,-
267.03. Assets: Inventory of stock on hand, $27,775.26;
accounts receivable, $83,434.69; bills receivable, $4,-
648.02; furniture, fixtures, etc., $769.30; real estate,
$9,212.13; cash on hand, $1,427.63. Total, $127,267.03.
In December, 1913, Mr. Canfield built his present business
house, a structure erected of native stone, 50 by 124 feet,
with basement under all, one of the finest buildings iu
this part of the county. The development of this great
industry is a striking example of American enterprise
and of western grit and initiative. Mr. Canfield is also
the owner of some of the most valuable oil land in the
world, and is interest in the Twin State Oil Company
and the Sun Oil Company of Yale, as well as the Webster
Refining Company of this place, of which he is president.
He has large holdings also in the Yale State Bank and
the Farmers National Bank of Yale. His brother, W. E.
Canfield, is associated with him in the great number of
his interests. Mr. Canfield was the owner of a town
lot at Perry which he secured after making the run to the
Cherokee Strip, September 16, 1893, and which later he
disposed of, and also has a valuable claim north of
Jennings, which he obtained shortly afterward. In poli-
ties a republican, he is ably' discharging the duties of
citizenship as a member of the Yale City Council.
Fraternally he is a Mason and an Odd Fellow and has
passed all the chairs in both lodges.

In 1893 Mr. Canfield was married to Miss Roxie Wright,
who was born in Arkansas, a daughter of J. M. Wright,
and six children have been born to this union : Jesse,

Ralph, Roy, Teddy, Ira and Wright.

Mr. Canfield belongs to a family which can trace its
ancestry back for generations in this country, pointing
with pride to nine Canfield brothers who fought in the
Revolutionary war. His success, however, has rested
entirely upon himself, and has naught to do with ances-
try, save as he may have inherited the sterling traits
of sturdy ancestors. There may be a feeling of family
pride when an individual points to lands and possessions
which his forefathers have gained and given to him, but
how much more gratifying it must be to realize that
one is the builder of his own fortune and that the credit
belongs to himself alone for obstacles overcome and
successful results accomplished.

William W. Childers. About twenty-five years ago
Mr. Childers began his career as a teacher, after obtain-
ing the benefits of a school and college education, fol-
lowed that profession in Mississippi, Tennessee and
Texas, had a somewhat extensive business experience in
the latter state, and since 1909 has been identified with
the flourishing Town of Tipton in Tillman County, where
lie is now cashier of the Farmers State Bank. He was
one of the organizers of this institution, and its capital
stock is $12,000 with surplus and undivided profits of
$6,000. The modern brick bank building was erected in
1911 at the corner of Broadway and Main Street, and
contains the largest vault in Tillman County. The pres-
ident of the bank is C. W. Howard of Frederick, while
the other officers live at Tipton, including R. S. Carlile,
vice president; Mr. Childers, cashier; and Miss Clara
Childers, assistant cashier.

The Childers family originated in Ireland, and was
established in one of the Carolinas during the colonial
era. The grandfather of the Tipton banker was James
Childers, a native of Tennessee, whence he removed to
Mississippi, and was killed while a soldier on the Confed-

erate side during the war between the states. William W.
Childers was born at Corinth, Mississippi, March 14,
1874. His father, S. H. Childers, who was born in Ten-
nessee in 1845, grew up on his father’s plantation in
Mississippi, and in 1861 enlisted and was a Confederate
soldier throughout the course of the war. He was with
a regiment of Mississippi cavalry under the command of
the noted Bedford Forrest, and in one battle was wounded
in the left arm. After the war he returned to Missis-
sippi, and since 1875 has lived at Ripley with the excep-
tion of about three years spent in Corinth. He has
been a farmer and stock raiser, and still occupies the
old homestead at Ripley. He is an active member of
the Baptist Church and in politics a democrat. The
maiden name of his wife was Melinda Griffin, a native
of Alabama. Their living children are: Etta who mar-
ried John D. Wammack, a farmer near Ripley; Jennie,
wife of R. E. Clark, also a farmer near Ripley ; William
W. ; Luther M., who is cashier of Bank of Elmer, Elmer,.
Oklahoma, and owns a stock ranch in Texas; John Y., a
merchant at Clarysville, near Ripley, Mississippi; Esear,
a farmer and stock man in Mississippi; J. E., who is now
a practicing physician in Natchez, Mississippi; Obie, who
lives on the farm with his parents; and Clara, assistant
cashier of The Farmers State Bank, Tipton, Oklahoma.

Beginning his education in the public schools at Ripley,.
Mississippi, William W. Childers continued in the high
school at Chalybeate, Mississippi, and in 1894 graduated
from the Southern Tennessee Normal School. In 1896
he graduated bachelor of science from the West Tennes-
see Christian College. With this thorough training he-
taught school in Tennessee two years, and in 1898 re-
moved to Southwest Texas and continued his professional
work there six years. From 1904 to 1908 he was in-
business at Lake Victor, Texas, and then spent one year
in the real estate business at San Antonio. In 1909 Mr.
Childers removed to Tipton, assisted in organizing the
Farmers State Bank, and became its cashier. He is
vi«e president of The Bank of Elmer, Elmer, Oklahoma.

In politics he is a staunch democrat of the old line
school. He has served as city clerk at Tipton, is now
clerk of the local school board, is city treasurer, and for
two years was a member of the village council. He is
one of the strong supporters of church activities, is a
steward in the Methodist Episcopal Church South and
superintendent of the Sunday School. In the Tipton
Lodge No. 417, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, he
is serving as senior warden, also belongs to Frederick
Chapter No. 41, Royal Arch Masons, has membership in
the lodge of Knights of Pythias at Burnet, Texas, and
formerly was affiliated with the Independent Order of
Odd Fellows in Tennessee.

In 1905 at Marble Falls, Texas, Mr. Childers married
Susie Browning Parkhill, who died at San Antonio in
1909. The one daughter of that marriage is Ethel, now
attending public schools at Tipton. At Tipton in 1912
Mr. Childers married Miss Mattie Reeves, who came from
Mayfield, Kentucky.

John Skelley. To say that John Skelley of Min-
eral, Cimarron County, has lived in the Panhandle dis-
trict of Oklahoma for a period of thirty years is suffi-
cient to classify him with the real old timers and'
pioneers. He has spent all his life in the Far West,
and it was only a few years ago that civilization caught
up with him. For years he lived and worked on the
open range, when the country was innocent of settlers
or civilization, except a scattered population of pioneers,
and when towns, railroads, and the institutions of
developed society were far and isolated.

He was about five years of age when brought to the
western country from Montgomery County, New York,.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1965

where he was born April 2, 1864. His parents were
Michael and Louise (Bailey) Skelley, the former a native
of Ireland and the latter of New York. Michael Skelley,
who was born in Ireland in 1820 and came to America
in infancy, had a career of exceedingly varied experi-
ence. In the early days he conducted a boat on the old
Erie Canal in New York State. In 1869 he came out
to Colorado and followed various occupations afterwards,
principally ranching and running a wagon freighting
train, in connection with his brother, from various points
on the Kansas Pacific Railroad, hauling supplies to mili-
tary posts and the settlements in New Mexico until the
building of the Santa Fe Railroad through that territory
in 1880. He was a well known man in his day. He died
at Pueblo, Colorado, in 1890. His wife, Louise Bailey,
was born in New York State in 1839, a daughter of
George Bailey, a native of the same state. She died
January 3, 1903, at Sheridan, Wyoming. There were
eight children in the family, four sons and four daugh-
ters, five of them still living.

John Skelley came out to Trinidad, Colorado, with his
parents in 1869. As a boy he attended the public
schools in Trinidad, Colorado. When only fourteen he
started out as a cowboy on a ranch. The next seven
years were spent in the free and open life of the old time
cattle man on the ranges of New Mexico and Wyoming.
For one year during this period he was a government
teamster with the quartermaster’s department of the
United States Army in Wyoming and the Black Hills of
South Dakota, and he spent one year with a government
surveying corps in northwestern Nebraska. After this, in
1885, a little more than thirty years ago, John Skelley
directed his operations to what is now Cimarron County,
Oklahoma, then described in the school geography as
No Man’s Land. His headquarters have been here ever
since, except a period of two years, 1892 and 1893, when
he went to Montana. He was first a teamster and cow-
boy, working for wages for different pioneers and ranch
companies, but gradually his activities became his own,
and for a number of years his operations have been
such as to constitute him one of the leading ranchmen
and citizens in this district of the Southwest. He now
has a large ranch twenty-four miles northwest of Boise
City at the old Mineral Postofiiee in Cimarron County,
comprising eight hundred acres of deeded land and
eight thousand acres leased for ranch purposes. It is a
ranch in size and equipment equal to the best still found
in the ranching country. He has partly modern build-
ings, has set out a great many trees, and has considerable
land under cultivation. The water for his ranch is
furnished by both wells and stream. His home is noted
for its hospitality, where the weary traveler gets both
bed and board without question or price, should they
need it.

For thirteen years Mr. Skelley conducted a general
store at old Mineral City in No Man’s Land, where he
still resides, his postofiiee address being Kenton, Okla-
homa, and during that time his store was also the location
of the postofiiee, this office being established in 1888 and
discontinued in 1911, and he served as postmaster thir-
teen years. In 1904 he was appointed United States
Court Commissioner for the Western District of Okla-
homa, and in 1907 was made a regular United States.
Commissioner, an office he filled for four years. He is
a republican, though he has been too busy with practical
affairs to seek office, and the few honors of that nature
that have come to him came unsolicited. He is very
popular with the native Mexican population of that
part of Oklahoma and New Mexico, and he speaks the
Mexican language like one of them and has their respect
and confidence.

On April 25, 1895, Mr. Skelley married Miss Lucy
Dacy, who was born in Kansas City, Missouri, October
12, 1871. She was a daughter of James Dacy, a pioneer
who settled in No Man’s Land in 1887 and who died
in 1891. To their marriage have been born five children,
two sons and three daughters: John Dacy, born De-

cember 27, 1896; Mary Catherine, born June 7, 1898,
and died July 23, 1898; George Lewis, born May 23,
1899; Frances Louise, born April 5, 1902, and Lucy
Elizabeth, born June 4, 1904.

P. R. Williams. When Mr. Williams started his busi-
ness career fifteen years ago, in 1900, he had cash capital
of less than $100. In Missouri and in Northeastern
Oklahoma he has been steadily working upward, first as
a merchant and subsequently as a banker, and is now
the cashier of the First State Bank at Wynona and is
a stockholder in four other banking institutions in this
part of the state. He is one of the men who are provid-
ing the business leadership for Osage County.

Born in Lawrence County,. Missouri, February 8, 1879,
Mr. Williams is still a young man and his many friends
predict a great deal for his future. His parents were
Jesse A. and Eva (Ham) Williams, the former a native
of North Carolina and the latter of Alabama. His
mother came to Missouri with her parents, while his
father removed to that state after he was grown, and
was married in Lawrence County and both died on the
homestead which he had acquired before his marriage.
He passed away at the age of sixty-five, when his young-
est son, P. R. Williams, was eight months of age, and
the mother lived for a number of years and died at the
age of fifty-nine. During the Civil war he was a soldier
in the Union army with a Missouri regiment. The two
oldest children are John, now living in California, and
Jessie A., of Missouri.

P. R. Williams was reared on a farm, and in 1899
finished his education in the Collegiate Institute at
Marionville in his native county. He soon afterwards
became identified with merchandising at Verona, Mis-
souri, and that was his home until he removed1 to
Oklahoma in 1909. One year was spent at Mannsville,
and he then came to Wynona, in Osage County. He and
his brother-in-law, J. M. Browning, organized the First
State Bank of Wynona in September, 1909, and Mr.
Williams has since been its cashier. Mr. Browning has
organized six different banks in this part of Oklahoma
and Mr. Williams has an interest as a stockholder in five
of them. The officers of the First State Bank are :
J. M. Browning, president; J. A. Owens, vice president;
P. R. Williams* cashier; and Mrs. Myrtle Williams, wife
of Mr. Williams, assistant cashier. The bank has its
deposits guaranteed by the Depositors Guaranty Fund
of the State of Oklahoma.

Mr. Williams is active as a member of the Methodist
Church, though he was reared a Presbyterian, and his
wife is also active in the same denomination. In 1901
he married Myrtle Browning, who was born in Lawrence
County, Missouri, a daughter of G. W. Browning. Mrs.
Williams was graduated from the high school at Verona,
Missouri.

John S. Burger. One of the dominating members
of the Blackwell bar is John S. Burger, whose ability
to render skillful service in the profession has brought
• him rapidly to a place of prominence in his section of
the state. Mr. Burger is a former county attorney of
Kay County, and is one of the pioneers of the old
Cherokee Strip, having made the run to this country in
September, 1893. He was at that time a young man,
and for a number of years before taking up the law was
a successful and popular teacher.

1966

HISTORY OP OKLAHOMA

John S. Burger was born in Barry County, Missouri,
February 25, 1871. The name is of German origin, but
the family have been identified with this country for
several generations. His grandfather was Rev. Jacob
Burger, who became well known as a Methodist circuit
rider both in Tennessee and in Missouri. He was one
of the leaders in the abolition movement before the Civil
war and preached and practiced that belief at a time
when it was an exceedingly unpopular doctrine and ex-
posed him to a great deal of personal danger and
inconvenience. Rev. Jacob Burger died at Leavenworth,
Kansas, in 1902, at the age of eighty-seven years. The
father of the Blackwell lawyer 'was Lieut.-Col. George
Burger, who was born in Tennessee, and he and his
brother Samuel and their father were all soldiers in the
Union army. Colonel Burger made a gallant record both
as a soldier and officer. He was a mechanic and farmer,
moved out to Fort Scott, Kansas, many years ago, and
died in Noble County, Oklahoma, at the age of seventy-
seven. He was a strong republican and a member of
the Methodist Church. He was married in Bourbon
County, Kansas, to Nancy Ellis, who was born in Eng-
land, her family having come from that country and
settled in Kansas. Colonel Burger and wife were the
parents of five children. The daughter, Jennie, now
lives in Grant County, Oklahoma; the next is John S.;
W. F. is a railroad man living at Seattle, Washington;
and Finis is an educator at Billings, Oklahoma.

John S. Burger was reared in the states of Missouri
and Kansas, and largely through his own well directed
efforts secured a liberal education. He is a man of fine
physical frame and constitution and owes its develop-
ment largely to the discipline of a Kansas farm while
he was a boy. He attended the public schools at Winfield
and Ureka, Kansas, was also a student in the State
Normal, and spent five years in the active work of teach-
ing. Some years after locating in a homestead in Clay
County, Oklahoma, he returned to Kansas and entered
the university at Lawrence, where he was graduated from
the law department with the class of 1903. Since then
he has been engaged in a successful practice at Black-
well. He was elected county attorney of Clay County
in 1912, and the following two years gave a most
effective administration to that office. He is a well read
lawyer, and stands high in his profession. In politics
he is a democrat.

Mr. Burger was married May 30, 1897, in Kansas, to
Miss Carrie Barkly. Mrs. Burger was born in Illinois
but was reared in the State of Kansas, and her father,
J. S. Barkly, now lives at Tonkawa, Oklahoma. To this
union have been born two sons and four daughters:
Marietta, Altha, John S., Jr., Irena, William and Leonora.
Mrs. Burger is a member of the Christian Church. He
has taken much interest in Masonry, and is affiliated
with the lodge, chapter and commandery, and is also a
member of the India Temple of the Nobles of the
Mystic Shrine at Oklahoma City. Mr. Burger, along
with a fine knowledge of the law, has the ability of the
forcible speaker, and these qualities, united with a frank
and genial manner, have brought him hosts of friends/
as well as a conspicuous position in his profession.

James H. Townsend. In the autumn of 1914 Mr.
Townsend was elected sheriff of Payne County, where-
upon he removed from the Village of Cushing to Still-
water, the county seat, and his alert and efficient
administration is clearly proving that he is the right
man in the right place and that the confidence of the
electors of the county was fully justified when they
called him to his present important and exacting office.

Sheriff Townsend was born at Sulphur Springs, the
judicial center of Hopkins County, Texas, on the 22d

of July, 1875, and is a son of William A. and Elizabeth
(Perry) Townsend, the former of whom was born in
Mississippi and the latter in Alabama, she having been
fourteen years of age at the time of the family removal
to Texas, prior to the Civil war, and having been reared
and educated in the Lone Star State, where her marriage
was solemnized. When the subject of this review was a
child of six months his parents removed from his native
place to Cheeota, Lamar County, Texas, where he re-
ceived his early education in the public schools. The
family then removed to Montague County, in the northern
part of the state, and the present sheriff of Payne
County, Oklahoma, was still a mere lad when he came
with his parents to Indian Territqry, about 1887. Mr.
Townsend thus gained varied experience in connection
with frontier life in old Indian Territory and is con-
sistently to be designated as one of the pioneer citizens
of Oklahoma, where he has kept step with the march of
development and progress and has witnessed the up-
building of a vigorous and prosperous commonwealth.
The parents of Sheriff Townsend have maintained their
home in Pontotoc County, Oklahoma, for nearly a score
of years and the father has become one of the repre-
sentative farmers and influential citizens of that county.
Of the children Sheriff Townsend is the eldest; John is
deceased; Joseph is now a resident of McNabb, Arkansas;
and Jennie is the wife of Frederick W. Hutsey, of Okla-
homa City.

The present sheriff of Payne County remained at the
parental home until he had attained to the age of
sixteen years. As a youth he was identified with the
cattle industry on the ranges of Western Texas and the
Indian Territory, and about 1891 his operations brought
him into Indian Territory. He passed about two years
in the Chickasaw region and then returned to Texas. He
lias maintained his permanent residence in what is now
the State of Oklahoma since 1895. He resided in Ponto-
toc County until 1901 and then established his home at
Sapulpa, Creek County, where he remained until May,
1913, when he became a resident of Cushing, Payne
County. While a resident of Cushing Mr. Townsend
was elected sheriff of the proposed County of Shaffer,
but in the popular election the county failed of organi-
zation by a majority of sixty votes, so that the officers
elected in anticipation of its establishment were not
called upon to serve.

Mr. Townsend is a skilled mechanic, and as such has
been prominently identified with railroad work, in which
connection he has been employed in various railway
shops in Oklahoma. While a resident of Sapulpa he
served for some time as special agent for the St. Louis
& San Francisco Railroad, and at 'the same place he was
also called upon to serve as a member of the police force
and as under-sheriff. His official service as a member
of the constabulary of Creek County was initiated at the
time of the opening of developments in the oil fields of
that locality. In the autumn of 1914, as before noted, he
was elected to the office of sheriff of Payne County, a
position for which his previous experience and his general
equipoise specially qualify him. The sheriff gives his
allegiance to the democratic party and is identified with
a number of fraternal and social organizations.

On the 18th of November, 1897, Sheriff Townsend
wedded Miss Rosa Lee Solwell, who was born in Tarrant
% County, Texas, and who was reared to majority in
Montague County, that state. Mr. and Mrs. Townsend
have two children, Elmer Edwin, who was born March
13, 1904, and Horace Haskell, who was born November 8,
1907, and who was named in honor of the first governor
of the new State of Oklahoma, which was admitted to the
Union in that year.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1967

Frank Grover Patterson. One of the youngest mem-
bers pf the newspaper fraternity in Western Oklahoma
is Frank G. Patterson, proprietor and editor of the
Davidson News. While a very young man in years,
Mr. Patterson has had an extensive experience in the
newspaper business, printing and allied arts, and for fully
eight years has been identified with the papers of Till-
man County.

He represents an old pioneer family of Livingston
County, Missouri, and was born in the City of Chilli-
cothe, in that county, May 31, 1889. The Patterson family
originally came from England, was subsequently found
both in Kentucky and Tennessee, and Mr. Patterson’s
grandfather Thomas Newton Patterson was born in Ken-
tucky in 1816, shortly after his marriage moved to Chilli-
30the, Missouri, where he became one of the first farmers
in Livingston County, and died at Waterloo, Oklahoma, in
1905. T. J. Patterson, father of the Davidson editor,
was born at Chillieothe in 1863, and still lives in that
city. In earlier years he was a teacher in the Chillieothe
public schools, but eventually took up the business of
contractor and builder, and has had a large business in
that line at Chillieothe and vicinity, and has also carried
out building contracts at El Eeno and in other parts of
Oklahoma. T. J. Patterson married Laura Belle Hen-
derson, a native of Chillieothe. Their children are :
Arthur, who lives at Louisville, Kentucky; Elizabeth,
wife of Cam Fullerton, an elevator constructor at Kansas
City, Missouri; Bae, who married Boy Berg, an electri-
cian at Chillieothe; Frank G.; Harry, a linotype operator
at Kansas City ; Thomas, a senior in the Chillieothe High
School; and Lena, also in high school.

The public schools of Chillieothe furnished Frank
Grover Patterson his early training, but at an early age
he entered the great university of a printing shop, serv-
ing an apprenticeship at Chillieothe. In 1907 he came to
Southwestern Oklahoma and was employed first with
the Frederick Enterprise. He managed the paper and
subsequently other papers in Tillman County up to 1911,
in which year he came to Davidson and bought the News
from U. L. Jolly, and has since been its proprietor and
editor. The News is democratic in politics, has a circu-
lation throughout Tillman and neighboring counties, and
its offices and plant are well equipped for newspaper and
job printing.

Mr. Patterson himself is a democrat, and has made
himself a factor in all public spirited movements under-
taken at Davidson during recent years. He was mar-
ried at Frederick, Oklahoma, in 1908 to Miss Elizabeth
Pike, a daughter of B. M. Pike, who is proprietor of a
'hotel at Wichita Falls, Texas. Mr. Patterson and wife
have two children: Lois born May 26, 1909, and Louise,
born December 23, 1911.

John Biley Thacker. The life of a literary man
seldom exhibits any of those striking incidents that seize
upon public feeling and fix attention upon himself. His
character, for the most part, is made up of the aggregate
of the qualities and qualifications he may possess, as
these may be elicited by the exercise of the duties of
his vocation or the particular profession to which he may
belong. However, it may be said that John Biley
Thacker presents an exception to the general rule. His
career ha3 been passed largely in a literary atmosphere,
for a major part of his activities have been spent in
the schoolroom and in connection with journalistic work;
yet he has also impressed himself and his character upon
the people of the communities in which he has resided
as a capable worker in other fields of endeavor, and his
various achievements have raised his reputation greatly
above that of the mediocre worker in the world of let-
ters.

Vol V— 14

John Biley Thacker, proprietor and editor of the
Eldorado Courier, was born at Bandolph, Fannin County,
Texas, December 5, 1869, and is a son of James Biley
and Susanna Elizabeth (Patton) Thacker, and a member
of a family of Seotch-Irish origin, whose original an-
cestor in America came to Virginia in the seventeenth
century. Members of the family spread from that state
to others of the South in early days, and a connection
of the branch to which Mr. Thacker belongs was Daniel
Boone, the great American frontiersman, explorer and
colonizer. James Biley Thacker was born in Mississippi,
March 16, 1833, and from that state removed with his
parents to Louisiana and later to near Longview, Gregg
County, Texas. About the time of the beginning of
the Civil war Mr. Thacker went to the California gold
fields, where he spent seven years in mining, and in
1867 returned to Collin County, Texas, from whence he
went to Fannin County, in the same state, and there,
October 30, 1868, was married to Susannah Elizabeth
Patton, who was born at Bandolph, Texas, December
30, 1844, where they still reside. Mr. Thacker has
passed his entire life as a farmer and stockman, and has
also been a local preacher of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, South. He is a member of the Independent
Order of Odd Fellows. There were nine children in the
family of James B. and Susanna E. Thacker, as follows:
John Biley; Martha Jane, who died in 1903 as the wife
of Jacob Colvin, who now resides in Florida; Cora Ann,
who married B. N. Davenport, a farmer of Harleton,
Texas; Ida Catherine, who died at the age of eighteen
years; Bobert Oscar, formerly a railroad man for a
number of years and now a farmer of Fannin County,
Texas, residing at Bandolph ; Benjamin William, a barber
of Denison, Texas; James Edwin, who died as a child;
Elijah Otto, a farmer and school teacher of Bandolph,
Texas; and Miss Julia May, who is single and resides
at the home of her parents.

John Biley Thacker attended the public schools at
Bandolph, and was graduated from Bandolph High School
in the class of 1889. He had shown himself a penmaster
while at school and for a short time was engaged in
teaching penmanship in Fannin and Williamson counties,
Texas, and in 1892 received his introduction to journal-
istic work when he became connected with a printing
office at Bonham, Texas, where was published the Farm-
ers’ Beview. After one year with this paper and a like
period spent in farming, Mr. Thacker became identified
with the Leonard Graphic, at Leonard, Texas, a publi-
cation with which he was connected on and off until 1896,
when he identified himself with a paper at Savoy, Texas,
and about this time published a small book of poems
entitled ‘ ‘ Boyhood ’s Pencilings, ’ ’ which was received
very favorably by both press and public. From that
time forward Mr. Thacker was employed by various
newspapers and wrote articles^ of a miscellaneous charac-
ter until 1900, when he became district organizer in
Montague County, Texas, for the Woodmen of the
World, and after leaving that position attended Draug-
hon’s Business College, at Fort Worth, Texas. In 1901
he occupied a position with the Brownwood (Texas)
Business College, teaching bookkeeping and penmanship,
and in the same year went to San Angelo, Texas, where
he occupied a like post. Beturning to Fannin County in
1902, he was employed in a printing office there and at
Whitewright for a time, and again, in 1903, took up his
educational labors, teaching commercial branches at the
East Texas Normal College. While thus engaged he was
employed also as the college printer and took a literary
course himself, being graduated in 1906 with the Bache-
lor of Arts degree. That year marked Mr. Thacker’s
advent at Eldorado, where for one year he taught a coun-
try school, and in February, 1908, went to Hollis, where

1968

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

he purchased the Hollis Post-Herald, which he edited
for two years, and in 1909-1910 occupied the position
of chief of the engrossing and enrolling department of
the State Senate, a capacity in which he acted also in
the year 1915. In 1910, when he accepted the position
of adjuster for the Oklahoma State School Land Depart-
ment, his duties were such that he was forced to sell
his newspaper, but later in the same year he bought the
Eldorado Courier, of which he has continued to be pro-
prietor and editor. This paper is the combination of
the Eldorado Light, founded in 1901, and the original
Eldorado Courier, founded in 1902, and assumed its
present form in the latter year. Originally a supporter
of republican principles, since Mr. Thacker’s ownership
it has been a democratic organ, and exerts a strong
influence in public and political affairs in Jackson,
Harmon and the surrounding counties, where it enjoys
a large circulation. The offices and plant are situated on
Main Street, and have an equipment that equals any in
the state in towns the size of Eldorado. The Courier is
well printed and well edited, giving its readers the latest
news, presented in an interesting and reliable manner,
and its columns have always been open to matter sup-
porting the civic welfare. It is considered a good adver-
tising medium and is being given generous support by
the business men of this and surrounding communities.
Mr. Thacker is a stalwart democrat, but his activities in
public life have been more as an influence than as a
seeker for personal preferment. Fraternally he is an
ex-member of the Knights of Pythias and the Praetorians,
and a member of Eldorado Lodge No. 181, Ancient Free
and Accepted Masons; Eldorado Chapter No. 56, Royal
Arch Masons; Eldorado Council No. 19; Consistory No.
1, "Valley of Guthrie, eighteenth degree of Masonry; Eldo-
rado Chapter No. 178, Order of the Eastern Star;
Mesquite Camp No. 69, Woodmen of the World, Eldorado;
and Mesquite Grove No. 228, Woodmen Circle.

On February 6, 1910, at Erick, Oklahoma, Mr. Thacker
was married to Miss Bertha Briley, daughter of John
Briley, a retired farmer of Mangum, Oklahoma. One
ehild has come to this union: James Glenn, born October
25, 1913, at Eldorado.

J. .1. Cloughley. A little more than twenty years
ago Mr. Cloughley was a messenger boy in the employ
of the railroad company at Parsons, Kansas. He went
through several grades of the railroad service, but for
the last dozen years has been active in a similar progres-
sive fashion in connection with Oklahoma and Indian
Territory banking, and is now president of the First
National Bank of Bingling. He is one of the able men
in Oklahoma’s banking fraternity, and his name and
influence are respected all over the southern counties
of the state.

The First National Bank of Ringling, in the estab-
lishment of which Mr. Cloughley was the principal
factor, was founded May 23, 1914, and has occupied its
new building on Main Street since December 15th of
that year. The officers of the institution are : Mr.

Cloughley, president; L. P. Anderson, vice president;
A. A. Morris, cashier. Its capital stock is $50,000 and in
a year’s time its resources have shown a gratifying
increase and its management has gained the confidence
of the business community in and around Ringling.

John J. Cloughley is a native of Kansas, born in
Parsons December 14, 1874. His parents, John and
Margaret (Canada) Cloughley, were both natives of
Liverpool, England, and in the family are mingled
strains of both English and Scotch. John Cloughley,
who was born in 1843, is now living at Parsons, Kansas.
He came to this country in 1873, bringing his wife and

three children, and for many years was an engineer
employed by the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad
with headquarters at Parsons. He is now a retired rail-
road man. He is a staunch republican and a member
of the Episcopal Church. He and his wife had eight
children: Robert, who is a retired railroad engineer

at Parsons; Maggie, who married Mr. Fuller and
resides in Bellingham, Oregon; Nellie, wife of Frank
Paragory, superintendent of a foundry at McAlester,
Oklahoma; Isabelle, wife of L. C. Minkler, an engineer
for the Southern Pacific Railway living at San Bernan-
dino, California; John J. ; William, who is secretary of
the National Livestock. Commission Company at Kansas
City, Missouri; Anna,' who lives at Sedalia, Missouri,
her husband being a conductor on the Missouri, Kansas
& Texas Railroad; and Susie, who lives at Wichita,
Kansas, and whose husband is a contractor and builder.

J. J. Cloughley acquired his education in the public
schools at Parsons. At the age of seventeen he found
work as messenger boy for the Missouri, Kansas & Texas
Railroad, and by 1892 had become proficient in teleg-
raphy and for ten years was employed by, the railroad
as operator and train dispatcher. During that time his
home was at Parsons. In 1902 Mr. Cloughley became
assistant cashier of the State National Bank at South
McAlester, Indian Territory. When that institution
was sold to the American National Bank in 1903, he
took the leading part in organizing the City National
Bank of South McAlester, and was its cashier until 1904.
He then organized the First .National Bank of Cornish,
Indian Territory, and was its president until it was
reorganized as the Bank of Cornish, and continued as
head of the new institution until 1914. Since then he
has been president of the First National Bank of
Ringling.

Mr. Cloughley is independent in polities, a member of
the Episcopal Church, and takes an active interest in
various Masonic bodies. He is a member and has served
as secretary of Cornish Lodge No. 64, Ancient Free and
Accepted Masons; belongs to McAlester Chapter, Royal
Arch Masons; and has taken eighteen degrees in the
Scottish Rite at the McAlester Consistory. In a busi-
ness way he is also a director in the Newman-Harris
Mercantile Company at Ringling.

At Vinita, Indian Territory, in 1893, Mr. Cloughley
married Miss Sabra Harmon, daughter of J. H. Harmon,
who is now deceased, and was for many years a cattle-
man at Seneca, Missouri. To their union have been born
four children: Harmon, a sophomore in the Agricultural

and Mechanical College at Stillwater, Oklahoma;
Florence, a sophomore in St. Mary’s Academy gt Okla-
homa City; Boone, and J. J., Jr., both in the public
schools at Ringling.

John W. Randall. The present postmaster of Black-
well, John W. Randall, is one of the pioneers of Kay
County, and has supplied many of the resources of
enterprise and business faith and hope which have
accomplished so much in this section of the state during
the past twenty years. Among his achievements was the
development of a fine homestead in the vicinity of
Blackwell. He has an important part in other business
affairs, and received his appointment to the postoffice
in February, 1908, taking charge on the 1st of April.
The Blackwell office is second class, and has four rural
carriers and two city carriers. The first assistant post-
master is John R. Camt, who has been connected with
the Blackwell office for the past two years, and begin-
ning with 1904 has served seven years in the railway
mail service.

Mr. Randall made the run from the Kansas line into
the Cherokee Strip in September, 1893, and was one of

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1969

the fortunate ones who staked out a valuable claim in
the vicinity of Blackwell. John W. Randall was born
at Gallatin, Missouri, September 22, 1859, but when an
infant his parents removed to Green County, Wisconsin,
where he grew up in the Town of Monroe. His father
was Thomas Randall, a native of Tennessee, where he
grew up, and his wife, Rachel Hodges, was a native of
Indiana, but of Tennessee parents. In 1877 the Randall
family left Wisconsin and removed to Kansas, locating
at Winfield. The father was a prosperous farmer, and
died in Scott County, Kansas, and the mother passed
away at the age of seventy-eight. Their children were:
Sarah, who lives in California ; Alice, a resident at Belle-
ville, Illinois; Mary Berkey, of Blackwell, Oklahoma, and
Ella, of Spokane, Washington.

John W. Randall grew up at Monroe, Wisconsin, where
he received his education in the public schools. His
early life was spent on a farm, and he had a thorough
training and discipline in the duties of farm work.

At Winfield, Kansas, July 16, 1882, Mr. Randall
married Miss E. E. Freeland. Mrs. Randall has been a
devoted wife and mother for thirty-three years, and is
a woman of intelligence, high character, and with no
little initiative. Before her marriage for several years
she was a successful teacher. Her father, F. M. Free-
land, was an Illinois man, and is now living in Oklahoma.
Her mother died in 1913. Mr. and Mrs. Randall take
pride in their family, comprising nine children, six sons
and three daughters: Dwight B., who is a clerk in the

local postoffice under his father; Gladys, a deaconess in
the Methodist Episcopal Church and formerly a school
teacher; Carl, who is secretary and treasurer of the
Blackwell Brick Company; Laura; Paul and Beulah,
twins; Glen; William, and Fred. The younger children
are all attending the public schools, while the older ones
are graduates of the high school.

Mr. Randall was for several years editor and proprietor
of the Blackwell Times Record. For six years he served
as United States commissioner at Blackwell, and made
an excellent record in that office as he has in every other
responsibility and business relation. While living in
Kansas he served as postmaster at Floral for seven years.
Fraternally he is a member of the lodge, chapter and
commandery of Masonry and also belongs to the Temple
of the Mystic Shrine at Tulsa. He finds his recreation
in hunting and fishing, and is a man of .splendid physical
constitution, stands six feet high and weighs 185 pounds,
and has always kept himself in sound health and vigor.
Among other undertakings Mr. Randall was one of the
active promoters of the Blackwell Oil & Gas Company,
which is capitalized at $210,000 ^nd has at the present
time twelve wells in operation with a number of miles of
pipe line. Mr. Randall has been one of the leaders in
exploiting oil and gas resources in this section of
Oklahoma.

John H. Bellis. At the time of the opening of the
Cherokee Strip, September 16, 1893, John H. Bellis, then
a young man of twenty-one years, rode his little Canadian
horse seventeen miles in fifty-five minutes in an endeavor
to secure a claim on the Black Bear Bottom west of
Pawnee. In this endeavor he was unsuccessful, as when
he got on the bottom he found men with families and
some were plowing. He immediately went one-half mile
north of Black Bear Creek, where he and his father
secured the same claim, Mr. Bellis buying off another
claimant and his father settling on the property. Fol-
lowing this John H. Bellis went on to Guthrie, but in his
absence, on account of sickness, he lost his claim, and
thus it was that he turned his attention to other enter-
prises and entered upon a career that has resulted in his
becoming one of the foremost business men of Payne

County, president of the Commonwealth Cotton Oil Com-
pany, an official in large and important industries, and
the holder of extensive interests.

Mr. Bellis was born in Missouri, June 30, 1872, a son
of David B. and Sarah (MeReynolds) Bellis, natives of
Indiana, a complete sketch of whose careers will be
found on another page of this work. His parents were
married in Indiana, following which they removed to
Missouri, and in 1873 went to Abilene, Kansas, where
they resided until the opening of the Cherokee Strip.
Since that time David B. Bellis has been interested in
farming and stock raising, although he is now practically
retired from active life and is living at Cushing. He
was a soldier for three years during the Civil war as a
member of Company B, Sixty-fourth Regiment, Indiana
Volunteer Infantry. There were six children in the
family: James, who died at the age of six months;

Mary, who is the wife of Edward Hunt of Guthrie ; J ohn
H. ; C. O., of Klamath County, Oregon; Etta M., the
wife of W. L. Larmer, of Cushing; and Alice E., the
wife of L. J. Martin of the Cushing State Bank. Mrs.
Larmer was a teacher for seventeen years, and was
elected the first county superintendent of schools of
Shaffer County, but the election for this county did not
carry by fifty-nine votes, so she had an office but no
county to put it in.

John H. Bellis was reared on his father’s farm near
Abilene, in Dickinson County, Kansas, and there his
early education was secured in the district schools. After
coming to Oklahoma he assisted his father until determin-
ing upon a business career, and in 1899 was graduated
from the Capitol City Business College at Guthrie. He
was at that time employed by the firm of W. H. Coyle
Company, at Guthrie, a cotton and grain concern, at a
salary of $40 per month, but when he left that company
seven years later he held the position of general man-
ager. On March 1, 1907, he came to Cushing and super-
intended the building of the mill for the Commonwealth
Cotton Oil Company, the first president of which was
J. M. Aydelotte, P. A. Norris being the first secretary.
These gentlemen continued with the concern until 1914,
when Mr. Bellis, who had until that time been manager,
bought their holdings and thus gaining a controlling
interest became president of the industry. E. A. Smith,
the present secretary and treasurer, came to Cushing
from Shawnee in 1907 as bookkeeper for the company
when it was organized and took his present position in
1914. In 1915 Mr. Bellis became the founder of the'
Bellis Furniture and Undertaking Company, of which he
has since been president. He is also vice president of
the Jones Oil and Gas Company of Cushing, and was
the founder of the company and the builder of the plant
of the Cushing Compress, which he subsequently sold
to the Peoples Compress Company. He is owner of the
Postoffice Building, Bellis Building and several other
brick buildings, and in addition to his own home, one
of the finest residences at Cushing, has erected about
twenty dwellings, which are rented to tenants. He has
two good farms and feeds from 1,500 to 2,000 cattle at
the oil mill and has been one of the stanchest supporters
of the agricultural interests of Payne and adjacent
counties. While he does not hold membership in any
religious denominations, he is a supporter of all the
churches and his charitable benefactions are numerous.
His fraternal connection is with the Masons, he being
a member of the Shrine at Tulsa and a thirty-second
degree Scottish Rite Mason.

As one of the leading industries of Oklahoma, a short
history and description of the Commonwealth Cotton
Oil Company may not be out of place in the sketch of
Mr. Bellis, to whose enterprise, energy and business
talent its success is due. The data is taken from a

1970

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

pamphlet recently prepared by local writers. The Com-
monwealth Cotton Oil Company at Cushing is one of the
largest cotton oil companies in the state and is the fifth
largest in the United States. Its yearly output will
exceed $1,000,000. The company was organized in 1907
on a small scale. The business grew to wonderful pro-
portions the first few years of the concern ’s existence and
at once began to attract wide attention among the large
interests of the East. Its products were the very finest
that could be produced and the officers soon found a
heavy demand for the plant’s output. The business is
now capitalized at $150,000. In 1914, 8,000 tons of cot-
ton seed were pressed at the plant, the products of
which amounted to more than $300,000 worth of business.
More than 16,000 bales of cotton were handled by the
company, which, with the cotton seed products, represent
fully $1,000,000 in business. The company’s plant is
situated in the west part of Cushing near the Santa
Ee Railroad tracks. The holdings consist of sixty acres
of land and a number of brick structures for the different
departments, the company ’s plant and property being
valued at $150,000.

The crude cotton oil that is produced by the plant is
sold in large quantities to some of the largest packing
plants in the United States. A considerable amount of
the company’s output is sold to the manufacturers of
Cottolene, Snowdrift, Crisco and numerous other prepara-
tions that in recent years have taken the place of pure
lard for cooking purposes. Little do some of the Cushing
people think that when they are using any of these
standard brands that the contents are doubtless a portion
of the output of one of their own home industries. The
process by which the oil is taken from the seed is a most
remarkable one. The seed is shipped to Cushing from
the string of gins for a radius of fifty miles around
after it has been separated from the cotton, and is then
run through the delinters, large machines used to separate
the lint that is left on the seed by the gins. The seed
is then crushed and run through a system of shakers
that are used to separate the hulls from the kernels. The
kernels, or meat of the seed, are then ground into meal
and formed into cakes by a machine called the cake
former, the cakes then being passed into steel presses
where enormous pressure is applied by a hydraulic ram
that compresses and separates the oil from the meal.
The oil thus produced or extracted is known as crude
cotton oil and is disposed of to large corporations. The
products produced by the mill and marketed are cotton
seed meal, used for feed for live stock, and cotton seed
hulls, also used for feed. These products are sold in
large quantities to the stock yards at Kansas City and
other large cities and to wholesale feed houses in
Nebraska, Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas.

John H. Beilis was married in 1902 to Miss Edith M.
Bowdlear, who was at that time assistant postmistress at
Ripley, Oklahoma, a native of Sioux City, Iowa, who
was reared at Omaha, Nebraska, and came to Oklahoma
with her sister, Mrs. John P. Hinkle. To this union
there have been born four children : William H. ; Nell ;

Lura May, who died at the age of two years ; and
Edith H.

Ered Boone. The postoffiee at Davidson is now under
the efficient management of Fred Boone, one of the
popular citizens of that community, and a man of broad
and varied experience in the work and activities of the
world.

His birth occurred at Table Rock, Nebraska, February
15, 1871, and he is a son of Ely T. and Eunice (Pepoon)
Boone. His father was born in the same county in
England where many generations before the father of
the famous Daniel Boone was born. The mother ’s family

is descended from that race of Pepins which furnished ]
several of the great kings to the early French nation. jl

Ely T. Boone, who died at Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1893, I

came to America in 1856, settling first in Illinois, from In

there moving out to Oregon, and from that state enlisted Jr

in a regiment of volunteer infantry during the Civil war, |

serving three years. After the war he removed to Ne-
braska, and was engaged in farming until his death. He
was also a carpenter by trade. His wife was born in
Ohio in 1841 and is now living at Twin Falls, Idaho.
Their children are: Henry O., a resident of Twin Falls,
Idaho; Gertrude, wife of Fred Leverett, a farmer at
Lisbon, Iowa; Fred; Albert, Frank and Arthur, all ;
farmers at Twin Falls, Idaho; and May, wife of Leslie
Lewis, a clerk at Twin Falls.

Fred Boone attended the country schools in the vicinity 1
of Table Rock, Nebraska, and finished his education with
a course in a business college at Shenandoah, Iowa. His
life to the age of twenty was spent on his father’s farm,
but during the last twenty or twenty-five years he has
come into varied contact with the world. For two years
he was a telegraph operator in the employ of the Chi-
cago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad. Then six years
were spent in fruit farming at Hardy, Arkansas. At
Buffalo Center, Iowa, he conducted an electric power
plant for three years. In 1903 he again came South and
at Myrtle Springs, Texas, had charge of fifty acres of
orchard up to 1906. During 1906 he was employed in
sawmills and in electric light plants and for a short time
served as commissary on a railroad. In 1907 he re-
moved to Oklahoma City, and spent three years as news
agent on trains. Then in 1910 came his removal to
Vernon, Texas, where he was for two years engineer in
the city waterworks. Mr. Boone removed to Davidson
in 1912, and followed his business as engineer until his
appointment on October 12, 1914, as postmaster. He
received this appointment from President Wilson. Mr.
Boone is a democrat and was formerly affiliated with the
Modern Woodmen of America. He is unmarried.

Benjamin F. Harrison. A man of fine intellectual-
ity, wide experience and much executive ability, Hon.
Benjamin F. Harrison, of Calvin, Hughes County, is
consistently to be termed one of the honored and repre-
sentative citizens of Oklahoma, and he has been a leader
in conserving th6 interests and advancement of the
Indians of the state, with just pride in his descent from
the staunchest of Indian stock, his father having been
a representative of the Choctaw and his mother of the
Chickasaw tribe. Mr. Harrison has been the architect
of his own fortunes and has been prominent and influen-
tial in public affairs in Oklahoma under both the terri-
torial and state regimes. His ability and high civic ,
ideals have not failed of recognition, as is evidenced
by his having served as Secretary of State of Oklahoma
and as a member of the State Legislature, he having
been a member of the First Legislature after the admis-
sion of the state to the Union, and' being the representa-
tive of Hughes County in the Fifth Legislature, that of j
1915. A man of thought and action, a citizen of sterling
worth, he well merits recognition in this history of the
state within whose borders he has maintained his home
from the time of his nativity. He is one of the sub- |
stantial agriculturists and stock-growers of Hughes
County, his well-improved farm, on which he maintains
his residence, being situated in the South Canadian Val-
ley and in close proximity to the Village of Calvin.

Mr. Harrison was born in the Choctaw Nation of
Indian Territory, in the year 1875, and is a son of Hil-
burn and Sarah (Colbert) Harrison. Becoming practi-
cally dependent upon his own resources when a lad of

HISTORY OP OKLAHOMA

1971

fourteen years, Mr. Harrison made good use of the
advantages afforded him in the public schools of the
Choctaw Nation and was finally enabled to enter Trinity
College, at Durham, North Carolina, in which institution
he was graduated as a member of the class of 1897. In
1900 he established his residence on his present home-
stead farm, which he has developed into one of the best
in Hughes County, and his progressiveness and marked
success as an agriculturist and stock-grower have been
a lesson and incentive to other residents of that section
of the state. In 1906 Mr. Harrison was elected a member
of the State Constitutional Convention, from the Eighty -
eighth District, and he took a prominent part in the de-
liberations and work of the convention, in which he was
assigned to a number of important committees, including
those on public-service corporations, state and school
lands, primary elections, and preamble and bill of rights.
Upon the admission of the state to the Union, in 1907,
Mr. Harrison was elected the flotorial representative from
Hughes and Pittsburg counties in the First Legislature,
and in 1908 he was re-elected, as a member of the Second
Legislature, in which he served as speaker pro tern. Of
the House of Representatives, as chairman of the Com-
mittee on Constitutional Amendments, and as a member
of the Appropriation Committee. Further and distin-
guished honors were in store for Mr. Harrison in the
gift of the voters of his native commonwealth, for in
1910 he was elected Secretary of State of Oklahoma, for
the term of four years from January, 1911, until Janu-
ary, 1915. He gave a most careful and effective ad-
ministration but resigned his position in November, 1914,
in which month he was elected representative of Hughes
County in the Fifth Legislature. He was made a candi-
date for the position of speaker of the House of Repre-
sentatives of the Fifth General Assembly, but before the
election he withdrew his candidacy, in the interest of
harmony. He was made chairman of the Committee on
Retrenchment and Reform, and a member of the follow-
ing named committees also : Congressional Redistricting,

Revenue and Taxation, State and School Lands, Public
Roads and Highways, Constitutional Amendments, and
Relation to the Five Civilized Tribes and Other Indians.

In the Fifth Legislature Mr. Harrison introduced a
bill prescribing the qualifications for teachers in the
public schools and other educational institutions of the
state and defining causes for their removal, the purpose
of the measure being to eliminate politics from educa-
tional affairs. Another bill introduced by him was that
providing for a governor’s council, consisting of all state
officials, upon whom shall be conferred the powers now
entrusted to the State Board of Affairs and the Board
of Control of the state penal, charitable and educational
institutions, except the power of selecting teachers. He
made a careful survey of the subject and estimated that
this measure would entail to the state a saving of $65,000
annually. Mr. Harrison was the author of the proposed
constitutional amendment providing a mileage tax for
the support of the state educational institutions, — a
measure designed to relieve the Legislature of the re-
sponsibility of making appropriations for the support
of these institutions. He was a co-author of a bill pre-
scribing requirements for admission to the state insane
asylums and providing that persons having property shall
contribute to the support of relatives confined in such
asylums. He not only showed much discrimination and
ability in constructive legislation, but also opposed vigor-
ously all proposed increases of appropriations for state
institutions except such amounts as were actually neces-
sary for maintenance.

In the Masonic fraternity Mr. Harrison has received
the thirty-second degree of the Ancient Accepted Scottish

Rite, besides being affiliated with the India Temple of
the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic
Shrine. He is prominently identified also with the Inde-
pendent Order of Odd Fellows, in which he is past grand
of the lodge at Calvin and also a member of the grand
lodge of the state. He holds membership also in the
Oklahoma Society of Eighty-niners, commemorating the
organization of Oklahoma Territory and its opening to
settlement.

In December, 1912, Mr. Harrison married Miss Grace
Liegerot, daughter of Charles and Emma Liegerot, of
Tonkawa, Kay County, this state. They have no children.

Samuel B. Elrod. The distinction of being the
second youngest postmaster in the State of Oklahoma
belongs to Samuel B. Elrod, who under the present
democratic administration took charge of the postoffice
at Hominy about a year ago. Mr. Elrod is one of the
capable younger business men of Osage County, and his
family has been identified with this state for a number
of years.

He was born in Tennessee December 28, 1888, a son
of B. F. and Annie E. (Milliken) Elrod, who were also
natives of Tennessee, his father having been born in the
same house as the son, and is now sixty-four, while his
wife is aged sixty. The parents now reside 3% miles
north of Hominy. When Samuel B. was two years of
age the parents moved to Texas, locating in Hill County,
and lived there until 1903, when they removed to South-
western Oklahoma. The father had been at El Reno at
the opening of the Kiowa and Comanche Reservation in
1901. Samuel B. Elrod lived with his parents in South-
western Oklahoma until 1911, when he came to Osage
County, and was followed two years later by his parents.
His father has been a farmer all his active career.
Samuel B. Elrod is one of ten children, nine of whom are
still living, and one having died at the age of five. He
is the youngest of the six sons in the family, while two
of the daughters are younger than he.

He lived with his parents until twenty-two and was
then married to Miss Gertrude Harris, born in Bedford
County, Tennessee, in 1893, and coming to Oklahoma
, about nine years ago with her grandparents, both her
own parents having died when she was very young.
Mr. Elrod was a practical farmer up to the time he
removed to Hominy, and then worked a year in a meat
market and for two years engaged in the ice and coal
business. His appointment as postmaster at Hominy
came on July 1, 1914. The Hominy postoffice is third
class, and he is now giving all his attention to its
management. He has been a democrat since casting his
first ballot, and is one of the young leaders of the party
in Osage County. He and his wife are members of the
Baptist Church and his fraternal affiliations are with
the Masonic Order and the Independent Order of Odd
Fellows. Mr. and Mrs. Elrod have one son, Reynold
Milton.

J. Will Morse. The Oklahoma Guaranty Bank of
Blackwell, of which J. W. Morse is cashier, is in point
of resources and stability one of the strongest financial
institutions of Northeastern Oklahoma. A recent state-
ment indicates total resources aggregating about $278,-
000. Its capital stock is $30,000, with surplus and profits
of about $5,500, while the confidence of the community
in its management is indicated by deposits approximating
over $240,000.

Mr. J. W. Morse has been identified with Blackwell since
1897, and is a banker, business man, leader in community
and church affairs, has been one of the men most directly
responsible for the growth and improvement of his city
during the past twenty years. Mr. Morse was born in

1972

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Christian County, Illinois, March 15, 1861. His father
was W. L. Morse, long an active business man at Pana,
Illinois. W. L. Morse was born at Worcester, Massa-
chusetts, of an old Massachusetts family, and located in
Christian County, Illinois, in 1856. W. L. Morse was
married in Kentucky to Mary Jane Meteer, a woman of
intelligence and good family, to whom her children owe
much for their success in life. She was born in Ken-
tucky, and two of her brothers, Thomas J. and John T.,
were soldiers in the Union army. She is still living at
the old home in Illinois, at the age of seventy-seven.
Both she and her husband were members of the Methodist
Episcopal Church.

James W. Morse grew up in Illinois, and received his
education by attending the public schools and by study
at home. He has a sister, Sarah A., who is married and
living at Champaign, Illinois. After leaving high school
he went into business at Pana, and when he came to
Oklahoma in 1897 he brought with him a broad and varied
experience and was well qualified to take an active part
in the upbuilding of the community at Blackwell.

In November, 1883, at Vincennes, Indiana, Mr. Morse
married Miss Jessie M. Eiee, who .was born in Kentucky,
a daughter of Rev. William G. Rice, who for many years
was a successful minister of the gospel. He had also
served as a soldier in the Confederate army, and spent
the last days of his life in Kentucky. To the marriage
of Mr. and Mrs. Morse have been born seven children.
Irocu died in infanev, and Wilber died in childhood.
Those living are: Florence, wife of C. D. Bailv of

Laurens, Iowa; C. E. Morse of Wich’ta, Kansas; Glvde,
attending high school at Blackwell; Wilford and Evelyn,
also in school. Mr. and Mrs. Morse have both been very
prominent in the Presbyterian Church activities at Black-
well. He has served as superintendent of the Sunday-
school and treasurer of the church board, and has always
expressed himself positively and in terms of action in
behalf of any movement for the improvement of churches,
schools and general elevation of morality and temper-
ance in his community. Mr. Morse is also prominent
in the Masonic Order, a member of the Knights Templar,
and belongs to Akdar Temple of the Mystic Shrine at
Tulsa.

Franklin J. Springer. To ptow old gracefully has
been only one of many accomplishments associated with
the career of Judge Springer of Cushing. Many men
much younger are not so fortunate in carrying the weight
of their years as Judge Springer, who is now close to
four score. His is a pleasing retrospect and a conscious-
ness of duty well performed and a long life of honorable
service have undoubtedly been factors in enabling him
to advance so easily toward a green old age.

From the time he was a hard-fighting soldier in the
army of the Potomac during the Civil war until the
present Judge Springer has employed much of his time
and energy in the duties of citizenship. He was born in
Northampton County. Pennsylvania, on a farm, May
18, 1837. He was the only child of his father, Louis
Springer, who died before Judge Springer had any
definite recollection of this parent. The mother’s maiden
name was Mary Kromer. Both were born in Pennsyl-
vania and of German parentage. The mother spent all
her life in that state. Up to the age of about ten years
Judge Springer lived with his grandparents, and soon
afterward started out to earn his own way in the world.
Self-reliance, independence, faithful diligence, have been
important factors in his career. For about six years
he worked on a river boat on the Ohio River. In 1852
he went west to Cass County, Illinois, and lived on a
farm there until the outbreak of the war. Returning
to Pennsylvania he enlisted in July, 1861, as a private in

Company B of the Forty-fifth Regiment of Pennsylvania
Infantry, and was later in Company A, Twenty-first
Pennsylvania Cavalry. He was continuously in service
until 1865, the close of the war, having veteranized at
the close of the first three years of his enlistment. He
■ was mustered out by a special order taking effect May
15, 1865. In the meantime he had borne more than the
ordinary duties and responsibilities of the soldier. Five
days before the surrender of Lee he was taken prisoner
at Amelia Springs, Virginia, and his regiment was
mustered out two months later. From private his first
promotion was to first sergeant, later to lieutenant, and
for one year before his muster out he was captain of
Company A of the Twenty-third Pennsylvania. This
record is the more notable for the fact that he enlisted
as a poor boy and a stranger among his comrades in
Company A. He made no efforts to gain promotion, and
every advance was on the basis of merit and efficiency
and not by reason of personal influence. He took part
in all the great battles in which the army of the Potomac
was engaged from Antietam on to Appomattox. At
Fredericksburg he was slightly wounded when a splinter
from a gun carriage struck him in the forehead, leaving
a scar which is still visible. While in the army he had
three horses shot from under him, and his clothing was
frequently struck by bullets, though he himself passed
through practically unscathed.

After the war he lived in Pennsylvania for a time,
was married there in 1866, and soon afterwards brought
his bride to Illinois and to Cass County, where he had
formerly lived, and engaged in farming. Five years
later he moved to^Iowa and was a resident of Lee County
in that state until 1889. Judge Springer is an Oklahoma
’89er. After participating in the great rush of colonists
and home seekers on the 22d of April he secured a
claim in Oklahoma County, and for a number of years
gave his energy to its development. He has always
been successful as a farmer, and has developed a large
acreage since coming to Oklahoma. He was honored by
election as one of the first county commissioners of
Oklahoma County, helped to organize that district, and
as the other members of the board of commissioners were
city men and practically unacquainted with their duties,
he bore a large share of the official responsibilities con-
nected with that office. For about five years Captain
Springer lived in Lincoln County, and about twelve years
ago moved to Payne County, and for the past five years
ha3 lived retired in Cushing. The greater part of his
career has been spent as a farmer, and he still owns
considerable farming land in Oklahoma.

Politically he has had a part in politics only as a
public spirited citizen, though frequently honored with
official position. He is a republican, and in Cushing
served as police judge until that office was abolished on
the introduction of the commission form of government.
Since then he has administered justice in the local courts
as a justice of the peace. Judge Springer took an active
part in the movement which brought about the organiza-
tion of old Oklahoma Territory. Perhaps his chief in-
terest since coming to Cushing has been the welfare of
local schools. He has helped to establish school dis-
tricts, has served many years on local school boards and
his name should be definitely remembered for his help
in founding the State Normal School at Edmond and
the Agricultural College at Stillwater. Fraternally he
is a member of the Masonic Order and also belongs to
the Grand Army of the Republic.

In Pennsylvania, on March 1, 1866, Judge Springer
married Emma Levan. She was born in Pennsylvania,
June 13, 1845, a daughter of John and Catherine (Oster-
stock) Levan, both of whom spent all their lives in the
Keystone State. Judge and Mrs. Springer are whole-

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1973

some people, always preserved good physical health, are
still active in spite of their years, have reared a large
family of children without the loss of a single one.
Neither Judge Springer nor any of his sons have ever
used tobacco or liquor in any form and he is as clean
mentally and morally as he is physically. In religious
matters he is somewhat liberal and prefers to analyze
and study the scheme of the world and the problems
beyond untrammeled by conventioned thought or dogma.
A brief record of his ten children is as follows: Alice

is the wife of Robert Yarbrough of Oklahoma City;
Frank H. lives in Pawnee County; Hattie Belle is the
wife of R. O. Pettigrew of Oklahoma City; Nora is the
wife of S. W. King of Texas; Fred lives in Shawnee;
Ida is the wife of Dusel Casto of Yukon; Lee lives in
Texas; Albert lives in Payne County; John W. is a
resident of Vinita; and Mamie is a teacher in the high
school at Cushing.

Thomas Andrew Gross. No individual in a com-
munity wields a stronger influence in the molding and
shaping of character than the public instructor. - The ,
capable, conscientious teacher must needs assume heavy
responsibilities, for on entering the schoolroom the child’s
mind is as plastic clay and is as readily made to take
shape under guidance and instruction. That community
is fortunate therefore that numbers among its citizens
men and women of ability and high ideals, to whom the
teaching of its future citizens is a trust not to be lightly
assumed but to which thought, care and constant service
must be rendered. In this category stands Thomas- An-
drew Gross, superintendent of schools of Frederick, Okla-
homa, who has devoted himself to teaching almost from
the time that he left college halls.

Mr. Gross was born at Birchwood, James County, Ten-
nessee, in April, 1875, and is a son of A. J. and Har-
riet (Ziegler) Gross. The family originated in Germany,
a number of generations ago, locating in Virginia in
colonial times, and subsequently removed to Tennessee in
the first settlement of that state. A. J. Gross was born
at Birchwood, in the Big Bend State, in 1851, and for
many years was engaged in farming there, but in 1910
moved to the vicinity of Dayton, Tennessee, where he
now makes his home. He is a member of the Baptist
Church and a democrat in politics, is interested in public
and civic affairs, and has served as a member of the
school board. Mrs. Gross, also a native of Birchwood,
survives, and has been the mother of nine children,
namely: J. F., who is identified with the Department of
Indians Affairs at Washington, D. C. ; Thomas Andrew,
of this review; Tennessee, who resides with her parents
at Dayton, Tennessee, and is unmarried; Lena, who mar-
ried Mr. Jones, a ranchman of Ridge, Montana; Pearl,
who married Mr. Brown, a civil engineer of Chapel, North
Carolina; and Lilly, Lola, Blanche and Stella, who are
unmarried and reside with their parents.

Thomas Andrew Gross first attended the Birchwood
public schools and was graduated from Birchwood Acad-
emy in 1894. He next taught school for one year in
James County, Tennessee, following which he enrolled
as a student at Carson & Newman College, Jefferson,
Tennessee, where he was graduated with the class of 1900,
degree of Bachelor of Sciences, with the highest honors
of his class. His college career was a notable one, in
which he was a prominent figure in the Columbian Liter-
ary Society, in the work of the Young Men’s Christian
Association, in athletics and in the various musical or-
ganizations. Later, in 1908, he received the degree of
Master of Arts from this institution.

In 1901 and 1902 Mr. Gross was engaged in editing a
newspaper at Dayton, Tennessee, but following this ven-
ture entered upon his real career as principal of the Fair-

mount schools, at Hamilton, Tennessee, in 1903-4. The
next three years he was principal of the County High
School, at Hixon, Tennessee, and in 1907 he came to
Weatherford, Oklahoma, as professor of English and
Literature in the Southwestern State Normal School, a
capacity in which he acted for four years. He was
then head of the Department of English, Baptist Uni-
versity, Shawnee, Oklahoma, for one year; principal of
the Okfuskee County High School, Okfuskee, Oklahoma,
one year, and principal of the Frederick High School for
one year, 1913-14, and in May of the latter year was
elected superintendent of city schools of Frederick, a
position in which he has since remained, and in which he
has charge of four schools, twenty-five teachers and 800
scholars. Mr. Gross, aside from being a teacher pos-
sessed the happy and unusual faculty of instilling in
the minds of others his own great store of knowledge, as
well as an executive who is capable of looking "after
the business management of his charge, is a close student,
and by constant study keeps abreast of his profession,
for teaching, like other vocations, is progressive. He is
a democrat in politics, is a member of the Baptist
Church and superintendent of its Sunday School, and a
director in the Carnegie Library at Frederick.

On May 1, 1901, at Talbot, Tennessee, Professor Gross
was married to Miss Arrie M. Roberts, who at that time
was living with her uncle, M. A. Roberts, but who came
from Little Rock, Arkansas, her birthplace. Three chil-
dren have come to this union, Marguerite, born in 1902;
Ralph Franklin, born in 1906; and Byron Roberts, born
in 1909.

The Roberts family is an old one in this country and
traces its record back many generations in England, being
originally from the family that gave to Great Britain its
famous soldier, the late Lord Roberts. The great-grand-
father of Mrs. Gross was a minister of the Methodist
Episcopal faith, spent many years in Tennessee, and was
identified prominently with the Indian history of his day
and locality. Benjamin Roberts, the grandfather of Mrs.
Gross, was born in North Carolina in 1808, and died at
Dandridge, Tennessee, in 1892, having been a pioneer of
East Tennessee where he was engaged as a merchant and
farmer for "many years. He was a republican in politics,
but not a politician.

J. Newton Roberts, the father of Mrs. Gross, was
born in Knox County, Tennessee, in 1839, and as a youth
was taken by his parents to Jefferson County, Tennessee,
and then to Little Rock, Arkansas, where he spent the
remaining years of his life, being principally engaged as
a contractor and builder. During the Civil war he served
as a Confederate private for some time, and was sta-
tioned at Memphis, Tennessee. He was an active worker
in the Methodist Episcopal Church, in which he was class
leader, and in political affairs was a democrat. Five
children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Roberts: Frank N.,
who is identified with a wholesale fruit company, at
Little Rock, Arkansas; James Benjamin, bookkeeper for
the Walker & Calef Ice Company, who died in 1900 at
Little Rock, Arkansas; Laura C., who married Doctor
Majors, a retired physician of Shiloh, Arkansas; George
W., who is a merchant at Little Rock, Arkansas; and
Arrie M., who is now Mrs. Gross. The mother of these
children, who bore the maiden name of Ellen Davidson,
was a native of Virginia, and died at Little Rock, Arkan-
sas, in 1880.

Arrie M. Roberts attended the public schools of her
native City of Little Rock, Arkansas, and after one year
spent in the high school went to Cleburne County, Arkan-
sas, both her parents having died. There she passed
three years in teaching school, and attending the high
school when she could find the time, and later taught at
Heber Springs, Arkansas. Miss Roberts next went to

1974

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Maury Academy, Dandridge, Tennessee, where she passed
one year, following which she became a student at Carson
& Newman College, Jefferson, Tennessee, where she re-
mained two and one-half years, and while there met Mr.
Gross. She thereafter was engaged in teaching until her
marriage, May 1, 1901. Mrs. Gross is well known in
educational circles, is a lady of many attainments, and
has a wide circle of appreciative friends living at Fred-
erick and elsewhere.

William A. Clute. A pioneer newspaper man of
Oklahoma, having come here at the time of the first
opening of lands for white settlement in 1889, William
A. Clute has been connected with a number of publica-
tions in this state, but is now engaged as a traveling
salesman. Mr. Clute was born September 22, 1859, in
Livingston County, New York, and is a son of Andrew
and Caroline Jane (Harris) Clute.

Andrew Clute was born in New York and when he
entered upon his career took up farming in Livingston
County, where he was living at the outbreak of the Civil
war. He enlisted as a private and scout in Company F,
136th Begiment, New York Volunteer Infantry, and
served three years with that organization, participating
in thirty engagements, including Gettysburg, Lookout
Mountain and Chattanooga and the battles incident to
General Sherman’s great march to the sea. Following
the war he removed to Michigan and then to Nebraska,
continuing his farming operations, and finally settled in
Colorado, where he met his death in a railroad wreck in
1881. He was a member of the Masonic Fraternity. In
1855 Mr. Clute was married to Miss Caroline Jane Harris,
who was born in 1848, the youngest of the eleven chil-
dren of Isaac and Hanna (Howe) Harris. She died at
Altus, December 9, 1915. There were four children in

the family, namely: Andrew, born in 1856, and now a
traveling, man of Hastings, Nebraska; William A.;
Francis M., born in 1869, who died in 1904; and Sidney
E., born in 1873, a resident of Altus.

William A. Clute was educated in the schools of Michi-
gan and Nebraska, and reared on the home farm. He
later entered the service of the Chicago, Burlington &
Quincy Bailroad as agent for the townsite department in
Nebraska and Colorado, and was subsequently agent and
trustee for the townsite interests on the C. K. & N. Bailroad
in the latter state. He also spent five years in Mexico,
as an exporter and, in 1889, when Indian Territory and
Oklahoma Territory lands were thrown open to the
public, came to El Beno, where he was given the first
deed issued for a town lot. He also secured a claim
two miles from the city of El Beno, paying the claim-
ant for his relinquishment by the purchase of a pair
of $5.00 boots. This land has since sold for $200 per
acre. Mr. Clute took an active part in the organization
of the town, being a member of the first city council
under the Enabling Act, and in 1891 bought the El
Beno Democrat, of which he was editor for two years.
In the same year he was the nominee on the independent
democratic ticket for the legislature, but was defeated
after a close contest. He was also a member of the first
grand jury ever impanelled in Canadian County, was
president of the first democratic club organized in the
county, was a delegate to the first state convention of his
party, and was the organizer of the first independent com-
pany of state militia, Company A, of which he served as
captain for several years. When the Cherokee' Strip
was opened to settlement Mr. Clute made the race to
Enid, at which place he edited the West-Side Democrat
during the exciting period of the town’s early history.
In 1892, with his brother, Francis M., Mr. Clute estab-
lished the Argus, at Arapaho, and conducted that paper

for t&o years, and in 1894 bought from Lafe Merritt the
El Beno Globe, being editor thereof for two' years. Since
disposing of his interests in that newspaper, Mr. Clute
has devoted himself to traveling for wholesale houses
as a salesman, having his headquarters and residence at
points in the state as convenience demanded.

Mr. Clute has been an eye-witness to the Wonderful
development of this state, and still takes a keen and
active interest in its institutions and industries. Few
men contributed in greater degree to the advancement
of Canadian County, the first history of which came from
his pen. He is connected with various fraternal and so-
cial organizations and has a wide acquaintance all over
the state, and has established enduring friendships with
some of Oklahoma’s most prominent and influential
citizens.

Thomas B. Dunlap. One of the newest towns in
Southern Oklahoma is Bingling, and though its annals
are brief there has been no lack of enterprise and achieve-
ment. One of the men present when the first furrow
was turned on the townsite is Thomas B. Dunlap, now
serving as postmaster. Mr. Dunlap has had a long
and active career, chiefly engaged in educational work,
and many years ago was superintendent of schools at
Ardmore.

Thomas B. Dunlap was born in Gibson County, Ten-
nessee, February 11, 1853, a son of J. M. and Elizabeth
(Carter) Dunlap. The Dunlaps came originally from
Scotland prior to the Bevolutionary war and settled in
South Carolina. The Carters were likewise early in
South Carolina, and came from Holland. J. M. Dunlap
was born in South Carolina in 1826 and died at Hum-
boldt, Tennessee, in 1880, having been taken to Tennes-
see by his parents when he was a small boy. His life
was spent as a farmer and he was a member of the
Masonic fraternity. His wife was born in South Caro-
lina in 1837 and died at Humboldt, Tennessee, in 1908.
Their seven children were: Thomas B.; Sallie A., wife
of Frank Craddock, a Tennessee farmer; Mary, wife of
B. F. Bains, a horticulturist in Gibson County, Tennes-
see; Maggie, who died in 1910 as the wife of J. N.
Jackson, who is a farmer in Tennessee ; Amanda, who
died at the age of six years, and Kendrick, a fruit grower
in Crockett County, Tennessee.

Thomas B. Dunlap had the environment of a Tennes-
see farm during his youth, and began his education in
the public schools of Gibson County. These advantages
were improved by a course in the Southwestern Baptist
University at Jackson, Tennessee, and in 1880 he grad-
uated A. B. from Eminence College in Henry County,.
Kentucky. Educational work was his chosen vocation,
and he served as superintendent of schools in several
counties in Texas up to 1894, in which year he was elected
superintendent of schools at Ardmore, Indian Terri-
tory. For four years he was principal of the Chicka-
sha Collegiate Institute, and then returned to Texas and
for four years had charge of the Jarvis Institute at
Granbury, Texas. Subsequent service in the educational
field comprised two years as president of Sulphur College-
at Sulphur, Kentucky, three years as professor of Latin
at Wilson, North Carolina; one year in the Chair of
Latin in the Virginia Christian College at Lynchburg,
Virginia.

Mr. Dunlap came to Wilson, Oklahoma, in 1914, but
in March of the same year identified himself with the
new townsite at Bingling. He was made postmaster by
Postmaster General Burleson and took the ofBee July 17,
1915. On January 1, 1916, the office was made third
class and Mr. Dunlap was made postmaster for a term
of four years. He is a democrat in politics, an elder in

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1975

the Christian Church and has affiliations with Ardmore
Circle of the Woodmen of the World.

At Florence, Alabama, in 1881, he married Miss Sallie
F. Young, whose father was the late Thomas W. Young,
a farmer at Florence. Their family comprises four
children : Errett, who is in the land business with Mullen
Bros., at Ardmore, Oklahoma; Allen Young, who was
drowned at Fort Arbuckle, Oklahoma, June 29, 1897 ;
Laurence, postmaster and merchant at Wilson, Okla-
homa; and Mattie, a junior in Enid College.

Yikgil A. Wood, M. D. It is not only as a physician
and surgeon, but as a citizen of varied usefulness and
public spirit that Doctor Wood is ’identified with Black-
well a_nd Kay County. He located in Blackwell in 1901,
and since that year he has quietly and efficiently per-
formed his services as a doctor in the city and surround-
ing country. He is a man of high standing in his
profession, and has undoubtedly chosen wisely in devot-
ing himself unselfishly and patriotically to the welfare
of his fellow man, rather than concentrating his efforts
towards the building up of a fortune. He enjoys the
rewards of community esteem in a richer degree than
some men perhaps more fortunate in worldly wealth,
and may well be content with his independence and his
career of practical idealism.

Doctor Wood is a pioneer of Oklahoma, having come
to the territory in 1889, the year of the first opening.
He has practiced medicine upwards of thirty years, and
by bis skill and ability stands in the front rank of
Oklahoma practitioners. Doctor Wood was born on a
Georgia plantation August 12, 1849. His parents were
James and Mary (Turner) Wood, the former a native
of North Carolina and the latter of Georgia. His father
gave service in behalf of the Southern cause during the
war between the states. From Georgia the family sub-
sequently removed to Texas, and later to Arkansas.
James Wood followed farming all his active career and
died at the age of eighty-two years, while his wife passed
away at sixty. Both were members of the Baptist
Church. Of their five children three are still living:
Hon. R. E. Wood, a prominent citizen of Oklahoma City,
assistant attorney-general of Oklahoma; O. M. Wood of
Arkansas; and Dr. V. A. Wood.

Doctor Wood spent his early life on farms in Texas
and Arkansas. This experience gave him a sound con-
stitution and was a wholesome training for his later
professional career. At the same time he attended public
schools, studied at home, and also had the advantages of
college. He began the study of medicine under a well
known physician in Arkansas, and then entered the
Louisville Medical College of Kentucky, where he was
graduated M. D. in 1885.

Doctor Wood was married in 1874, in Arkansas, to Miss
Sarah Robbins. They have now lived together as man
and wife and in mutual confidence and esteem for more
than forty years. Mrs. Wood is a member of a Georgia
family and of old Southern antecedents. Doctor Wood
and wife are proud of their family of nine children:
Robert H., who is a geologist and is connected with the
work of his profession in a Government position at Wash-
ington; Homa and Okla, twins, and both A. M. graduates
from the University of Oklahoma, and Homa is an LL. D.
of the same university; Virgil O.; Dudley; Beulah, of
Shawnee ; Minnie Rose, wife of a successful business man
at Watonga; and Edna, wife of F. A. Smith of Fort
Smith, Arkansas. All the children have received the best
of educational advantages, and have been well prepared
for their duties in life.

Doctor Wood, outside of his professional service, has
interested himself above all in the advancement of the
public schools of Blackwell and Kay County. For twelve

years he has served as a member of the Blackwell School
Board, and the people of that community readily’ give
him credit for the splendid improvements which now give
Blackwell rank among the first cities of Oklahoma in
point of educational standards and equipment. He has
worked assiduously and unselfishly to provide such oppor-
tunities to the growing generation and for many years to
come his name will deserve recognition when the progress
of the Blackwell schools is under discussion. Doctor
Wood and wife are both active members of the Baptist
Church, in which he is deacon, while Mrs. Wood is promi-
nent in the church organizations. Both have been liberal
supporters of the church, and Doctor Wood has probably
accomplished as much as any other local physician in
the direction of practical charity, giving his services
without thought of remuneration to those requiring it,
whether rich or poor. He has always believed in the
golden rule, and has practiced it perhaps as acceptably
as any man. While he has always enjoyed a high stand-
ing and a good practice as a physician, he has not accumu-
lated wealth and has had little ambition to do so. Much
of his income has gone in support of the manifold
charities and causes in which he was interested, and in
the community esteem which is paid him and in the
wealth of his home and well trained children he has
riches greater than could be measured by bank stocks
or railroad bonds. Doctor Wood is a fine example of the
old-time Southern gentleman, has proved himself trust-
worthy in all the relations of life, and greets hardship
and ill fortune with the same kindly smile that he turns-
to his many friends.

William R. ' Jones. Within the period of his resi-
dence in Oklahoma Judge Jones has proved a specially
able representative of both the pedagogic and legal pro-
fessions, and in the autumn of 1914 there came a well
merited recognition of his eligibility and hi3 high stand-
ing at the bar when he was elected to the bench of the-
County Court of Payne County, an exacting and respon-
sible office in which he is giving a characteristically ef-
fective and popular administration. Prior to establishing
his residence at Stillwater, the county seat, he had main-
tained his home at Cushing, this county, where he had
been a successful teacher in the public schools and had'
also engaged in the practice of law.

Judge Jones was born on a farm in Wright County,
Missouri, and the date of his nativity was December 18,
1877. He is a son of Thomas and Luvinia (Royster)
Jones, who were born and reared in Tennessee and who
were young folk at the time of the removal of the
respective families to Missouri, just before the outbreak
of the Civil war. In that, state their marriage Was
solemnized and they still reside on their excellent home-
stead farm in Wright County, the subject of this review
being the eldest of their eight surviving children.

Judge Jones acquired his early education in the schools
of his native state and his initial experiences were those
gained in connection with the activities of the home farm.
He .was an ambitious student and through his well di-
rected application he acquired a liberal education along
academic lines. Thus he admirably fortified himself for
the pedagogic profession, of which he was a successful
and popular representative for fourteen consecutive
years, save for an interim of one year. His earlier work
as a teacher was in schools of his native state, and he
taught one year in Arkansas. In 1902 he came to
Oklahoma Territory, and here he continued his efficient
services as a teacher for a period of six years — until he
turned his attention to the practice of law. During the
first two years of his residence in the territory he taught
in the schools of Oklahoma County, and he has been a
resident of Payne County since 1908. While in Oklahoma

1976

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

County Judge Jones further fortified himself by attend-
ing the State Normal School at Edmond, and later he
continued his higher academic studies in the Oklahoma
Agricultural & Mechanical College, at Stillwater. For
three years he was principal of the public schools at
Cushing, Payne County, and 1912 he was elected county
superintendent of schools, an office which he held two
years, and in which he did admirable work in systematiz-
ing and advancing the work of the schools of Payne
County. While engaged in teaching he devoted close
attention to the study of law and gained a comprehensive'
and practical knowledge of the science of jurisprudence,
his admission to the Oklahoma bar having been granted
in 1910. He removed to Stillwater upon assuming office
as county superintendent of schools, and after his retire-
ment from that responsible post he was here engaged in
the active general practice of law until his election to
his present office, that of county judge, in the autumn of
1914. He is a staunch and effective advocate of the
principles and policies for which the democratic party
stands sponsor and has rendered yeoman service in behalf
of its cause during his residence in Oklahoma. He and
his wife hold membership in the Christian Church and he
is affiliated with the local lodge of Ancient Free and
Accepted Masons.

In 1908 was solemnized the marriage of Judge Jones
to Miss Naomi Howe, who was born in Kansas, and who
is a daughter of Alexander C. and Harriet Howe, both of
whom were born in Pennsylvania, whence they removed
to Kansas in the pioneer period of its history. Thev
remained in the Sunflower State until 1892, when they
came to Oklahoma Territory and first located at Guthrie.
Mr. Howe later became a prosperous farmer of Payne
County, where his death occurred and where his widow
still maintains her home. Judge and Mrs. Jones have
three children: Lorene, Paul and Harold.

Ira Edwin Snyder. This young business man of
1 rederiek where he is manager of the Southwestern Lum-
ber Company, has shown an unusual ability to advance
himself in the world, and immediately on finishing a high
school course in Kansas started to learn the lumber
business, and in a very few brief years has been advanced
to responsibilities which make him an important factor
in the Town of Frederick.

Born at Pleasanton, Kansas, February 11, 1889, he is
a. son of Edward Marcus Snyder, a grandson of Asa
Snyder, and a great-grandson of an emigrant from
Germany who spelled his name Schneider, who settled in
Tennessee as a farmer and married a Miss Downey.
Grandfather Asa Snyder removed his family from Ten-
nessee to Kentucky, thence to Illinois, and finally to
Kansas, and died near Pleasanton in the latter state. He
combined the business of farming with his duties as a
local Methodist Protestant minister. Edward Marcus
Snyder, who was born near Danville, Vermilion County,
Illinois, in 1853, was also a minister of the Methodist
Protestant Church, and is now living at Centerville
Kansas. In that state he has had charge of churches at
Centerville, Rose Hill, Battlefield, Whitewater, and other
places, and for two years preached in the Congrega-
tional Church at Fredonia. His first wife was a Miss
Perry, who died in Linn County, Kansas, the mother of
three children, namely: Fred B., who is a machinist in
the shingle mill at Blanchard, Washington; Lena May,
who lives at Wichita, Kansas; and Clema Inez, wife of
Frank Brooks, who is a farmer near Blue Mountain,
Kansas. Edward M. Snyder married for his second wife
Ella Ann Osborne, who was born at Uniontown, Penn-
sylvania. Their children are Ira Edwin Snyder and
Charles Wilbur Snyder, the latter born October 31, 1890,

and now manager of the Daseomb-Daniels Lumber Com-
pany at Frederick, Oklahoma.

His early training in the common schools Mr. Snyder
acquired at Centerville, Rose Hill, Prairie Center, Kan-
sas, and was graduated from the high school at Burns,
Kansas, in 1909. On May 10th of the same year he
placed his foot on the first round of the ladder of
advancement by becoming yard man and bookkeeper in
the lumber yard at Burns, and remained there until
April, 1910. He was then sent to Westphalia, Kansas,
as manager of the R. W. Long Lumber Company for
2% years, and on October 5, 1912, arrived at Frederick,
Oklahoma, where he has since had local management of
the Southwestern Lurhber Company. The headquarters
of this company are at Kansas City and there are eleven
branch yards maintained in Oklahoma. This company
acts as sales and distributing agent for the East Oregon
Lumber Company in the State of Oregon.

Mr. Snyder is independent in polities, a member of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, is affiliated with West-
phalia Lodge No. 305, Ancient Free and Accented Masons,
with Frederick Chapter No. 41, Royal Arch Masons, with
the Brotherhood of American Yeomen, and belongs to
the Business Men’s Association of Frederick.

On December 31, 1912, at Westphalia, Kansas, hp mar-
ried Miss Violet Eagle, daughter of J. S. Eagle, who is
now living retired at Westnhalia. They have two daugh
ters, Rose Marie and Eleanor Margaret.

Thomas P. Braidwood. In 1887, about two years
prior to the formal opening of Oklahoma Territory to
white settlement, Mr. Braidwood came to the neutral
strip of country then known as No Man ’s Land and
became one of the influential figures in defining the
government and instituting the development of this
region that now includes a number of the most prosper-
ous and progressive counties in the western part of the
state. He established his residence in old Beaver City
and there opened and conducted the first hardware store,
operations having been continued in the original building
until the same was destroyed by a cyclone that swept
the locality on the 31st of March, 1892. In the year
that marked his arrival in this new frontier region, Mr.
Braidwood became one of the organizers of the Terri-
tory of Cimarron, and he served as a member of the
Territorial Senate. In 1888 he was chosen territorial
secretary, and of this office he continued the incumbent
until the territorial organization was dissolved by the
opening of Oklahoma Territory to settlement, as duly
recorded in the direct historical department of this
publication.

In 1890 when old Beaver County, including the present-
day counties of Beaver, Texas and Cimarron, was organ-
ized, Mr. Braidwood was appointed county clerk by
Hon. George W. Steele, then Governor of Oklahoma Ter-
ritory. In the ensuing popular election, in 1891, he
was duly chosen the incumbent of this office, in which
he served two years. He then returned to his former
home at Leavenworth, Kansas, where he remained until
1897, when he came again to Oklahoma and resumed his
residence in Beaver County. In 1902 he was elected
representative of Beaver and Woodward counties in the*
lower house of the Territorial Legislature, in which']
he served one term and did much to further the best'
interests of his constituent district, besides taking loyal
and effective part in legislation for the benefit of thei
territory at large. In 1905 he served as journal clerki
of the Legislature. In 1907, the year of the admission
of Oklahoma as one of the sovereign states of the
Union, Mr. Braidwood was appointed United States Com
missioner for western Oklahoma, and of this Federal

infan

band

«tyj

He da

folloirii

April i

•the foil.

tcember,

jmiiRe
and Job

in tie

Indian ]
wlio «,
June, ]|
■Black, ;

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1977

office lie has since continued the efficient incumbent, his
residence being maintained in the Village of Beaver,
judicial center of the county of the same name. He
has been foremost in all activities tending to promote
the civic and material advancement of his home town and
county, and in 1888 he served as mayor of old Beaver
City, no other pioneer of this now opulent section of
the state being better known or held in higher popular
esteem. Mr. Braidwood has reclaimed and improved
one of the large and valuable stock ranches of Beaver
County, is still the owner of this property and on the
same he maintained his residence for a period of eleven
years. He has proved one of the strong, vigilant and
resourceful pioneers and upbuilders of western Okla-
homa and his name shall ever merit high place on the
.historical records of this section of the state.

Mr. Braidwood was born in the city of Albany, New
York, on the 24th of March, 1855, and his father,
Thomas L. Braidwood was born at Utica, that state, on
the 3d of May, 1820, . his death having occurred in
Beaver County, Oklahoma, on the 1st of May, 1900,
only two days prior to his eightieth birthday anniversary.
Thomas L. Braidwood was reared and educated in the
old Empire State, where h§ learned the trade of iron
moulder and where he continued his residence until
1871, when he removed with his family to Kansas and
became one of the pioneer settlers of Cowley County,
where he entered claim to and settled upon a tract of
government land. He instituted the development of
this land and eventually perfected his title to the
property. He continued to reside upon his pioneer
homestead until 1875, when he removed to Leavenworth,
that state, and became superintendent of a stove foun-
dry. With this industrial enterprise he continued to
be thus identified until 1889, when he came to Beaver
County, Oklahoma, and resumed operations as an agri-
culturist and stock grower, with which lines of enterprise
he here continued to be identified until his death, both
he and his wife having been persons of superior intel-
lectual powers and of sterling character, their worthy
lives and worthy deeds having gained to them the good
will and high esteem of all with whom they came in con-
tact. In the State of New York was solemnized the
marriage of Thomas L. Braidwood to Miss Marian
Burgess, who was born in the City of Glasgow, Scotland,
on the 11th of November, 1818, and who was thus an
infant at the time of her parents’ immigration to the
United States, in 1820. She was reared and educated
in the State of New York and survived her honored hus-
band by exactly two years, she having been summoned
to the life eternal on the 3d of May, 1902, in Beaver
•County, Oklahoma. The marriage of this loved pioneer
couple was solemnized at West Troy, New York, on
the 6th day of July, 1844, and after a period of nearly
sixty years their devoted companionship was severed by
the death of Mr. Braidwood. They became the parents
of four sons and two daughters, concerning whom the
following brief data are entered: James was born

April 6, 1845, and died on the 15th of September of
the following year. John Burgess was born September 5,
1846, and now resides in Albany, New York. He mar-
ried Miss Caroline VanGuy sling, on the 25th of De-
cember, 1870, and her death occurred in 1885, their sur-
viving children being James A., born October 12, 1871,
and John Burgess, Jr., born September 5, 1874. James
i Liddell was born September 25, 1848, and was drowned
in the Arkansas River, at a popit near Muskogee,
i Indian Territory, on the 10th of May, 1871. Marian E.,
> who was born at Albany, New York, on the 10th of
June, 1851, was married July 4, 1874, to Charles C.
IZBlaek, and they became the parents of four children:

Charlotte, Marian E., Francis and Charles B., all of
whom are living except the first born. Thomas P.,
whose name introduces this article, was the next in
order of birth. Anna J., who was born March 13, 1858,
became, on the 31st of March, 1875, the wife of William
M. Allison, and of their six children Howard and Robert
died in infancy, as did also Nina, the three surviving
being William A., born August 1, 1878; Marian, born
in February, 1879, died in 1907 ; and Anna, born May
18, 1883. Mrs. Allison died July 6, 1892, at Chandler,
Oklahoma, and her husband, who was a pioneer news-
paper man, both in Southern Kansas and in Oklahoma,
now resides at Snyder, Oklahoma, where he is serving as
postmaster.

Thomas P. Braidwood acquired his early education in
the public schools of his native city, the capital of the
State of New York, and was a lad of about sixteen years
when he accompanied his parents on their immigration
to Kansas, in 1871. After his father assumed the super-
intendency of the stove foundry at Leavenworth, that
state, Mr. Braidwood was' employed twelve years as a
moulder in the establishment, and he thus continued to
be engaged until his removal to what is now the State of
Oklahoma, in 1887, as noted in detail in former para-
graphs of this article.

Mr. Braidwood is aligned as a stalwart advocate of
the political principles and policies for which the re-
publican party stands sponsor, has received the thirty-
second degree of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite in
the time-honored Masonic fraternity, and is affiliated
also with the Knights of Pythias.

At Leavenworth, Kansas, on the 6th of June, 1877,
was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Braidwood to Miss
Josie A. Warner, who was born at Delavan, Tazewell
County, Illinois, on the 10th day of July, 1855, a daugh-
ter of Alexander and Almira (Dossett) Warner, the
former a native of England and the latter of Illinois.
Mrs. Braidwood received a collegiate education and for
three years rrior to her marriag.e she was a successful
teacher in the pioneer schools of Crawford County,
Kansas. She died in the City of Leavenworth, that
state, on the 12th of June, 1897, and of her two chil-
dren the elder is living, — Thomas. C., who was born
at Leavenworth, Kansas, September 3, 1878, and resides
at Beaver, Oklahoma. He married Miss Ed’th Hoover,
a native of Kansas, on the 10th of April, 1913. Lottie,
the younger of the two children of Thomas P. and
Josie A. (Warner) Braidwood, was born November 26,
1880, and died in infancy.

Lewis M. Spencer. A well known citizen of Cana-,
dian County and an influential and honored resident of
the thriving little City of Yukon, Mr. Spencer is specially
entitled to recognition in this publication, as he figures
as one of the founders and builders of the attractive town
in which he maintains his home and in the original plat-
ting of which he was associated with his brother, A. N.
Spencer.

Mr. Spencer reverts to the fine old Buckeye State as
the place of his nativity and is a scion of one of its*
pioneer families. He was born at Wilmington, Clinton
County, Ohio, 6n the 17th of April, 1842, and is one of
the four sons born to Mahlon and Mary Ann (Little)
Spencer, who removed from Oh;o to Montgomery County,
Illinois, in an early day and became pioneers of the
latter state, where the father engaged in farming, both
he and his wife having continued their residence in Illi-
nois until the time of their death. He whose name
initiates this review was a child at the time of the
family removal to Illinois, and in Macoupin and Mont-
gomery counties he was reared to maturity under the con-

1978

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

ditions and influences of the pioneer days, his early
educational advantages having been limited to a some-
what desultory attendance of the winter sessions ip a
primitive log school-house of the type common to the
locality and period. As a young man in 1860 he went
to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where Capt. W. Knott Little,
a brother to his mother maintained his home. As a
valiant soldier in the Confederate service he took part
in the great conflict, and after the close of the war he
made his way to Texas, where he gained practical ex-
perience in the herding of cattle on the great open
ranges. From the Lone Star State he and his brother,
A. N., who is now deceased, had occasion to drive cattle
through what is now the State of Oklahoma, and in so
doing they made their first visit in the vicinity of the
present Town of Yukon, of which they were the
founders. A. N. Spencer later became associated with
the construction of the Choctaw Railroad, the line of
which is now a part of the Chicago & Rock Island system,
and on this early railway he became the founder of the
Village of Yukon, in association with his brother Lewis
M., of this sketch. The two brothers laid out the vil-
lage and were the most influential factors in bringing
about its development and upbuilding into one of the
attractive and prosperous municipalities, of the present
State of Oklahoma. Lewis M. Spencer has maintained
his home at Yukon since 1891, and is locally referred
to, with all of appreciation, as the father of the town.
He and his brother obtained four quarter-sections of
land, and on this tract laid out the town, and built
the railroad and to the development of which they vig-
orously applied themselves, their effective efforts having
resulted in gaining to the new town an excellent class
of enterprising citizens. Lewis M. Spencer has erected
many houses in Yukon and has sold them on easy terms,
thus enabling numerous families to obtain desirable
homes. During all the years of his residence at Yukon
he has here been a prominent and successful representa-
tive of the real-estate business, in the handling of both
farm and town property, and with characteristic pro-
gressiveness and civic loyalty he has contributed liberally
to the erection of church edifices and parsonages, and
to the support of religious, educational and other agencies
that ever conserve the best interests of the community.
His success has been won by earnest and worthy effort,
he has guided his course on a high plane of integrity
and honor, and none of the sterling pioneers of Canadian
County has more secure place in popular confidence and
esteem than does this generous and public-spirited citi-
zen.

Mr. Spencer has been closely identified with the de-
velopment of the admirable agricultural resources of his
home county, and at the Louisiana Purchase Exposi-
tion, in the City of St. Louis, he won a bronze medal for
his exhibit of corn raised by him and pronounced the
best exhibited at that great exposition. He has won also
other prizes on corn and cotton exhibited by him at
fairs conducted by both state and county agricultural
societies. Yukon is located on a beautiful high site
fifteen miles west of Oklahoma City, fourteen miles east
of El Reno, three miles south of the .North Canadian
River and twelve miles north of the South Canadian
River. It consists mostly of dark rich valley soil under-
laid with oil and gas, and raises most any kind of
produce in abundance. To the investor Yukon offers
the largest revenue on the investment, the demand for
houses at a good rental, with a low taxation and small
capital invested, insures the investor a good net gain on
his investment.

On September 13, 1874, was solemnized the marriage
of Mr. Spencer to Miss Mary J. Siceluff, the only child

of sterling German parents, and the one child of this
union is Claudia, who is now the wife of Elmer E. Kirk-
patrick, of Oklahoma City.

Robert C. Whinery. Owner and editor of the
Tonkawa News, Robert C. Whinery is one of the suc-
cessful newspaper men of Oklahoma. To journalism
he has brought the talents which would have enabled
him to succeed in lines of business much more remunera- j
tive, and for many years has been through all the grades J
of service in the fourth estate, from printer and reporter
to editor, and from a salaried position to independent 4
publisher.

In many ways the Tonkawa News has a distinctive 1
position in Oklahoma newspaperdom, and is acknowledged
to be one of the brightest and most enterprising journals *1
in the northern part of the state. It is now issuing the
numbers of its eighteenth volume, and was established
at Tonkawa in 1898 . by , Thomas Fry, now a resident ,
of Wichita, Kansas. The paper is maintained inde- 1
pendently so far as politics is concerned, and is first I
and last a strenuous advocate of everything that is good
for Tonkawa and vicinity, whether in business, civic 1
improvement, the elevation of schools and churches, or g
anything else that will make it a better town to live in. I
Mr. Whinery has a well equipped newspaper office and J
plant, with linotype, modern presses both for newspaper I
printing and job work, and is a man of broad experience 1
both in the mechanical and editorial branches of his I
profession. For eleven years he has been identified with I
newspaper work in Oklahoma, having come to the terri- I
tory in 1904. He brought the first linotype machines I
into Shawnee, Oklahoma, and for one year was connected I
with Charles Barrett on the Shawnee Herald. They I
conducted a live wire newspaper during the territorial j
days, and the Herald was a power both in politics and }■
in general affairs. Mr. Whinery was associate editor j
with Mr. Barrett on the Herald. Later he removed to I
Tonkawa and bought the plant of the News, and has ]
since developed this paper with a large circulation I
throughout Kay and adjoining counties.

Robert C. Whinery was born in Wilmington, Clinton I
County, Ohio, and is of Quaker parentage, a son of Isaiah j
and Hannah Whinery. His father is of Irish stock, and j
made a creditable record for himself and his descendants I
as a soldier in the Union army. He is now living at I
Pleasanton, Kansas, at the advanced age of eighty-four !
years. The mother died in 1906, aged sixty-eight. She I
was a native of Virginia, her parents being of the F. F. !
V. There were six children, four sons and two daughters. I

Mr. Whinery received his early education in a little 1
Quaker school in Ohio. His university career began with J
his entrance into a printing shop at the age of fifteen
in the lowly capacity of a devil. He learned everything I
about printing and newspaper business that could be
learned in the shop of the Pleasanton Observer, and then
went to Kansas City, where he had a more metropolitan
training and experience. For a time he was on Colonel I
Van Horn’s republican paper, the Kansas City Journal, I
and also with the Kansas City Star under Colonel Nelson. I
One of the editors under whom he worked was the noted 1
William Allen White, the great Emporia editor, authorl
and statesman. He finally resigned and moved to Shaw- I
nee, Oklahoma, as already mentioned.

At Pleasanton, Kansas, in January, 1893, Mr. Whinery!
married Miss Mamie Latimer. Mrs. Whinery is a woman t
of education and culture, was educated in Park College j
in Missouri, and was a successful teacher before her J
marriage. Her parents were James and Elizabeth (Hart- 1
ford) Latimer, her father having been a professor ini
Knox College in Illinois. Mr. and Mrs. Whinery have j
three children : Marie Elizabeth and Esther, students j

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1979

at the State University at Norman; and Eobert C., Jr.,
now nine years of age.

Mr. Whinery in politics has always been a republican.
He has been honored with the office of mayor, and is a
hard and independent worker for anything that will bring
welfare to his community. His associates speak of him
as a man of decided conviction, and always ready to
take a firm stand on a platform of right and justice.
He is a member of the Masonic Order, being a past
master of the lodge, and of the Independent Order of
Odd Fellows, and his family worship in the Presbyterian
faith.

Aakon Drumright. Only to few men can come such
distinction as that which has made Aaron Drumright the
father of a city of fifteen thousand people, which bears
his name, and which is now considered one of the great-
est oil centers in the world. Drumright was worthily
named. It was an honor fitly bestowed. Mr. Drumright
was not only the fortunate possessor of a large acreage
in Creek County which was underlaid by unusually rich
deposits of oil and gas, but he had the public spirit, the
business, enterprise and the management which enabled
him to make the best of these resources not only for him-
self but for the thousands of others who have since con-
gregated around the site of his original homestead. The
people of Drumright, both the old and new settlers, say
that no one individual has done quite so much in a public
spirited and liberal fashion for the upbuilding of the
little city than the man for whom it was named.

It is also unusual to discover that Mr. Drumright is a
very young man in spite of his wealth and position.
He was born at West Plains, Howell County, Missouri,
June 22, 1883. His parents were E. P. and Eliza Ann
(Hatcher) Drumright, his father having been born in
Tennessee in July, 1854, and his mother in Northern Mis-
souri. The mother died at West Plains at the age of
forty in May, 1896. The father spent about forty years
on the old homestead at West Plains, but for the past five
years has had his home in Oklahoma. In 1910 Aaron and
his brother Otto traded their father’s old place for a
farm in Oklahoma. Aaron Drumright is one of a family
of nine children, six of whom are still living, three sons
and three daughters: Aletta, wife of Edward Sparks
of Douglas County, Missouri; Viola May, wife of Preston
Hesterly, and she is now deceased, while Mr. Hesterly
was county clerk of Douglas County, Missouri, and later
became a physician in Oklahoma; Otto is a farmer at
Bristow, Oklahoma; Aaron is the fourth in order of
age; Everett lives in Kansas; Arthur died at the age of
three years ; Lina married Henry Bridges of Kansas ;
Gertrude is the wife of Frank Nasworthy of Bristow,
Oklahoma; and Eliza is now deceased.

The first sixteen years of his life Aaron Drumright
spent on the old farm. His experiences have led him
into Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, and especially in
earlier years he earned his bread by the sweat of his
brow. He worked as a roustabout on railroads and with
carpenter contractors until twenty-three, and then located
near Cushing, Oklahoma, where in 1905 he married Miss
Mary Eyan. She was born in Iowa, daughter of Dennis
Eyan.

After his marriage Mr. Drumright began farming on
leased Indian lands, and kept that up for five years. His
efforts were successful, and at the end of five years he
had twenty-eight hundred dollars to show for his work
and management. He had begun with a minimum of
capital, though he possessed the strength and industry
and determination which enable a man to succeed in
anything he undertakes. At the opening of the Cheyenne
Eiver and Standing Eock Indian Eeservation in South
Dakota he registered and drew Lot No. 1,750, which

brought him a claim near Isabelle, South Dakota. He
proved up and Jiept the claim for two years, then sold,
and returning to Oklahoma located on the present site of
Drumright in November, 1911. Here he bought 120
acres of land from B. B. Jones, paying fifteen dollars an
acre or $1,800 for the entire tract. This has been his
home and the scene of his fortunate operations down to
the present time.

About the time Mr. Drumright bought his land B. B.
Jones and T. B. Slick were drilling for oil two and a
half miles northeast, at what is known as the old Tiger
well. After the well was brought in it averaged a pro-
duction of thirty-five barrels per day. There was no pipe
line which could take the oil to market, and consequently
the well was plugged. Other wells were brought in in
that territory, and during 1912 Mr. C. B. Shafer put
down the first well on Mr. Drumright ’s land, which struck
oil in September, 1912. Then followed the great rush
which has since made Drumright the largest active pro-
ducing center for oil in the country. Nine wells were
sunk on the 120 acres by C. B. Shafer, and one of them
proved to be a gas well.. Five of these wells averaged
250 barrels per day.

It was in July, 1912, that the first tent was set up on
Mr. Drumright ’s farm at the southwest corner. It 'was
used as a boarding camp, and quickly around it sprang
up others, and in February, 1913, Mr. Drumright had the
land surveyed and sold as lots. At the present time the
entire farm of 120 acres is platted and nearly all of it
sold. About one-third of the City of Drumright is on
Mr. Drumright ’s old farm. As soon as the camp was
formed a postoffice was required, and Mr. Drumright
took a petition from one rig to another and secured suffi-
cient signatures in order to get this branch of the service
from the Federal Government. When it came to select-
ing a name for the office there was general suggestion
and approval of the name of Mr. Drumright, and thus
Drumright was put down in the directory of postoffices
and as such the name will probably exist through all
succeeding generations. It is interesting to note that the
camp was first known as Fulkerson’s Camp, because
J. W. Fulkerson owned the south half of the town, but
Mr. Drumright ’s interests and activities made him so
popular a figure among the early comers that it was
almost by unanimous choice that his name was selected for
the name of the city.

In many ways he has been influential in helping for-
ward every movement and institution in that locality.
He was a member of the local school board in June,
1912, and served with the board until June, 1915. In
that time he was largely responsible for the present
splendid school system to be found in Drumright. At
first the town had only one small building, with sixty
pupils enrolled. Now there is a twelve-room stone
building, a ten-room brick building, and a new high school
building in course of construction that will cost $60,000.
All this has been accomplished in about three years,
and Drumright is not only a city of great natural com-
mercial resources, but also a center of schools, churches,
good homes and is rapidly progressing toward every
other standard civic improvement. Mr. Drumright has ■
also served as treasurer of the township board. He
helped to organize the first bank, known as the Drum-
right State Bank, in 1914, and has since been its presi-
dent. He gave his help toward organizing and main-
taining the Commercial Club, of which he is treasurer.
He is also city treasurer, and was president of the com-
mittee that secured the construction of a branch of the
Santa Fe Eailroad to Drumright. Thus the future his-
torian will find not only the fact that the town was
named for him, but that his activities went into and helped
to vitalize every local movement and improvement. In poli-

I!l80

HISTORY OP OKLAHOMA

tics he is a republican. He practically built the Methodist
Episcopal Church of which he is an artiye member, and
he is prominent in Masonry, being affiliated with the
thirty -second degree Scottish Rite Consistory at Guthrie,
and with the Mystic Shrine at Tulsa. He is also affiliated
with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Modern
Woodmen of America and the Benevolent and Protective
Order of Elks. Mr. and Mrs. Drumright are the parents
of four children : Everett, aged nine; Bessie, aged seven;
Irene, aged five; and Fred Haskell, aged three.

John O. Shaw. When, in 1915, John O. Shaw was
appointed principal of the Frederick High School, an
individual was chosen for that position who is eminently
fitted bv education, training and experience to discharge
its important duties. His entire career has been devoted
to teaching and has been one of steady and well-won
advancement, until today he is one of the best known
and most popular educators in this part of Oklahoma,
where his labors have been prosecuted for the past
five years.

John O. Shaw was born at Harrisburg, Boone County,
Missouri, September 26, 1880, and is a son of J. W. and
Mildred French (Woods) Shaw, and a member of a fam-
ily that originated in Ireland and settled in Virginia
probably before the War of the Revolution. His grand-
father, John Wesley Shaw, was born in the Old Dominion
and was an infant when taken to Missouri, where the
family located among the pioneers. The grandmother,
Mrs. Elizabeth Shaw, still makes her home near Higbee,
Missouri, in advanced years. J. W. Shaw was born
near Harrisburg, Missouri, in 1856, was reared to agri-
cultural pursuits and has been engaged in farming and
raising stock all his life. He is an active member of the
Baptist Church, as is his wife, and their children were
reared in that faith. Mrs. Shaw was born in Harris-
burg, and has been the mother of three children: John O.,
of this notice; W. A., who is engaged in banking at
Columbia, Missouri; and Robert H., a farmer and the
owner of a property located near the old homestead in
Boone County.

John O. Shaw attended the public schools of Harris-
burg, and in 1901 was graduated from Columbia Normal
College, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. He had
been reared to agricultural pursuits, but had decided upon
a career as an educator in preference to farming, and
soon secured a school in the country district of Boone
County, where he continued to teach for five years, there
gaining much practical experience of a valuable nature.
Realizing the need for further preparation, Mr. Shaw
then took a course of three and one-half years in the
University of Missouri, and in 1910 came to Watonga,
Oklahoma, where he became principal of the high school.
After two years he was made city superintendent of
schools there, and continued to hold that position until
1915, when he received the appointment as principal of
the Frederick High School. At the present time he has
under his charge six teachers and 150 pupils. While Mr.
Shaw has held his present office only for a short period
he has already demonstrated that he is a man who can
accomplish things, and he has under way a number of
plans which will elevate the high school system here. The
favorable impression which he has created among teach-
ers, scholars and parents indicates that he will be one of
the most popular principals Frederick has known. Pro-
fessor Shaw is a member of the Baptist Church, and is a
pledge member of the Nu Beta Rho, an honorary Greek
letter tenehers’ fraternity.

In 1905, Mr. Shaw was united in marriage at Harris-
burg, Missouri, with Miss Bessie Blakemore, daughter of
Allen Blakemore, a hardware merchant of Harrisburg.
To this union there have come two children, namely:

Martha Vivian, who was born January 9, 1909; and Luda
French, born June 26, 1912.

Geokge II. Healy. In point of continuous residence
this honored member of the Beaver County Bar is to be
consistently designated as the oldest citizen of the
county, and in addition to this interesting feature of
pioneer prestige he holds secure place as one of the
representative members of the legal profession in this
section of the state, and as a citizen whose influence
and co-operation have been potent in connection with
civic and material progress in western Oklahoma. He
is engaged in the practice of his profession in the Town
of Beaver, the county seat, has held various offices of
distinctive public trust, including that of county judge,
and became a resident of what is now the State of
Oklahoma more than thirty years ago, so that he
gained varied experience in connection with frontier
life in old Indian Territory.

Judge Healy is a scion of a New England colonial
family of English lineage and personally takes due
pride in adverting to the old Pine Tree State as the
place of his nativity. He was born in the Village of
China, Kennebec County, Maine, on the 30th of May,
1857, and is a son of William H. and Ellen (Breck)
Healy, both likewise natives of that state. Reared and
educated in Maine, William II. Healy achieved success
and prominence in New England as a tanner and an ex-
porter and importer of leather and hides. He developed
an extensive business, in connection with which lie
maintained tanneries and warehouses both in Boston and
New York. His operations in this field of enterprise
continued until 1875, when he removed with his family
to Texas, where he engaged in the cattle business on a
large scale, besides which, in line with his former busi-
ness activities, he developed a proseprous business in
the buying of furs from Indians and white trappers in
Dakota Territory, his activities in this direction con-
tinuing from 1875 to 1879 and both of his business
ventures in the West having proved very successful.

In 1878 William H. Healy established a cattle ranch
in the western part of Indian Territory, — in the neutral
strip commonly designated as No Man’s Land and later
included in Beaver County. He continued the handling
of cattle upon an extensive scale on the great open
ranges of Texas and Indian Territory until his death,
which occurred in 1883, and he became widely known
throughout the Southwest, both as a business man of
great energy and ability and as a citizen of sterling
character. His marriage to Miss Ellen Breck was solemn-
ized in his young manhood, and his wife was summoned
to eternal rest in 1867, while the family home was still
maintained in the East. Of their six children the first
born, a daughter, died in infancy. Caroline E., who was
born in 1843, has never married and maintains her
home in the City of Springfield, Massachusetts. William
H., Jr., who was born in 1845, attained to distinction
as one of the representative lawyers in the city of Bos-
ton and there his death occurred in 1897. Frank D.,
who was born in 1847, served as sheriff of Beaver County,
Oklahoma Territory four years, his term having been
initiated in 1894, and in 1897 he was appointed Register
of the United States Land Office at Woodward, Okla-
homa, a position which he retained until his death, in
1902. He established his residence in Indian Territory
in 1878 and here was associated with his brother George
H., of this review, in the cattle business in the early
days. In 1866 he married Miss Frank B. Dow, likewise
a native of China, Maine, and they are survived by
three children, William, Charles and Dole. He became
prominent in public affairs and political matters in

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1981

Oklahoma Territory, and was a stalwart advocate of
the cause of the republican party. Nathaniel G., who
was born in 1849 and who remains a bachelor, is now
a resident of the City of Los Angeles, California.

George H. Healy, the youngest of the children, was
graduated in an excellent private school in the city
of Boston when he was seventeen years of age, and he
accompanied his father on the removal to Texas, in 1875,
so that virtually his entire mature life has been passed
in the Southwest, where his memory links the pioneer
past with the present-day era of opulent progress and
prosperity, it having been his privilege to contribute a
due quota to the march of advancement along both civic
and industrial lines. Mr. Healy came to Indian Territory
in 1880, and during the long intervening years he has
maintained his home within the borders of what is
now the vigorous young State of Oklahoma. He was
early associated with his brother Prank in establishing
a cattle ranch in the old Neutral strip in which the
present Beaver County is included, and this ranch was
situated on Beaver Creek, its operation having been
continued by the brothers until the opening of Oklahoma
Territory to settlement.

In 1890 Judge Healy was elected the first treasurer
of old Beaver County, which then included also the
present counties of Texas and Cimarron, and for eight
years prior to the admission of Oklahoma to statehood
he served as a member of the Republican Central Com-
mittee of the Territory, his vigorous and effective co-
operation having been fruitful in the advancing of the
party cause during the territorial days as well as under
the later regime of state government. A man of broad
intellectual keen and mature judgment, Judge Healy
finally gave careful attention to the study of law until
he had fortified himself well in accurate knowledge of
the science of jurisprudence, and in 1900 he was admitted
to the Oklahoma Bar. He soon afterward engaged in
the practice of his professioh at Beaver, his attention
being given to his substantial law business until his
election to the bench of the County Court of Beaver
County, on which he served four consecutive years,
1910-14. Since his retirement from the bench Judge
Healy has continued in the active work of his profession
at Beaver, where he controls a large and representative
law business and is known as one of the leading members
of the bar of Beaver County.

In the City of Emporia, Kansas, on the 5th of No-
vember, 1890, was solemnized the marriage of Judge
Healy to Miss Lydia Savage, who was born at Virginia,
Cass County, Illinois, on the 23d of August, 1870, and
who is a daughter of John W. and Caroline M.
(Springer) Savage, the former of whom was born in
Illinois, in 1838, and the latter in Pennsylvania, in the
same year, she being now a resident of Beaver, Okla-
homa, her husband having died at Emporia, Kansas, on
the 20th of May, 1891. Judge and Mrs. Healy have
but one child, Ledru Rollin, who was born in Beaver
County, Oklahoma, on the 9th of August, 1891, and
who was afforded the advantages of the Kansas State
Agricultural College, at Manhattan, and of the Wesleyan
Business College, at Saline, that state. He is now one
of the representative young members of the bar of the
City of El Paso, Texas.

P. L. BtfCY. Since 1902 Mr. Buey has been one of
the active oil producers in the Kansas and Oklahoma
Territory. For the past ten years he has lived at
Bartlesville, and has not only been an operator in oil
but is also the principal real estate man at Bartlesville,
and head of the P. L. Bucy Realty & Investment Com-
pany. His active career began when he was still a boy,

and he has lived in a number of the states of the Mis-
sissippi Basin.

P. L. Bucy was born at St. Mary’s, West Virginia,
September 3, 1878, a son of Alexander and Janet
(Prunty) Bucy. His father was born in Steubenville,
Ohio, February 4, 1833, and his mother at St. Mary ’s,
West Virginia, in November, 1838. They were married
at Steubenville, and the father died at Williamstown,
West Virginia, November 4, 1908. The mother and one
of her daughters now reside with Mr. Bucy at Bartles-
ville. The father was a soldier of the Union army, and
at the beginning of the war enlisted in Company A of
the Twenty-second Ohio Infantry, and after three years
veteranized and continued until mustered out with an
honorable discharge at the close of the war. He was
engaged in coal mining until 1876, and thereafter was
a farmer.

P. L. Bucy was the fifth in a family of nine children,
and spent the first eighteen years of his life with his
parents in West Virginia. After the age of fourteen
he left school and became a worker, living at home but
earning his own support. When eighteen he went to
Steubenville, Ohio, and became a contractor. That was
his business there until the age of twenty-two, and the
following year he spent in the same business at St.
Louis. Mr. Buey then became identified with the Iron
Mountain Railroad Company in construction work with
headquarters at Pittsburg, Mississippi.

On April 5, 1902, he left Pittsburg and entered the
oil business with headquarters at Pittsburg, Kansas.
From there he came to Bartlesville in 1905, and has since
done a great deal of drilling and producing in the
Bartlesville field. He has organized a number of cor-
porations under the laws of different states and has
dealt extensively in real estate, farm lands, oil lands
and city property in Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania,
Wisconsin, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. The P. L.
Bucy Realty & Investment Company is a co-partnership,
and the largest concern of its kind in Bartlesville. It
has extensive oil holdings in Oklahoma.

Mr. Bucy is a republican and was defeated by only
thirty-three votes in the primary election of 1914 for
the Legislature. He is a member of the First Baptist
Church of Bartlesville and of the Benevolent and Pro-
tective Order of Elks. As a citizen he has worked
effectively to prevent vicious legislation in land title
laws, and has been engaged in considerable litigation.
Some of his cases have been carried to the Supreme
Court, and he is known as one of the most vigorous
fighters for justice, but always contending for fair and
honorable principles.

J. A. Jones, M. D. The senior member of the medical
profession at Tonkawa is Dr. J. A. Jones, who has been
in active practice there for the past fifteen years, and
who in that time has seen many physicians come and
go, and now, in point of continuous service, is the oldest
doctor in that community. His success has been in pro-
portion to his long residence, and he is known all over
Kay County as a successful physician and a public-
spirited man.

In 1900 Doctor Jones graduated from medical college,
and in the same year moved from Northeastern Missouri
to Oklahoma and began practice at Tonkawa. He was
born in Northwestern Indiana on a. farm near Val-
paraiso in January, 1874. His father, George W. Jones,
was a substantial farmer and stockman, had made a
record as a soldier in the Union army during the Civil
war, and is now living retired at the age of seventy-seven
in Tonkawa, Oklahoma. The mother, whose maiden name
was Elizabeth Peterson, is now deceased.

One of a family of four children, Doctor Jones grew

1982

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

up on a farm, and from his early experiences in the
country gained the rugged constitution which has served
him so well in his arduous practice as a physician. He
attended public school in Valparaiso, also the Western
College of La Belle, Missouri, and afterwards paid his
way for several years as a teacher. His work as a teacher
was done in Missouri, and in the meantime he took up the
study of medicine and finally secured his degree from a
medical college. Doctor Jones is a student all the time,
keeps in close touch with advance in the medical profes-
sion by constant reading, association with other physi-
cians, and possesses a fine library.

At Tonkawa, in 1902, he married Miss Myrtle Pep-
pered. They have one daughter, Glayds, a bright girl
of twelve years now attending school. Doctor Jones is a
member of the County and State Medical societies, in
Masonry has attained the thirty-second degree of the
Scottish Rite, and is also an Odd Fellow. He has been
prospered materially, resides in a comfortable seven-room
cottage home at Tonkawa, furnished in excellent taste,
and has considerable property both in the city and in
Hay County. He has always manifested a public-spirited
attitude toward local improvements, has performed his
proportion of work in making Tonkawa a better place
in which to live, and has contributed liberally to schools,
churches and all local movements.

Col. A. H. Norwood. Forty-five years of residence
and experience as a teacher, lawyer, newspaper man,
merchant and in general business affairs and politics
have given Colonel Norwood of Dewey many unique
relations with the old Cherokee Nation and North-
eastern Oklahoma. Among white men of prominence
Colonel Norwood has lived in that section of Oklahoma
longer than any other individual with the exception of
N. F. Carr. Colonel Norwood is an authority on
Cherokee history and has been both a witness and a
participant in the progress and development of old Indian
Territory from the time when there was not a railroad
between Kansas and the Red River.

A. H. Norwood was born at Cleveland in East Tennes-
see, November 17, 1850. His parents were P. W. and
Isabella Ann (Cowan) Norwood, both natives of East
Tennessee, where they lived until 1876, and then removed
to Texas, where they spent the rest of their lives. P. W.
Norwood was a farmer and while a resident of Tennessee
held several county and state offices, and during the war
was a captain and served as provost marshal in the
Union army. His wife was a first cousin to Sam
Houston, the great Texas statesman, her mother being
Hattie Houston. The maternal grandfather was Andrew
Cowan, who served as an officer in the War of 1812.
P. W. Norwood was descended from John Norwood, who
settled at Lyons Mills near Baltimore, Maryland, and
he and five of his sons were soldiers in the Revolutionary
war. He came from the north of England and was a
Scotchman. Colonel Norwood was the oldest in a family
of eight children, six of whom reached maturity and
five are now living. All the children accompanied their
parents to Texas with the exception of Colonel Norwood.

The first twenty years of his life he spent at the old
home in East Tennessee and received his education at
Flint Springs Academy and at Cleveland. He studied
law with a member of the bar at Chattanooga.

Colonel Norwood came to the Cherokee Nation of
old Indian Territory in 1870, and for six years was a
teacher, first at Fort Gibson and for three years was
connected with the Orphan Asylum of the Cherokees.
From Fort Gibson he went to the Coo Wee Scoo Wee
district, and located on the site of the present City of
Claremore, where he combined the practice of law with
merchandising. He established the Claremore postoffiee,

at a time when mail was delivered only once a week and
was carried by horseback. He was first postmaster, and
gave the name to the office, since applied to the thriving
little city. The name was given in honor of an old
Osage chief. In 1881 Colonel Norwood became associated
with Col. J. H. Bartles in the lumber and milling
business, and they had common business relations more
or less for fifteen years.

Soon after coming to Indian Territory Colonel Nor-
wood became prominent among the Cherokees and for
about twenty years was a member of the National
Council of the Cherokee Nation. At different times he
also served as secretary of both houses of the national
Legislature and was one of the Cherokee officials that
signed the patent for the lands now owned by the Osage
tribes in Oklahoma. As a lawyer and representative of the
Cherokee Nation he took an active part in the allotment
of lands and has practiced largely before the interior
department, a business, which required his presence
many times at Washington, D. C. He represented the
Cherokees at Washington, and gave an active opposition
to the bill for the original opening of Oklahoma Terri-
tory, and subsequently became a vigorous antagonist of
the separate statehood movement, working ardently for
the single statehood cause which finally prevailed. He
was formerly active in tribal politics and in more recent
years has been a democratic leader in his part of the
state. In 1914 and 1915 he was secretary of the county
central committee, and at the present writing is colonel
on the governor’s staff. Under appointment from the
Federal Government he served as first mayor of Clare-
more, and by virtue of that office presided over the courts
with jurisdiction similar to that of United States com-
missioner, and on account of that service has been long
familiarly known as Judge Norwood. He was also the
first mayor of Chelsea.

Colonel Norwood has long been in the newspaper
business, published papers at Claremore and Chelsea, and
is now the owner and editor of the Dewey Globe, which
he established. Colonel Norwood is said to know more
people in the Cherokee Nation than any other citizen.
By his long residence and associations and also by study
he has become familiar with both the Delaware and
Cherokee tribes historically and personally, and has
known all the chiefs and officials of the Cherokees since
the time of John Ross.

Colonel Norwood was the first man to organize an oil
company for operations in Oklahoma. This was the
Cherokee Oil & Development Company, instituted in 1889
and incorporated under the laws of Illinois. A number
of St. Louis men were associated with him in that
enterprise, and they drilled their first wells at Chelsea.
For ten years Colonel Norwood was the legal representa-
tive for Indian Territory of the Cudahy Oil Company,
the first to develop the oil resources of Washington
County and he secured many of the leases to the land
on which they conducted their operations. During his
residence at Claremore Colonel Norwood combined with
his merchandising a business as buyer and shipper of
stock. Along with his many other activities Colonel Nor-
wood has constantly supported schools and churches and
at different times has served on several local school
boards and has helped to build several institutions in the
old Cherokee Nation.

Colonel Norwood has been three times married. In
1872 Miss Alice R. Gourd became his wife. Her father
was Judge Jackson R. Gourd, a prominent man in the:
Cherokee Nation. The mother and the one child of the
union are both deceased. His second wife was Susie
Love, a member of the Delaware tribe of Indians. She
had an exceedingly fair skin, while Colonel Norwood’s
complexion is so dark that he would more readily have

A. H. NORWOOD

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1983

been taken for an Indian than his wife. There were two
children by this union, and both are deceased, and their
mother passed away in 1893. In 1904 Colonel Norwood
married Ida M. Woodard, who was born in Indiana and
was of Quaker parentage. Colonel Norwood can relate
many interesting incidents in connection with Indian life,
customs, religion and traditions. He speaks and under-
stands to some extent the Cherokee language, and has
some knowledge of the languages of the other tribes.

Andrew Hickenlooper Smith. By his enterprise Mr.
Smith has contributed to the general commercial and
business resources of the little City of Frederick, Okla-
homa. He is now proprietor of the leading garage in
that town, and for a number of years has been success-
ful as a farmer and stock raiser in the same community.

Though born at Winamae, Indiana, September 15,
1878, he belongs to an old Ohio family. The Smiths came
originally from England, and his grandfather, Adolphus
H. Smith, was born at Albany, New York, in 1809, and
died on his farm at Enon, Ohio, in 1902, at the extreme
age of ninety-three years. He was an early settler at
Cincinnati, where he built up a large business as a dis-
tiller. He was at Indianapolis, Indiana, soon after the
establishment of that town and was a trader there in
skins and furs and other merchandise. Mr. A. H. Smith
acquired his middle name from a prominent Cincinnati
business man, General A. Hickenlooper, who married
Maria Smith, a sister of William H. Smith, the father
of Andrew H. Smith. General Hickenlooper gained his
rank and title by service in the Civil war in the Engineers
Corps, and later became president of the Cincinnati Gas
& Electric Company. William H. Smith, the father, was
born at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1842, and died at Enon, Ohio,
in 1901. He grew up on the farm at Enon, lived for a
time at Winamae, Indiana, and in 1879 returned to Cin-
cinnati. He was a democrat in politics, a member of
the Episcopal Church, and was affiliated with the Masonic
fraternity. He married Camilla A. Bees, who was born
at Cincinnati in 1849 and died in the same city in 1911.
Andrew H. Smith is their only surviving child, the daugh-
ter Laura having died in infancy.

After a high school education in Cincinnati, Andrew H.
Smith took a course in Bartlett’s Commercial College
of that city in 1894, and for the next four years was
a salesman in Cincinnati. Since then his time has been
given almost entirely to farming and ranching in Ohio,
Oklahoma and Arizona. He located at Frederick, Okla-
homa, in 1906, and that has been his home with the
exception of fourteen months during 1911-12 spent in
Arizona. On coming to Southwestern Oklahoma he
bought a farm nine miles southeast of Frederick com-
prising 160 acres, and on that land has demonstrated
some of the possibilities of his section for diversified
farming and stock raising. It was on February 1, 1915,
that he bought the garage situated on South Tenth Street
in Frederick, and thus became proprietor of a well
equipped and prosperous enterprise. The garage was
established by I. W. Yancey in 1913. The building is
32x140 feet and furnishes storage for a number of cars,
also facilities for repair work and the handling of auto-
mobile accessories, and Mr. Smith has the local agency
for the Overland cars.

An interested member of the Masonic fraternity, he
is affiliated with Lodge No. 222, Ancient Free and Ac-
cepted Masons, at Christiansburg, Ohio, and also with
Frederick Chapter No. 41, Boyal Arch Masons, witli
Frederick Commandery No. 19, Knights Templar, and
with India Temple of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine
it Oklahoma City. He also belongs to Harmony Chap-
ter of the Order of the Eastern Star at Wilcox, Ari-
zona. and to the Junior Order of the United American

Tol. V— 13

Mechanics at Hampton, Ohio. ' As a local business man
he belongs to the Frederick Business Men’s Association.

At Northampton, Ohio, in 1901, Mr. Smith married
Miss Lola M. Freeze, whose father William Freeze is a
farmer at Frederick. Mrs. Smith is a member of Har-
mony Chapter of the Order of Eastern Star.

Leroy B. Tooker. A popular and able young repre-
sentative of the newspaper business in Western Okla-
homa, Mr. Tooker is editor and manager of the Beaver
Democrat, a well ordered weekly paper published at the
county seat of Beaver County.

Mr. Tooker was born at Lawrence, McHenry County,
Illinois, on the 12th of July, 1888, and is a son of
Benjamin F. and Mary L. (Palmer) Tooker. His father
was born in 1840, in the State of Wisconsin, where his
parents were pioneer settlers, and for many years he was
a successful building contractor, a vocation which he
continued to follow until 1907, when he came to the
'newly-organized State of Oklahoma and obtained a tract
of Government land in Beaver County. This homestead,
which he has developed into one of the well-improved and
valuable farms of the county, is situated twenty-four
miles southwest of Beaver, the county seat, and there
he and his wife still maintain their residence, their
marriage having been solemnized , in 1879 and Mrs.
Tooker having been born in Pennsylvania, on the 8th
day of July, 1842, her parents likewise having been
natives of the old Keystone State. They have three
children, of whom the subject of this review is the
youngest, as is he also the only son: Lynnia Belle, who
was born February 20, 1880, at Lawrence, Illtnois’, was
united in marriage in 1911, to Hugh N. Bobertson, and
they reside in Beaver County, Oklahoma, their two chil-
dren being Linden and Lillian; Georgia May, who was
born in 1882, became, in 1899, the wife of Charles L.
Munger, their home being in Beaver County, and they
have five children, — Yernon, Harlan, Adrian, Kenneth
and Lila.

The public schools of his native place afforded to
Leroy E. Tooker his early educational advantages and
after completing the curriculum of the high school he
pursued a higher course of study in the University of
Illinois at Champaign. He left the university in 1909
and immediately came to Oklahoma, where his parents
had established their home in the preceding year. Here
he put his scholastic attainments to practical test and
utilization by becoming a representative of the peda-
gogic profession. As such he devoted two years to teach-
ing in the public schools of Beaver County, his suc-
cessful work including a year of service as principal
of the village schools of Beaver, in 1910-11.

On the 19th of June, 1911, Mr. Tooker purchased the
plant and business of the Beaver County Democrat, and
in the following year he founded the Forgan Enterprise,
of both of which weekly papers he has since continued
editor and publisher and both of which he has brought up
to a high standard, — especially as purveyors of local news
and as exponents of the general interests of Beaver
County. Since assuming control of the Beaver County
Democrat, which is the pioneer newspaper of the county,
he has effected its absorption of the La Kemp Mirror,
the Ivanhoe News and the Forgan Enterprise in the
Beaver County villages of the names designated, and thus
he had made the Beaver County Democrat a paper of
specially wide circulation and dominating influence in
the county, its political proclivities being indicated by
its title. Both through his paper and in a personal way
Mr. Tooker stands exemplar of civic progressiveness and
spares neither time nor effort in his efforts to promote
the social and material advancement and wellbeing of

1984

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Beaver County and its people. In the time-honored
Masonic fraternity he has received the thirty-second
degree of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Bite, and he is
affiliated also with the Independent Order of Odd
Fellows. He holds membership in the Presbyterian
Church, of which his parents have been zealous members
for many years. This energetic, wide-awake and pro-
gressive young journalist is still numbered among the
eligible bachelors of western Oklahoma, and it is need-
less to say that this fact does not in the least militate
against his popularity in social circles.

Charles S. Baxter. When he was eighteen years old
Charles S. Baxter began learning the printer’s trade.
His work as a printer and publisher and editor have
been for nearly a quarter of a century identified with
old Indian Territory, the Texas Panhandle and extreme
Northwestern Oklahoma. He is now editor and owner
of the Guymon Democrat, which is the official organ of
Texas County and the City of Guymon. A democrat him- ■
self, he has not been without considerable influence in
his party, and as a veteran Oklahoma editor is well
known among his professional brethren all over the
state.

He was born November 5, 1868, on a farm in Living-
ston County, Missouri, a son of W. H. H. and Nancy
(England) Baxter. His father, a son of Bichard Baxter,
a native of Kentucky, was born in Mercer County, Ken-
tucky, February 22, 1835, and in early boyhood went
with the family to Missouri, where he was engaged in
farming for many years. At one time he served as
county judge of Polk County, Missouri. His death
occurred at Bolivar, Missouri, January 7, 1902. He was
married in 1850 at Lexington, Kentucky, to Miss Nancy
England, who was born September 17, 1837, in Mercer
County, Kentucky, a daughter of Mathew England, also
a Kentuckian by birth. To Judge Baxter and wife were
born nine children, four sons and five daughters, namely:
John, who now lives in Springfield, Missouri; James
K., a printer by trade living at Bolivar, Missouri;
Charles S. ; Frank, deceased; Mollie, wife of William
Burton of Bolivar, Missouri; Nannie, wife of Harry
Lightfoot of Bolivar, Missouri; Maggie, who is un-
married and living at Bolivar; Myrtle and Mattie, both
deceased.

Charles S. Baxter acquired his early education in the
public schools of Livingston and Polk counties, Missouri.
Though reared on a farm he early conceived an ambition
and aim to become a printer, and took up the trade at
the age of eighteen. He has never deserted the printing
shop for any length of time during the past thirty
years. It was in 1891 that he moved to Indian Ter-
ritory and located at old Bush Springs in the Chickasaw
Nation, where he became one of the editors of the
Landmark for three years. In 1895 he moved to Dal-
hart, Texas, and for a year was editor of the News at
that place. In 1906 he came to Guymon, and has since
been foreman, editor and owner of the Guymon Demo-
crat, which was established in that year. This paper
has a large circulation, and is a very flourishing concern
as a business proposition. It has a modern equipped
plant. Mr. Baxter is a thoroughly seasoned newspaper
man, and has had fewer reverses to his credit than the
average editor and publisher.

Fraternally he is identified with the Independent
Order of Odd Fellows and is a member of the Christian
Church. On August 21, 1901, at Bolivar, Missouri, he
married Miss Ida Newport, a daughter of A. M. New-
port, who was born in Dallas County, Missouri. Mrs.
Baxter was born in Dallas County, September 21, 1868.
To their marriage have been born five children, three
sons and two daughters : Willie Lee, born September 21,

1902; Monroe, now deceased; Bertha, born October 9,
1905; Dorothy, born September 9, 1907; and Charles
Louis Jr., born May 30, 1912.

Bey. Frank J. Stowe. The pastor of the Presbyterian |
Church at Blackwell is one of Oklahoma’s ablest church- |
men. He has the distinction of being one of the few |
ministers of the gospel who sat as a delegate in the 1
constitutional convention of Oklahoma. As a teacher, I
preacher, church organizer and leader of movements for ill
both personal and civic righteousness, his experience I
covers a large field and in many states.

Bev. Mr. Stowe took charge of the church at Black- J
well in January, 1913. This church was organized in
May, 1896, and was only a mission supplied by ministers
resident of other places for some time. The first local
pastor was Bev. J. B. E. Craighead from Pennsylvania.
The formal organization of the church occurred on
Thanksgiving Day in 1898. The first church building
was brought to Blackwell from Arkansas City. It had
been a mission church and constructed from funds sup-
plied by New York. The old church building cost only
$560, and is now used, since remodeling, as a manse.
The second regular pastor in charge was the Bev. Thomas
B. Barrier, who came in 1903 to serve four years. Under
his pastorate a modern brick edifice was constructed at
a cost of $8,000. It is well furnished and arranged for
modern church work, containing a large audience room, a
young men’s room, with other rooms in the basement.
The church is out of debt, and the business organization
is unusually systematic and thorough, and all the bills,
including the pastor’s salary, are paid monthly. There
is a fine Sunday-school with about 250 scholars enrolled,
while the church membership numbers about 350. There
are twelve elders and twelve on the business board.
There are women ’s societies and missionary organizations
and young people’s societies. In 1907 Bev. T. H. Hawley
began his ministry of two years, followed by Bev. B.
Kuntz, who also served two years, and on January 20, ,
1913, Bev. Frank J. Stowe accepted the call to this
church.

Frank J. Stowe was born in Lockport, Illinois, May
11, 1868. His father, William Stowe, who was a farmer
and stockman, was born at Jamestown, New York, a.-
son of Nathaniel Stowe, and a relative of Professor i
Stowe, husband of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author ofi
Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The Stowes were an old and
prominent family of New York State. Bev. Mr. Stowe’s
mother was Laura Barnard, who was born at Eavenna,
Ohio, and a sister of Capt. James Barnard, who served-
with a gallant record as an officer in an Ohio regiment
during the Civil war. Bev. Mr. Stowe has a brother,

H. B. Stowe, a railroad man at Streeter, Illinois. Both!
the parents are still living and now have their hornei
at Lockport, Illinois.

Bev. Mr. Stowe spent his boyhood on a farm, withl
more or less regular attendance at the public schools.-
His education was continued in this wise until the age;
of seventeen, and after that he was employed in looking
after the details of farm work on his father’s place of-
100 acres. His ambition was for an education and foi
a calling which would enable him to express his ability
and character and service for humanity. He finally wem
to Boston, Massachusetts, and received $100 a year aj
salary while working as an apprentice in a wholesale
jobbing house. He also attended school at Boston
paying his own way and taking special work in th<
Boston University, and the course at Emerson College
where he was graduated in 1895. He then became :
teacher of the college at Waynesburg, Pennsylvania
While in Boston he was also a worker in the mission
and slums of that city. He continued his studies whil

2Vi

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1985

teaching, and finally entered the Cumberland University
at Lebanon, Tennessee, where he remained as a student
and teacher for eight years, completing his theological
studies there and receiving the A. M. degree. His first
regular pastorate was at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on
the site of the famous battle of Stone Eiver. All the
officers of the church board were former Confederate
soldiers.

In 1907 Eev. Mr. Stowe removed to old Indian Ter-
ritory, becoming pastor of the Presbyterian Church
and president of Industrial College at Wynnewood. He
was soon afterwards chosen a delegate to the constitu-
tional convention, and took a very important part in its
deliberations. He was a member of the liquor traffic
and educational committees, and impressed his ideas and
ideals on several important clauses of the organic law.
After five years as a pastor at Wynnewood he took a
church at Purcell for two years, and then accepted the
call to Blackwell.

On August 4, 1898, at Barkyville, Pennsylvania, Mr.
Stowe married Minerva Hunsberger. Mrs. Stowe is a
woman of strong native intelligence and of thorough
education and culture. She was born and reared at
Barkyville, and is a graduate of Findlay College in
Ohio, in music and art. For a time she was a teacher
in the Waynesburg College of Pennsylvania, and while
there formed her acquaintance with Mr. Stowe. Her
parents were Abraham and Catherine (Barky) Hans-
berger. Her father was a well-to-do merchant, and a
member of the Winebrennarian Church.' He is now de-
ceased, but his wife is living. Eev. Mr. Stowe is a
member of the Masonic Order. He is an excellent
speaker, a man of strong physique, and is an excellent
leader in behalf of any cause which he espouses.

John Foster. The name of John Foster will always
be associated with the founding and development of the
Town of Cushing. From the beginning of his residence
there twenty-one years ago, when there was practically
nothing to distinguish the townsite, Mr. Foster has made
his own activities coincide with the best interests of the
community, has exerted his influence and has expended
time, energy and means in promoting everything that
would give Cushing a proper prestige and standing among
the towns of Northern Oklahoma. Cushing is today the
center of one of the principal oil and gas fields in the
state, and perhaps no town in Oklahoma has a more
promising future. No small share of the credit for
this accomplishment is due this banker, business man, and
influential citizen. Mr. Foster organized and since the
beginning has been cashier of the First National Bank
of Cushing, and is also vice president of the First
National Bank at Yale in Payne County.

A Missourian by birth, and for a quarter of a century
a resident of Oklahoma, John Foster was born at Cape
Girardeau in Southeastern Missouri June 19, 1864. His
parents, T. C. and Eliza (Alton) Foster were born in
the same locality, but nine years after the birth of their
son, John, they moved to Independence, near Kansas
Dity, Missouri, and ten years later went to Camden Point
n Missouri. At the opening of the Sac and Fox reserva-
ion of Oklahoma the entire family settled there, and
;he father followed farming until he retired and he and
iis wife spent their last days with their son, John, in
lushing. The mother died about eight years ago and
;he father about five years ago.

The oldest of five children, John Foster spent his early
ife on a farm, gained from such surroundings a rugged
thysique and experience which has proved invaluable to
dm in his business career. He attended the common
chools of Independence, Missouri, and was also given a
horough normal training in the State Normal School at

Kirksville. As a pprt of his early record there should
be mentioned eight terms of teaching in country schools.
At the same time he carried on farming, and that was his
vocation until he removed to Oklahoma in February fol-
lowing the opening of the Sac and Fox reservation. For
a year and a half Mr. Foster ran his sawmill at Candler,
also built a cotton gin and was connected for a time with
the Sac and Fox Trading Company.

However, his most important achievements are found
in the twenty-one years of his residence at Cushing.
He and C. W. Carpenter, the two oldest residents of the
town, have lived as close neighbors during all these years
and have long been associated in the banking business.
Mr. Foster was one of the five men who laid out what is
known as the “South Addition” to the townsite of
Cushing. That is now the heart of the town. Mr. Foster
also used his influence in getting the Santa Fe Eailroad
Company to locate its right of way just where he wanted
it and where it would be of the greatest advantage to
the growing town. The South Addition to Cushing was
a tract of 120 acres. Later Mr. Foster bought fifty acres
on the east side, platted this into lots, and those lots are
now practically covered with residences and homes. For
several years Mr. Foster was engaged in merchandising
in Cushing, and had stores at several other points in
Payne County, and is still interested in a stock of mer-
chandise at Quay.

His work as a banker and practical financier began
in 1897, when he organized what was then a state bank,
but which in 1903 took out a national charter and is
now the First National Bank of Cushing. Mr. Foster
has been cashier of the institution since it was organized
in 1897. Some of the most prominent residents and
business men of Cushing are identified with this insti-
tution as officers and stockholders. The president is
C. W. Carpenter, Mr. Foster’s old neighbor and asso-
ciate. The vice president is N. Douglas, and the assistant
cashier is Ernest Burford. With a capital stock of
$25,000, the First National Bank has surplus and profits
according to a recent statement of $13,500, total resources
of over $633,000, and its deposits are well upward of
$600,000.

Mr. Foster has been very active and prominent in
making Cushing a center of the oil and gas development
of this part of the state. At one time he owned seven
quarter sections of land situated in the oil belt. He
helped to organize the Home Gas Company, is a director
in the company, which now has several producing wells
and is prepared to furnish gas to local factories at the
low rate of three cents per 1,000 feet. While Cush-
ing has made much development in the past twenty years,
its location close to an important gas field will un-
doubtedly bring it still greater prestige as a manufac-
turing and industrial center. Mr. Foster himself occupies
one of the most attractive estates in Cushing, residing
in a fine fourteen-room house surrounded with eleven
acres of ground. Outside of business affairs his name
is one of recognized influence in polities both in Payne
County and over the state. For twenty years he has
served as clerk of the board of education at Cushing,
and under his personal supervision was constructed a
handsome $20,000 high school which is now the pride of
the town. There are also three modern ward school build-
ings of eight rooms each. Mr. Foster has also served on
the city council. His office holding has been confined
to those of unremunerative positions where the incumbent
has opportunities for rendering much service, but with-
out compensation. He is also a power in local democratic
politics, and has served as secretary of two state con-
ventions, one at Anadarko and the other at Oklahoma
City. Mr. Foster helped to organize the Christian
Church at Cushing. * He served as president of the Com

1986

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

mereial Club several years, and in Masonry is a thirty-
second degree Scottish Rite.

In 1895 he married Miss Maggie Culbertson of Cam-
bridge, Ohio. Their five children are : Margaret, who
graduated from the Cushing High School in 1915 ; Lucile,
Charles, John and T. C.

Zeral Zenn Rogers. One of the most prominent names
in the history of Frederick since its establishment as a
town following the opening of the Kiowa and Comanche
country in 1901, has been Rogers. Mr. Z. Z. Rogers is a
young business man of that city and at the present time
is holding the office of mayor. His father was a pioneer
settler and in many ways closely identified with the
interests of the growing little city.

The Rogers family was established in colonial America
by John Rogers, who came from England. Zeral Zenn
Rogers was born in Clarksville, Arkansas, November 27,
1887, a son of the late William Wayne Rogers, whose
death on August 28, 1913, was regarded in the light of a
calamity to the community at Frederick.

William Wayne Rogers was born in Clarksville, Ar-
kansas, in 1854, and in 1891 removed his family to
Vernon, Texas, and in 1901 came to Frederick at the
opening of the settlement. He was a dry goods mer-
chant, and was prominent in church and fraternal affairs.
He was president of the board of stewards, chairman of
the board of trustees and chairman of the building com-
mittee when the Methodist Episcopal Church South
erected its home at Frederick. He was also teacher of
the Business Men’s Bible Class, which at one time num-
bered 183 members. He stood high in both the Masonic
and Odd Fellows fraternities. He was past master of
Frederick Lodge No. 249, Ancient Free and Accepted
Masons; past high priest of Frederick Chapter No. 41,
Royal Arch Masons; past eminent commander of Freder-
ick Commandery No. 19 of the Knights Templar; and
was affiliated with the council, Royal and Select Masters,
and with India Temple of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine
at Oklahoma City. In Odd Fellowship he belonged to
Frederick Lodge No. 223, Independent Order of Odd Fel-
lows, of which he was past grand. Associated with H.
W. Leininger and A. S. J. Shaw he organized in 1907
the Southwest Odd Fellows Association, and became first
president of that association. Mr. Shaw is now grand
master of the State Lodge of Odd Fellows in Okla-
homa. The Southwest Odd Fellows Association com-
prises the Odd Fellows lodges in Tillman, J ackson, J effer-
son, Comanche and Cotton counties. Its object is to
promote good fellowship and to hold contests to assure
proficiency in the working of the degrees. The association
held its last meeting at Lawton on April 26, 1915, and
in 1914 Mr. Z. Z. Rogers was president. The late Wil-
liam W. Rogers was also a member of the first city coun-
cil of Frederick, representing the First Ward, and on
finishing that term served on the school board continu-
ously until his death. He married Miss Addie Truscott,
who was a native of Quincy, Illinois. Their children are :
A. A. Rogers, who was the first county superintendent
of schools of Tillman County, serving two terms, and is
now county superintendent of schools at Wilson, Okla-
homa; E. E. Rogers is a traveling salesman for Hutchi-
son wholesale grocers, and resides at Hutchison, Kansas,
and he drew the claim known as the Rogers Addition to
Frederick, Oklahoma, the most desirable in the city.
Vera is the wife of S. E. Patton, who has lived at
Frederick since 1901 and has been continuously identified
with the Oklahoma State Bank of that city as cashier;
D. D., who is master mechanic in the machine shops at
Wellington, Kansas; B. B. Rogers, who has a position
with the government service at El Paso, Texas; Z. Z.; and

J. J., who is now attending the Kansas City Dental Col-

Mr. Z. . Z. Rogers had just finished the high school
course at Vernon, Texas, in 1901, when the southwestern
section of Oklahoma was opened to settlement and in
the same year he joined his father’s family at Fred-
erick. At that time he was still a boy in years, but soon
took up the serious work of life as clerk in a grocery
store. He was employed by the firm of Parker & Mc-
Connell, was with them nine years altogether, and was
promoted from driver of a delivery wagon to keeping
books in the office for the last four years. Early in 1911
came his first advancement in politics when elected city
clerk, and he served two terms until 1913. His acceptable
work in that position was his chief recommendation for
election to the office of mayor of Frederick on April 6,
1915. He is now one of the youngest mayors of Okla-
homa. The mayor’s term runs for two years.

In July, 1915, Mr. Rogers engaged in the drug business
with D. H. Hail as partner, and they have a well stocked
store at the corner of North Grand Avenue and Ninth
Street. Mr. Rogers is a democrat, a member of the
Methodist Episcopal Church South and treasurer of its
Sunday School and has fraternal affiliations with Fred-
erick Lodge No. 249, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons;
with Frederick Council, Royal and Select Masters; with
Frederick Lodge No. 223, Independent Order of For-
esters; with the Woodmen of the World, the Modern
Woodmen of America, and the Praetorians. He is also
associated with the Business Men’s Association.

At Hobart, Oklahoma, in 1906, he married Miss Ana
E. Hancock, daughter of Edward Hancock, who is a
farmer at Grandfield, Oklahoma. Mr. and Mrs. Rogers
have two children: Jim Jack, who was born January 23,
1908; and Trullus Truscott, born October 16, 1910.

Albert S. Dickson. Coming in 1886 to that section
of neutral strip in Indian Territory that was at the
time commonly known as No Man’s Land, Mr. Dickson
established his residence at Neutral City, a true frontier
town of period, where he remained until Oklahoma Terri-
tory was thrown open to settlement and formally organ-
ized, its prescribed confines including the former No
Man’s Land, when he removed to Beaver, which was made
the judicial center of the county of the same name and
which originally included also the present counties of
Texas and Cimarron. In this now thriving and im-
portant town of western Oklahoma he has since continued
in the active and successful practice of law, and he is
junior member of the representative law firm of Dick-
son & Dickson, in which his coadjutor is his brother,
Robert E. The firm controls a specially substantial
and important practice in this section of the state and
its high standing at the bar of Oklahoma determines the
distinctive professional ability of its members and their
secure place in popular confidence and good will.

On the paternal homestead farm in Andrew County,
Missouri, a log house of the pioneer type figured as the
stately domicile in which Albert S. Dickson was born
and the date of his nativity was February 1, 1867. He
is a son of Benjamin Franklin Dickson and Anna (Var
Deventer) Dickson, whose marriage was solemnized ir
that state in the year 1860.

Benjamin F. Dickson was born in Boone County, Mis
souri, in 1826, his parents having been pioneers of thaii
county, where they established their home on theii
emigration from their native State of Kentucky. Hd
was reared to adult age in his home county and as
young man he removed to the northwestern part of Mis
souri, where he passed the remainder of his life as ai
energetic, progressive and duly successful farmer. Hi
died in Andrew County in 1892, when about sixty-si:

on the i
Part

iltt,'

Peanj
papers a
in ties

$ri%a
*«r is ft
aides, a

■Wspape

fieat-pa

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1987

years of age, and his wife survived him by a number of
years. She was born in Missouri and was a daughter of
Granville and Ursula (Clark) Van Deventer, her father
having been a scion of the historic old Van Deventer
family of Lee County, Virginia. Benjamin F. and
Anna (Van Deventer) Dickson became the parents of
three sons and two daughters, concerning whom the
following brief record is given: Alexander Jackson,

born in 1861, is now a prosperous agriculturist and
stock-grower of Beaver County, Oklahoma. In 1886 he
wedded Miss Belle Baker and they have one child, Anna.
Bobert, who was born in 1864, was afforded the ad-
vantage of Avalon College, at Avalon, Missouri, and is
now senior member of the law firm of Dickson & Dick-
son, as previously noted. He was the first regularly
elected county attorney of Beaver County and since
his retirement from that office he has been associated
with his brother Albert S. in the practice of law at
Beaver. He whose name initiates this article, was
the third in order of birth of the five children. Lucy D.,
who was born in 1869, was educated in the Missouri
State Normal School at Strasburg and in 1896 became
the wife of Godfrey Stegman, their home being in the
City of St. Joseph, Missouri, and their only child being
a daughter, Elsie. Bell, who was born in 1872, is the
youngest of the children. In 1899 she became the wife
of Hugh A. Ellingsworth and they now maintain their
home at Helena, Missouri. They have one child, Ever-
etta.

Albert S. Dickson passed the period of his childhood
and early youth on the old homestead farm and is
indebted to the public schools of Andrew County, Mis-
souri, for his preliminary education, which was effectively
supplemented by a course of higher study in Avalon
College, at Avalon, that state. In the meanwhile he
' had given much attention to the reading of law, with
' the intention of eventually entering the legal profession.
1 In August, 1886, Mr. Dickson came to the Indian Ter-
r ritory and, as previously stated, established his residence
at Neutral City, in "No Man’s Land,” where he

I remained until 1890, when he removed to Beaver. In the

0 following year he was admitted to the bar of Oklahoma
ifj Territory and since that time he has continued in the
j practice of his profession at Beaver, as one of the repre-

II sentative pioneer lawyers and a valued citizen of Beaver
County. Though he takes a deep and loyal interest in

. public affairs and is a staunch advocate of the principles
“ of the republican party, he has never sought or held
political office, as he considers his profession worthy of
!!j his undivided allegiance. He is affiliated with the Knights
IJ of Pythias and both he and his wife hold membership in
““ the Christian Church at Beaver.

. At Liberal, Kansas, on the 29th of January, 1910,
611 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Dickson to Miss
Edna Humphrey, who was born near Trenton, Missouri,
on the 27th of September, 1884, and who is a daughter
“® of Clark and Emma Humphrey, likewise natives of Mis-
souri. Mr. and Mrs. Dickson have one child, Albert
~j DeWitt, born September 24, 1913.

11 Frank I. Leasure. While not one of the largest
jjj. papers and not published in one of the largest towns
w in the state, the Roosevelt Record at Roosevelt has a
]eir virility and vigor all of its own. Its editor and proprie-
j6 tor is Frank I. Leasure, well known in Oklahoma press
18 8 circles, and whose experience as a practical printer and
j[jg. newspaper man cannot be measured entirely by the
j jj number of years since he reached his legal majority.

’jje His birth occurred at Mount Auburn, Iowa, September
gjj 4, 1882. The Leasures are of French origin, and his

1 great-grandfather, John Leasure, came to this country

with two of his brothers, all of them settling in Penn-
sylvania. Mr. Leasure ’s father is H. E. Leasure, who
was born in Ohio in 1852, and when a small boy was
taken out to a farm in Iowa County, Iowa, where he
grew up, but substituted railroading for agriculture as
his regular career. He was a station agent at different
places in Iowa and Kansas, but in 1899 left that business
to become a jeweler at La Crosse, Kansas. He was
afterwards in the same line at Independence, Kansas,
spent several years in Missouri, and in 1904 located in
Arkansas City, Kansas, where he is still in business as a
jeweler. Politically H. E. Leasure is a socialist in belief,
and has affiliations with the Independent Order of Odd
Fellows, the Knights of Pythias, the Woodmen of the
World and the Modern Woodmen of America. He mar-
ried Arminta Dormer, who was born in North Missouri,
in 1857. Their four children are: Carl C., who is a

traveling salesman with home at Arkansas City, Kansas ;
Frank I.; Maude M., wife of P. T. Boyd, a telegraph
operator residing at Texarkana, Texas; and Ernestine
L., a teacher living with her parents.

Frank I. Leasure received his early education in the
public schools of Iowa and Kansas and also attended a
high school at Independence in the latter state, subse-
quently taking a business course at Rolla, Missouri. His
independent work for himself began at the age of nine-
teen at Harrisonville, Missouri, as an apprentice in a
drug store. Eighteen months later he left that employ-
ment for one which he liked better in a printing office
at South Haven, Kansas. He spent two years at South
Haven, and after that was employed as a journeyman
on various newspapers in Kansas and Colorado until
1903, in which year he located in Kaw City, Kay County,
Oklahoma, and spent one year with the Star at that
place. After that he took a trip through Old Mexico,
and then returned to Arkansas City, Kansas, and settled
down to the daily routine of city editor of the daily
paper there. He held that position from January, 1905,
to January, 1912. In the month mentioned of the latter
year he came to Roosevelt, Oklahoma, and bought the
Roosevelt Record from E. F. Tennant, and has since been
its capable proprietor and editor. The plant and offices
are situated on Main Street in the Village of Roosevelt,
and he has done much to build up its circulation and
influence in Kiowa and surrounding counties since he
took charge. It is a democratic paper, and was estab-
lished in March, 1902, by G. H. Parker and E. M.
Timber. In addition to its local circulation it now has
a foreign list of more than a 150.

Mr. Leasure is himself a democrat in politics, and is
affiliated with the Knights of Pythias at Hobart. He is
well known in the Oklahoma Press Association, of which
he is a member. In June, 1910, at Newkirk, Oklahoma,
he married Miss Frances Cline, a daughter of Joseph
Cline of Arkansas City. They have one son, Harold E.,
born February 4, 1913.

A. C. Smith is editor of the Ponca City Democrat, of
Ponca City, Oklahoma, a newspaper with an interesting
history. The Democrat was born on the prairie in North-
ern Oklahoma at the opening of the Cherokee Strip in
September, 1893. Mr. Smith is a veteran of the news-
paper and printing business, and for a number of years
conducted a paper in Southern Kansas, until he suddenly
transferred his enterprise to the Cherokee Strip about
twenty-three years ago and has guided the destiny of the
democrats through all these years. The first issue of
the Democrat was on Thursday, September 21, 1893,
and with a magnificent development which has occurred
in Oklahoma since that date the paper has likewise
prospered, and now has a daily issue. Mr. Smith is also
at the present time postmaster of Ponca City, having

1988

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

been appointed to that office in November, 1913, by
President Wilson.

A. C. Smith was born at Bloomfield, Davis County,
Iowa, October 25, 1865. His parents were neighbors
and friends of Gen. James Weaver, who for many years
was one of the notable figures in American politics and
a great leader of the greenback party. His father was
Berryman Smith, a native of Kentucky. From Kentucky
he moved to Davis County, Iowa. Berryman Smith died
at Bloomfield, Iowa, at the age of fifty-five, while his
wife passed away in 1875. They were both active in the
church and in polities he was a democrat. They were
the parents of nine children, three sons and six daughters.

A. C. Smith grew up at Bloomfield, Iowa, attended
the common and high schools, and when still a boy had
his first practical experience and training as a newspaper
man in the office of the Legal Tender, a greenback paper,
the official organ of the greenback party. It was issued
as a general newspaper, but particularly in support of
General Weaver’s position on money and other economic
questions. Its editor was a man of no little ability as
a writer and thinker, Crawford Davis, now deceased, who
for a number of years was a zealous worker in the green-
back cause. Mr. Smith had four years experience with
the Legal Tender, and rose from the position of devil
to that of city editor. He later moved to Arkansas City,
Kansas, during the boom days of that locality, and was
engaged in the newspaper business there until he made
the run into Cherokee Strip on the opening day in Sep-
tember, 1893. His enterprise gave to the Cherokee Strip
one of its first newspapers, and he has kept the paper
up to a high standard of excellence through all these
years.

Mr. Smith has been quite active in democratic polities,
has served as delegate to various conventions both in
territorial and statehood days, and through his paper and
otherwise has effectually advocated good government and
the general cause of morality, education and religion.
He and his wife are active members of the Pentecostal
Church of the Nazar ene; he is a trustee and steward of
the board and superintendent of the Sunday-school, hav-
ing a school of about 200 scholars.

On December 25, 1889, Mr. Smith married Miss Nora
Burrell of Arkansas City, Kansas. She was reared and
educated there, a daughter of Capt. A. J. Burrell, now
deceased, who came out of Indiana to Kansas. Mr. and
Mrs. Smith have four children: Nadine, Juliet, Kath-

erine and Allen. One daughter, Beatrice, died at the age
of seven years. One daughter is now in charge of the
Conservatory of Music at Bethany College, Oklahoma.

C. A. Constantine. In every corner of the wide world
is found the Greek, everywhere plodding, patient, de-
termined, steadfast, reliable, prosperous. The descend-
ants of that sturdy race that once comprised the flower
of civilization and culture in the ancient world are still
active and indomitable, and though Greece is a small
country, a little nation, yet the doings of the Greeks fill
a large part in history and one of which they need not
be ashamed when placed in comparison with any other
people. Considering how widely dispersed are the mem-
bers of this race, it is not strange that one of the
important citizens of Oklahoma is from that race.

Pawhuska is the home town of Mr. C. A. Constantine,
and there he is regarded as a benefactor. He was one of
the first citizens to locate after the opening of the sale
of the townsite and one of the most .conspicuous semi-
public buildings and institutions there is a monument to
his public spirit and enterprise.

Mr. Constantine is truly a cosmopolitan. He has
lived in nearly all quarters of the habitable globe and
has had a fund of personal experiences and adventures

such as many pages could hardly adequately describe.

He is one of the most interesting as well as one of the
most valuable citizens of the state which is notable for
the cosmopolitan character of its citizenship.

He was born in the suburbs of Constantinople in
March, 1866. His family is of Greek origin and his
ancestry can be traced directly back to a Greek family
that flourished in the Eastern Empire when Constanti-
nople was the capital city for all the eastern half of I
Christendom prior to its conquest by the invading Turks j
in the middle of the fifteenth century. Mr. Constantine ’s
father was a man of considerable prominence, serving in ,
an office which would correspond with that of mayor or
commissioner in one of the districts around Constantinople.

He was educated in the local schools up to the age 1
of sixteen. His mother had died' when he was twelve
years of age. Three of his elder brothers were already
employed, one of them taking charge of a city office,
one of them in a maritime commercial exchange and the
next older being also employed in a city office. After
about a year Mr. Constantine became dissatisfied with
his position as a subordinate, and at the age of seven- '
teen ran away from home. He had no money, and after,
borrowing forty dollars from a friend took a young Greek
companion with him and they shipped on a sailing vessel
from Constantinople bound for Tripoli. After three }
months on the North African coast they returned to I
Constantinople, where the police acting under instruc-
tion from his father arrested young Constantine and <1
returned him to the parental care. However, he soon '
secured his father’s consent to leaving home, and next
went to Athens, where he joined a cousin and for three
years was employed in a store or in other lines of work. ,
He left Athens suddenly, with only eighteen francs as
capital, going to Alexandria, Egypt. At the end of
three days he had only three francs left, and being with-
out friends had to accept the first employment that
offered. After a month he became better acquainted and
secured a position as shipping clerk in a wholesale house,
and spent one year in Alexandria. Greek was his native
language and as a boy he had learned to speak the Turk-
ish tongue, and while in Alexandria he also picked- up
some fluency in the Egyptian and Italian languages.
This proficiency made him available for a position at
Jedda, the seaport of Makha in Arabia, where he was
given charge of a retail grocery concern and was paid I
wages double what he had received in Alexandria. How-
ever, after three months he found the climate did not
agree with him, and he- returned to Alexandria and was ■
employed for a time in a money exchange. Soon after-
wards he took charge of a grocery store at another place
in Egypt, but while there contracted the smallpox and!
was shipped back to Alexandria consigned to the Greek;
Hospital. There was no room in the hospital, and he
accordingly took his blankets and went to the woods
resolved to die a quiet death. He was picked up by;
some Arabs, who reported his case to the Greek com-
munity, and he was cared for until he had recovered.
While in Alexandria he and another Greek boy wandered
out into the desert and were lost, and for fifteen days;
mingled with the Arabs. They told their captors many,
strange tales in order to preserve their lives, passing
themselves off as dignitaries of the Sultan, and finally
had themselves carried back into Alexandria. Three
days later the historic massacre of whites in Alexandria,,
in 1881, began, and it was only after many desperate
chances that Mr. Constantine escaped the general ven-
geance which fell upon thousands of the aliens living in
that city. He left the country with many other refugees
three days later, and was given free transportation by
the Greek government to Piraeus, the seaport of Athens.
His father learned of his condition and secured his return

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1989

to Constantinople. A few months later Mr. Constantine
ran away again, taking passage on a sailing ship to the
Black Sea and visiting several of the Russian ports. He
next went to Marseilles, France, and after traveling in
French vessels around the Mediterranean went on a
French boat to Martinique in the French West Indies,
returning on the same vessel. He again made the same
trip, but on arriving at Martinique broke his contract
and was put in jail for fifteen days and was released
only on promise to leave the island at once. He shipped
on an American vessel loaded with a cargo of sugar
for New York. He worked his passage to New York,
and thence took an English boat to Liverpool, where he
was discharged. At Dublin he shipped on an American
vessel bound on a cruise around Cape Horn to San
Pedro, California, a voyage of six months and eighteen
days without touching land. He landed from the boat
ill and spent some time in a hospital at Los Angeles,
and remained in Southern California altogether for two
years. He found employment with the fruit packers and
in that time picked up a good knowledge of the English
language.

Up to that time most of his experiences had been in
tropical or semi-tropical countries, but in 1889 he went
north to Juneau, Alaska, but had little success in that
quarter and returned as far as Seattle, afterwards
through San Francisco, and was in the vicinity of Salt
Lake until 1892. During the World’s Columbian Exposi-
tion he was in the City of Chicago, and there his enter-
prises prospered so that he found himself with abundance
of money and with this good fortune returned to Athens,
Greece, where he was married in 1893 to a Greek girl
named Alexandra Pakiadi, who was also born in Con-
stantinople, the only child of her parents. After visiting
his father Mr. Constantine sailed for the United States
with his bride, landed in New York City, and for a time
lived at Scranton, Pennsylvania. At Scranton was born
his first child, a daughter, to whom was given the name
'Sappho. From there he removed to Atlanta, Georgia,
and engaged in business as a grocer and proprietor of a
refreshment parlor. In that city the second daughter
was born into the household, and upon her was bestowed
the name Antigone.

Mr. Constantine’s experience in the northern latitude
was renewed following the Klondike excitement. In
August, 1896, he left his wife in charge of his busi-
ness in Georgia and set out for Dawson City in North-
west Alaska, it requiring from August to the 3rd of
November to make the trip. At San Francisco in obe-
dience to the regulations it was necessary to lay in sup-
plies of all kinds sufficient to last an entire year.
On reaching the Yukon region it was necessary to make
the trip down the river to Dawson City before the
waters froze over, and he had to go into the woods and
cut the timber to make a boat. Mr. Constantine was the
first white man to shoot the White Horse Rapids with a
loaded boat, and about four hundred people lined the
banks to see him accomplish that notable feat. Never in
all his life of varied experience had he received such a
demonstration of popular applause as was given him by
his fellow men as they stood on the banks and shores of
the canyon and yelled their acclaim and fired off their
pistols as he successfully navigated the rapids. It was
not altogether a feat of reckless daring, since Mr. Con-
stantine had been a teacher of swimming in California
and had gained an expert skill in the handling of boats
propelled by oars and paddles. Before reaching Dawson
City on the 3rd of November the waters' were frozen
over and he had to chop through the ice for a con-
siderable distance in order to land his boat. On the
previous trip to Alaska in 1889 his partner had acci-
dently struck Mr. Constantine with an axe, causing a

severe injury to his leg. Again in 1896 he was injured
and out of active employment for about three months.
Starting another prospecting tour, at eleven o’clock at
night when the thermometer was forty degrees below zero
and he was twelve miles from Dawson City, he acci-
dentally shot himself through the leg, and only after
a struggle of two hours was finally rescued by a man
with a sled. He spent two years in Klondike, with
experiences of which those mentioned are only a sample,
and made one trip back to San Francisco during the
time. After that two years he returned to Atlanta,
Georgia. Owing to the poor health of his wife he sent
her back to Athens with their two children, and she died
in Greece in 1903.

During 1904, at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in
St. Louis, Mr. Constantine again operated with consider-
able success, but after the close of the fair returned to
Atlanta, and then started into the Southwest to look for
a location, in 1906 establishing himself in Tulsa, Okla-
homa. The Pawhuska townsite was opened in 1906, and
he was present during the auction sale of lots, and has
been identified with that thriving community of North-
eastern Oklahoma ever since. He bought a few cheap
lots during the sale and rented a bake shop, to which he
added a confectionery. After one year in that location
the business outgrew its quarters, and he then rented the
store where his present conspicuous center of activities
is located, and subsequently bought the ground and
building. His location is now in the heart of the city,
and he operates a confectionery and bakery, a candy and
ice cream manufacturing establishment, and also con-
ducts a hotel in connection.

In December, 1914, Mr. Constantine completed the
theater that bears his name in Pawhuska. The Con-
stantine Theater is regarded as the finest building of its
kind in Oklahoma, and has the second largest stage of
any theatrical house in the state. It represents the last
word in every facility and equipment for comfort and
enjoyment. It has a perfect system of heating, the fan
system of ventilation, and the lighting and fire pro-
tection are of the latest design. No expense has been
spared in making this theater the equal of any play-
house in the Southwest, and it stands as a splendid
monument to the enterprise and public spirit of its
builder. It also represents his own ideas, which were
only expressed in solid material through his architect.
One of the notable features of the playhouse is the con-
venience of its seating arrangement, the chairs being
six inches wider than in all ordinary theaters. Mr. Con-
stantine is the manager of the theater and has devoted
the house to high class motion picture plays and the
best obtainable legitimate drama. Adjoining the
theater is his cafe, and both establishments are on the
main street of the city.

It was not with an idea solely to profit that Mr. Con-
stantine invested so heavily in this enterprise, but rather
from the impulse of civic pride. It is the expression of
his desire to give an entire community the benefit of
his prosperity, and he has frequently turned over the
theater free for school commencement exercises and
religious assemblages.

Mr. Constantine stands high in Masonry having taken
thirty-two degrees in the Scottish Rite, and having also
completed the York Rite degrees. He is also affiliated
with the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the
Knights of Pythias, and is a member of various insur-
ance orders. His two daughters attended school in the
Loretto Academy in one of the suburbs of Denver,
Colorado and graduated from Pawhuska High School.
The daughter Sappho is eighteen and Antigone is seven-
teen. Two more cultured and brilliant young women it
would be difficult to find. Only recently Sappho was

1990

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

awarded a prize for work in domestic science, while
Antigone received a state award as an appreciation of
her musical talent, being an accomplished contralto singed.
Both of these medals were awarded by the Oklahoma
University at the inter scholastic meet.

In connection with his theater and cafe and other
business at Pawhuska, Mr. Constantine employs eighteen
persons or more, some of whom are Greeks and soffit
Americans, and he is everywhere known as a liberal em-
ployer, paying the highest standard of wages. His entiie
career in Pawhuska has been in consonance with the
finest letter and spirit of American citizenship apd; he
is one of the men of foreign birth who do ■ cfedit
to their adopted country.

Pinkney R. Amos. One of the real pioneers ft the
original Oklahoma now resides at Frederick,/ where he
is engaged extensively in the real estate bjjsin^es, not
only as a broker but also handling large quantities of
land and other property of his own. Mr; Amos was
one of the first men to sell goods at the present Xlklahoma
City in 1889, was likewise identified witb; the1 Cherokee
Strip, and moved to Frederick at»out tai rime Tillman
County was opened for settlement. -j fj

The Amos family has been identified with West Vir-
ginia for nearly a century, and both IHr.jpLmos and his
father were born there when the country JlFas only West-
ern Virginia prior to the formationjjbf M separate state.
Pinkney R. Affios was born in Mariofi Oj&nnty at Fairview
in what is now West Virginia Marcli ^2, 1852, a son of
Peter Amos, who was born in the fme state in 1813,
and died at Fairview in 1892. A'r ter Amos was a man
of prominence in his section, owned a number of farms,
did business as a stock man,/anjpwas also a merchant.
During the war between the-' stares he sold supplies to
the Confederate government’ affd for that offence was
arrested and was kept a prisoner in the Federal prison
at Wheeling, West Virginia/* f or a number of months.
His church was the Methodist Episcopal and in politics
he was a democrat. Petei/Amos married Mary Basnett,
who was born in West Virginia in 1812, and died at
Lampasas, Texas, in 1891. Their children, eight in num-
ber, were as follows //Elizabeth, who now resides at
Clarksburg, West .Virginia, is the widow of Dr. J. B.
Conaway, who for a.-n umber of years was a practicing
physician near Clarksburg; Catherine, who lives at Fair-
view, West Virginia, is the widow of George Brown, a
farmer and /trader; Philip B. lives at Fairview, where
he has been a Merchant for forty years and is now pres-
ident of jthe/First National Bank; Nannie C. lives at
Fairview, the widow of Dave Ammons, who was a trader
and cattle-dealer; Charilla, who died in 1914, was the
wife of. A. E. Morgan, a farmer at Fairview; Luther J.
is a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church South in
California ; Pinkney R. is the seventh in age, and the
ypwngest, Willie died at the age of five years.

. * Pinkney R. Amos received his education in the com-
mon schools of Marion County, West Virginia, up to the
age of twenty, having in the meantime assisted his father
and gained a practical acquaintance with business affairs.
For a number of years he was associated with the elder
Amos in the store, and also was an extensive stock shipper
to Philadelphia, and owned a mill. He confined his atten-
tion to stock business from 1881-,to 1889, and owned a
large sheep and cattle ranch at Lampasas, Texas.

On April 22, 1889, Mr. Amos arrived at Oklahoma City,
then only a tank station on the Santa Fe Railroad. In
the city which sprang up there within a few days’ time
he established the first exclusive shoe store, which was
the first establishment of its kind, not only in that
city but in the entire territory. The store was located
on Main Street. In 1893 Mr. Amos left Oklahoma City

and moved his stock of goods to the newly opened dis-
trict known as the Cherokee Strip, establishing a store at
Perry. Then in 1901 he moved to Frederick, and here
has followed the real estate business. His offices are in
the Amos Building, which he owns. For the past fifteen
years he has handled many thousands of acres of farm
land in Southwestern Oklahoma, and handles city prop-
erty, farm lands in Tillman County and other counties of
Oklahoma and Texas, and probably has the chief busi-
ness of its kind in Tillman County.

Mr. Amos is a democrat, attended the Methodist Epis-
copal Church, and is affiliated with Lodge No. 1217 of
the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and with
the Woodmen of the World. In his native state of
West Virginia in 1875 he married Miss Alice D. Morgan,
whose father was William Morgan, now deceased, a West
Virginia farmer. They have two children: Frank, who
has built up a large insurance business at Woodward,
Oklahoma; and Fairie, who is the wife of D. S. Tant,
an attorney living at Vernon, Texas.

William F. Carson. A prominent and successful
representative of real estate and loan business in western
Oklahoma is Mr. Carson, who maintains his residence at
Beaver, judicial center of the county of the same name,
where he is in charge of the office and business of the
Renfrew Investment Company, the headquarters of which
are in the City of Woodward. On other pages of this
work is given a review of the career of the president of
this important company, Rufus O. Renfrew, and to that
article reference may be made for further information
concerning the company and its extensive operations.

William Frank Carson, who has been a resident of
Oklahoma since 1900, was born on his father’s farm in
Champaign CJounty, Illinois, on the 23d of June, 1874,
and is a son of William G. and Martha Jane (Bales)
Carson. His father was born in Vermilion County,
Indiana, in which state he was reared and educated and
when, in 1855, he removed to Illinois and became one
of the pioneer settlers of Champaign County, where he
settled on a preemption claim which he obtained from
the Government. His entire active career, marked by
consecutive industry and unpretentious worth of charac-
ter, was one of close identification with the great and
fundamental industry of agriculture, and through his
well-directed endeavors he achieved independence and
definite prosperity. He was a staunch democrat of the
old school and though he was ever loyal and public-
spirited as a citizen he never desired or held political
office. Both he and his wife early became zealous
members of the Universalist Church, and he exemplified
his faith in his daily life, his death having occurred in
the City of Champaign, Illinois, on the 10th of Novem-
ber, 1906, after he had been a resident of Champaign
County for a full half century.

On the 22d of February, 1854, was solemnized the
marriage of William G. Carson to Miss Martha Jane
Bales, who likewise was born in Vermilion County,
Indiana, the date of her nativity having been August
27, 1834, his birth having occurred in that county on the
29th of June, 1829, — dates that clearly denote that the
respective families were founded in that section of the
Hoosier State in the early pioneer days. Mrs. Carson,
who still retains her home at Champaign, Illinois, is a
daughter of Caleb and Emily (Spangler) Bales, natives
of Virginia, and of her ten children — two sons and eight
daughters — four daughters died in infancy, — Maria, Ella,
Elizabeth and Laura. Emily Josephine, who was born
December 20, 1858, became, in 1881, the wife of Eugene
A. Ford, and they have four children, — Amos Carson,
William Van Pelt, Martha Belle, and Eugene Bartholo-
mew. Caleb W., who was born December 10, 1860, was

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1991

reared and educated in Champaign County, Illinois, and
in his native state he continued his residence until July 5,
1885, when he removed to Ashland, Kansas, where he
accumulated a very large estate and where he was
the largest individual taxpayer in Clark County at the
time of his death, which occurred August 13, 1915. He
served eight years as postmaster at Ashland, during
both administrations of President Cleveland, and was a
leader in the ranks of the democratic party in that sec-
tion of the Sunflower State. He attained to the thirty-
second degree in the Ancient Accepted Scottish Kite of
the Masonic fraternity, besides being affiliated with the
Mystic Shrine. In March, 1886, he wedded Miss Martha
Congeleton, who survives him, as do also their four sons
and one daughter, — Paul C., William G., Prank Lee,
Caleb W., Jr., and Hazel Ellene. Ellen A. Carson was
born August 11, 1864, was united in marriage on the 27th
of February, 1890, to Hon. John I. Lee. Their only
child, Irving Allen, died in infancy. Mr. Lee, who died
at Cordell, Washita County, Oklahoma, on the 25th
of December, 1914, was editor and publisher of the Clark
County Clipper, at Ashland, Kansas, from 1885 to 1890,
and thereafter served until 1892 as clerk of the District
Court of that county. From 1894 to 1898 he was
register of the United States Land Office at Dodge City,
Kansas, and in 1901 he came to Oklahoma Territory and
engaged in the lumber and coal business at Cordell,
where he passed the residue of his life. He was influ-
ential in democratic political activities in Kansas and
likewise after his removal to Oklahoma. Mary Marc
Carson was born August 9, 1867, and on the 20th of
August, 1886, she became the wife of Dr. David P. Sims,
their only child being a son, Carson, and the family home
being maintained at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Miss
Luvilla B. Carson, who was born January 22, 1870,
remains with her widowed mother.

William Frank Carson, the second son and yougest
child in the above mentioned family, passed the period
of his childhood and early youth upon the homestead
farm which was the place of his birth, and after duly
availing himself of the advantages of the public schools
of Champaign County, Illinois, he pursued a higher course
in what is now the great Valparaiso University, at Val-
paraiso, Indiana. He continued to be associated with
the work and the management of his father’s farm until
1899, when he removed to Ashland, Kansas, where he
served as deputy clerk of Clark County. In that city
he was thereafter associated with his only brother in
the mercantile business for a period of two years, and
upon coming to Oklahoma, in 1900, he established his
home at Curtis, Woodward County, where he continued
in the same line of enterprise four years. He had
entered claim to a tract of Government land in that
county and in 1904 he perfected his title to the property.
In 1910-11 Mr. Carson held a clerical position in a mer-
cantile establishment in the City of Woodward, and in
1912 he there assumed the position of bookkeeper in
the head office of the Renfrew Investment Company.
In October of the same year he was assigned to the
management of the company’s office at Beaver, where he
has since continued the alert and efficient incumbent of
this position, in which he has done much to extend the
business controlled from this office.

Mr. Carson is found aligned as a staunch supporter
of the cause of the democratic party, is affiliated with
the Masonic fraternity, and both he and his wife are
specially zealous and valued members of the Presby-
terian Church at Beaver, in the Sunday School of which
he has served three years as superintendent. It is
worthy of incidental note that this is the oldest exclu-
sively Presbyterian Church in the state, its organization

having been effected in 1886, when Beaver County was
still a part of the region commonly designated as No
Man’s Land, — prior to the creation of Oklahoma Terri-
tory. Mr. Carson is secretary of the Beaver Gospel
Team, and also secretary of the Beaver County Sunday
School Association.

At Keinbeek, Grundy County, Iowa, on the 14th of
April, 1901, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Carson
to Miss Grace B. Klein, daughter of Herman E. and
Katherine (Kline) Klein, both natives of Iowa, where
their respective parents settled in the early pioneer days.
Mrs. Carson was born on her father’s homestead farm
in Grundy County, Iowa, on the 4th of September, 1876,
and in her youth she received excellent educational
advantages, through the medium of which she prepared
'herself for service in the pedagogic profession. For
eight years prior to her marriage she was a successful
and popular teacher in the schools of her native state
and in Kansas. Mr. and Mrs. Carson have five children,
whose names and respective dates of birth are here
noted: Francis Klein, March 26, 1902; Ellen Belva,

June 1, 1905; Ernest Lee, September 1, 1906; Willis
Spangler, July 26, 1910; and Luvilla Grace, July 22,
1912.

William Henry Miller. To found a town and to
exercise such a kindly and wholesome supervision over
its welfare as to deserve the title of ‘ ‘ town father ’ ’ is
an enviable distinction. That is only one phase of
William Henry Miller’s participation with the life and
affairs of Oklahoma. He is one of the real pioneers,
was out in “No Man’s Land” in the primitive days
of that country, and has participated in a number of the
important land openings and as a homesteader, cattle
raiser, civil engineer, teacher, business man, has played
an unusual part in the development of this great state.
His present home and activities are centered at Buffalo,
which he founded.

He was born March 17, 1858, in a log house on a
farm in Knox County, Missouri. At the age of three
years left an orphan, he was reared by John Miller as
his foster father and lived with that worthy Missouri
gentleman the first twenty-seven years of his life. In
the meantime he had made the best of his opportunities
and had secured the equivalent of a liberal education.
In 1881 he graduated from the Gem City Business
College at Quincy, Illinois, and in 1884 he completed
the work in the £Torth Missouri State Normal at Kirks-
ville, Missouri, near his old home. The following two
years were spent as a teacher in Missouri.

It was in 1886 that Mr. Miller moved out to that
portion of the present State of Oklahoma which then
on the geography was marked as No Man’s Land.
There he followed the profession of civil engineer until
1891, in which year he resumed teaching. He taught
the first public school in what is now Harper County,
and was superintendent of city schools at Shawnee in
1896-97, and in 1898-99 superintendent of the city schools
of Blackwell.

While in No Man’s Land he was in the cattle business
in 1886 and 1891, together with his work as a surveyor.
He lived the thoroughly primitive life of the place and
time. He ate buffalo meat when buffalo still contended
for the prairies with domestic cattle, and he bore all the
hardships of the frontier, including existence in sod
houses. He was also/ a factor in that short-lived govern-
ment known as the Territory of Cimarron, which was
set up to furnish jurisdiction and competent local govern-
ment for the narrow strip of land between the Texas
Panhandle and Southern Kansas and Southern Colorado.
He was elected to the senate of the provisional govern-
ment and was the first territorial assessor in 1889-90.

1992

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

As a civil engineer he surveyed nearly all the old town-
sites of No Man’s Land.

In 1891 Mr. Miller took part in the opening of the
Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indian reservations. In 1893
he likewise participated in the opening of the Cherokee
Strip, locating at Blackwell. In 1899, removing to old
Woodward County, he secured a claim on Buffalo Creek.
On a portion of that land he subsequently laid out the
present Town of Buffalo, and gave to it the enterprise
which started it as one of the flourishing town centers
of Northwestern Oklahoma. In 1896 he was elected the
first county surveyor of Harper County. In his own
Town of Buffalo he erected some substantial buildings,
and he has contributed generously to every public insti-
tution in the town. He owns a model farm of 280 acres
adjoining the townsite, has a complete set of buildings,'
and also a modern home, and owns about 700 town lots.
In politics he is a democrat, but has never had time for
political work.

Mr. Miller has also distinguished himself in the field
of invention. He is inventor of an ore separating ma-
chine on which he has a patent, and which has met the
test of practical experience in the mines of Mexico. He
is also patentee of a grain separator and thresher
combined.

Tor much of what is best in his life’s accomplish-
ment Mr. Miller credits his able wife. On April 5, 1888,
at Columbia, Missouri, he married Miss Fannie E. Turner.
She was born in that university center on November 7,
1866, and she and her husband were school mates prior
to their marriage. Mrs. Miller has been more or less
closely identified with educational work since she was
sixteen years of age. She now ranks as the leading
authority on primary school work in Oklahoma. She
and her husband are active members of the Christian
Church and she has taken a specially active part in
Sunday-school, having been secretary of the Oklahoma
State Sunday School Association. She taught the first
school in Blackwell and was connected with the schools
there for seven years, while Mr. Miller conducted the
first school in Harper County.

H. C. Wallace, D. O. At Blackwell one of the physi-
cians who can claim a patronage of exceptional numerical
strength and value is Dr. H. C. Wallace, who is one of
the leading representatives of the School of Osteopathy
in Oklahoma, and has met with unanimous success during
the fifteen years of his residence at Blackwell. Within
twenty years the practice of osteopathy, starting in re-
stricted localities and hampered by prejudice, has spread
from coast to coast, and has won its place with older
schools of medicine, and largely because of the work of
Doctor Wallace the influence of the science is very ap-
parent in Northern Oklahoma. Doctor Wallace is Resi-
dent Physician and Manager of the Southwestern Osteo-
pathic Sanitarium of Blackwell, and the existence of this
institution must be credited mostly to his untiring efforts
to place his profession in the front rank, and provide
suitable care for the adherents of the osteopathic system
of treatment. Starting in 1912 with a small sixteen-
room frame building, the institution has grown to its
present dimensions. It has become one of the largest
osteopathic institutions in existence, with one of the
largest and finest hospital buildings and most complete
and modern equipment of any hospital of any kind in
the Southwest, having a capacity prhieh can be utilized
for about 100 patients, and beautiful grounds and park
surrounding the building, and situated on the highest
land in the city.

Miss Clara Powell, recent night superintendent of the
Kirksville, Missouri, Hospital, is the Superintendent and
assisting her is a corps of as efficient nurses as are to

be found anywhere. Other physicians and surgeons
associated with Doctor Wallace in this institution- are
Dr. George J. Conley of Kansas City, Missouri, the chief
surgeon; Dr. L. S. Larimore, who has charge of the eye,
ear, nose and throat and X-ray departments; and Dr.
M. M. Estlack, both of Blackwell; Dr. Ernest Ewing of
El Reno, Oklahoma; Doctors Mitchell and Mitchell, Dr.
W. F. Nay and Dr. N. Triplett, all of Enid, Oklahoma;
Dr. P. W. Gibhson of Winfield, Kansas; Dr. N. Howell
of Wellington, Kansas; Dr. Fred Thompson of Caldwell,
Kansas; Dr. L. Brenz of Arkansas City, Kansas; Doctor
Calvert of Ponca City, Oklahoma; Dr. F. C. Davis of
Tonkawa, Oklahoma; Dr. E. Hicks of Newkirk, Okla-
homa; Dr. F. Barrows of Kingman, Kansas, and a
number of others.

Doctor Wallace is a graduate of the American School
of Osteopathy and a post-graduate of the Los Angeles
College of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons.

A downtown office is maintained at Blackwell in the
National Block, corner of Main and Blackwell Avenue.

Dr. H. C. Wallace was born near Juniata, on a farm
in Adams County, Nebraska, January 21, 1882, and has
lived in Blackwell since 1903. i His father, John Wallace,
was a native of Vermont, and during the Civil war made
a record as a gallant soldier with the Fourth Iowa
Cavalry. He came of Scotch ancestry, and for many
generations the family has been noted for its integrity
and vigor of citizenship. From Vermont John Wallace
moved out to Iowa, and was one of the early settlers
in Marshall County of that state. He married Ruth
Ferguson, a native of Iowa, whose parents came from
Pennsylvania. From Iowa the Wallace family moved out
to Adams County, Nebraska, where they were among the
early settlers. Later the father came to Blackwell in
Kay County, Oklahoma, where he is now living at the
age of eighty-eight years, being one of the oldest
veteran soldiers in Kay County.

Dr. H. C. Wallace grew up in the states of Nebraska
and Missouri, receiving his education and graduating
from the high school at Grant City, Missouri, and then
entered the American School of Osteopathy at Kirksville,
where he finished in 1903. In the same year Doctor
Wallace married Cora Roten, who prior to her marriage
had been a successful teacher. Her father was John
Roten of Albia, Iowa. They have two children: John

Herbert and Velma Bernice.

H. H. Brenner. While in a business way Mr. Bren-
ner’s chief distinction rests upon his work as a banker,
he is also a splendid type of the business man and citizen
who not only do things but get things done for the
permanent welfare and prosperity of his community. His
community can hardly be regarded as one town, since,
though a resident of Pawhuska for many years, his
interests extend all over Osage County, and his associa-
tions and friendships include many leading business men
all over the country.

As a banker Mr. Brenner has been primarily identified
with the First National Bank of Pawhuska, of which he
is president. Some years ago, when he took charge of
the bank, it was an institution with $25,000 capital, a
surplus of $2,000, deposits of $34,000, and the books
showed indebtedness at $10,000. At the present time
its capital stock is $50,000, with surplus and undivided
profits of $32,000, and a total of deposits amounting to
over $500,000. The total resources of the First National
in May, 1916, amounted to approximately $716,000.

In addition to being president of the First National
Bank of Pawhuska. Mr. Brenner is president of the Paw-
huska Oil & Gas Company; was formerly president of
the Bank of Big Heart, an office which he resigned,
thought still remaining a stockholder; was president of

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1993

the Foraker State Bank, now the First National Bank
of Foraker, which he organized and managed four years,
and at one time was identified with the National Reserve
Bank of New York City.

The story of Mr. Brenner’s career is one that illus-
trates the possibilities of accomplishment. In earlier
life he lived in close touch with poverty and his inde-
pendence and self-reliance have brought him to an envi-
able goal of prosperity and real success. He was born
at Golding, in Courland, Russia, now Germany, June 15,
1852, a son of Benjamin and Gertrude (Nattison) Bren-
ner. His parents spent all their lives in the old country,
and his father in earlier life was a merchant. Mr.
Brenner was the youngest of his mother’s four children,
two sons and two daughters, and by his second marriage
his father had also four children, all of whom are living
in this country except one. Two are in Memphis, Ten-
nessee, and one in Brinkley, Arkansas. Mr. Brenner has
a number of nephews and nieces in different parts of the
United States.

He was seventeen years of age when he set out for the
United States, making the journey alone, and arriving
at Oxford, Mississippi, with neither money nor influ-
ential friends to help him. He lived at Oxford until
1886, having been connected with the mercantile firm of
Meyers, Sichels & Company for twelve years. After-
wards he engaged in the mercantile business for himself,
and in 1886 first came to Pawhuska, Indian Territory,
under appointment from President Cleveland as post
trader. Pawhuska was then one of the smallest posts in
the Indian Territory. He remained as a trader there
until 1890 and then returned to Mississippi, engaging
in the merchandise business at Clarksdale. He also
bought a large cotton plantation of 2,740 acres in the
Yazoo Valley, but met with financial reverses in the
management of his enterprise. In 1895 Mr. Brenner
returned to Pawhuska, receiving a new appointment as
post trader during Cleveland’s second administration.
Here he laid the solid foundation of his preserit pros-
perity. He was a merchant, and also engaged in the
cattle business with Prentice Price of Hominy. It was
as a merchant and cattle man that his chief interests
were centered for twelve years. In 1903 Mr. Brenner
came to the Bank of Pawhuska as president, and his
success in raising that institution to one of the foremost
in Northeastern Oklahoma has already been mentioned.
During the past thirteen years he has devoted most of
his time to banking and the oil and gas business. He
owns extensive real estate interests at Pawhuska, and has
effected much for local improvement.

In 1905 Mr. Brenner spent two months in Washington
negotiating with Congress for the setting aside of various
townsites in Osage County. As a result of his efforts
640 acres were set aside for the townsite of Pawhuska;
160 acres for Big Heart; and similar amounts for Hom-
iny, Fairfax and Foraker. The setting aside of these
townsites was a necessary preliminary to real develop-
ment of towns that are now among the most important
in Osage County.

In 1903 Mr. Brenner promoted the Pawhuska Oil &
Gas Company, of which he is now president. At that
time no oil or gas had been produced within twenty-five
miles, but he proved his own faith and good judgment
by investing his own resources, and now for a number
of years this company has been one of the largest in the
development of the local oil and gas fields. It is capi-
talized at $250,000. Throughout the state Mr. Brenner
has interests in land, gas and oil leases.

The original oil and gas leases given by the Osages
in 1896 expired in March, 1916. As the authority to
lease all the Osage lands is vested in the Secretary of
the Interior with the concurrence of the Indian Council,

Mr. Brenner spent the preceding months of January and
February in Washington, representing his company.
There were many conflicting claims, all requiring careful
investigation, and it was a difficult matter to do justice
to all. The Pawhuska Oil and Gas Company was suc-
cessful in securing 38,400 acres in the vicinity of the
City of Pawhuska on terms which made it possible to
offer gas to the consumers at reasonable prices. In fact,
Pawhuska enjoys the distinction of possessing a larger
gas field and cheaper rates than any other city in the
United States.

Since getting his citizenship papers Mr. Brenner has
been consistently a supporter of the democratic party.
He was presidential elector from Oklahoma in 1912, and
always active as a party man, and has served as a
delegate to many state conventions both in Mississippi
and Oklahoma. He has likewise contributed generously
to the party treasury, though for himself he has never
desired nor has he been willing to accept any honors in
the way of office. Mr. Brenner has numbered among
his personal friends many of the well known men in
politics and business, but deems his most illustrious
friendship as that which existed between him and the
late Justice L. Q. C. Lamar of the United States Supreme
Court. Mr. Brenner is a thirty-second degree Scottish
Rite Mason, a member of the Mystic Shrine, an Elk
and a Knight of Pythias, and belongs to a number of
other social and civic orders. Though born of a Jewish
family, in America he has always associated with Gen-
tiles almost entirely, but shows his loyalty to his race
by membership in the United Israelites and the B’Nai
B’rith. He is also a member of both the State and
National Bankers’ Association and a member of the
National Gas Association of America.

In January, 1899, Mr. Brenner married Mary Louisa
Morris. She was born in New York State, and they
were married at the City of Albany. Mrs. Brenner is
one of the leading Pawhuska women in social and benevo-
lent affairs. She was one of the founders of the Epis-
copal Church of Pawhuska, is a member of the Shakes-
peare Club and the Art Club, and spends much of her
time in doing good in her community. While they have
no children of their own Mr. Brenner is keenly interested
in the welfare of his many younger relatives and has
generously assisted a number to gain education and to
fit themselves for usefulness in business and the profes-
sions. When Mr. Brenner came to the United States
he had no knowledge of the English language. His mother
tongue was German. He never attended school after
coming to this country, and has acquired most of his
education through close contact with men and affairs.
Few men have lived their lives to better purpose than
this Pawhuska banker.

George M. Burkhardt. For a young man a little be-
yond thirty, George M. Burkhardt has had a long busi-
ness experience and is well established as one of the
proprietors and the active manager of the abstract com-
pany at Frederick in Tillman County.

Mr. Burkhardt represents the thrifty and substantial
element of Texas citizenship that was introduced into
that part of the Southwest from Germany. He was born
at Round Top in Fayette County, Texas, December 3,
1884, a son of Louis G. and Bertha R. (Ullrich) Burk-
hardt. His grandfather Burkhardt was born and mar-
ried in Germany, came over with his family, and was
an early farmer settler in Fayette County, Texas. The
grandfather Adam George Ullrich was born in Baden,
Germany, and at the age of eighteen crossed the ocean
and settled on a farm in Fayette County, Texas. He
was employed by the owner of the farm, but later
bought the place, and still lives on that farm, which is

1994

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

crossed by the line between Payette and Washington
counties, Texas. He was born in 1834, and is thus
more than fourscore years of age. Louis G. Burkhardt
was born in Fayette County, Texas, in 1853, and died
near Round Top on his farm in 1887. He and his brother
and a sister owned 270 acres near that village. He was
a member of the Lutheran Church. His wife, Bertha R.
Ullrich, was also born in Fayette County, and is now
living in Washita County, Oklahoma. Their children
were: Lina, the wife of Ernest Stein, farming people in
Washita County, Oklahoma; Lizzie, wife of Gottlieb
Stehr, a farmer in Custer County, Oklahoma ; George M. ;
Amanda, who married Oscar Hoepfner, a farmer in
Washita County, Oklahoma; and Katy, wife of Henry
Funk, who lives in the Town of Bessie, Oklahoma. After
the death of Louis G. Burkhardt his widow married C. H.
Koch. He was born in Hesse, Germany, emigrated to
Fayette County, Texas, and later to Washita County,
Oklahoma, where he died in 1909. The children of this
second marriage are: Justus Koch, who is a farmer in
Washita County, Oklahoma; Otto Koch, also a farmer
in the same county; Blandina, who is employed in the
telephone office at Hobart in Kiowa County, Oklahoma;
Christian, a farmer in Washita County; and Adam, a
farmer in the same county.

George M. Burkhardt received more or less regular
instruction in the public schools of Round Top up to the
age of nine, at which time his mother removed to Cop-
peras Cove, Texas, where he continued school attend-
ance up to the age of fourteen. At that date he showed
an indication of the reliance which has always charac-
terized him by running away from home, and returning
to his native Village of Round Top, continued his studies
in the German language for two years. He then returned
to Copperas Cove and was employed on his mother’s farm
up to the age of twenty. In 1904, realizing the need of
better educational preparation, Mr. Burkhardt entered
the Hills Business College at Waco, Texas, and after
completing his course there engaged in the real estate
business at Holland in Bell County, Texas, for two
months. His next location was at Belton, the county
seat of Bell County, where he was in the abstract business
in the employ of A. M. Montieth up to the summer of
1907. At that time Mr. Burkhardt identified himself
with Lawton, Oklahoma, but on the 18th of November
of the same year entered the employ of the Monerief
Cook Company in the abstract business, and on Febru-
ary 28, 1909, came to Frederick to represent the same
company. In 1910 E. J. Sehowalter and Mr. Burkhardt
bought the Monerief Company’s interests in the abstract
business and Mr. Burkhardt has since had the sole man-
agement of this important concern, since Mr. Sehowalter
is vice president of the Chattanooga State Bank of Chat-
tanooga, Oklahoma. Mr. Burkhardt ’s offices are in the
rear of the First National Bank Building.

Up to the summer of 1912 Mr. Burkhardt was a regu-
lar republican, but has since been affiliated with the
democratic party. He has served as councilman in Fred-
erick from the Third Ward and is now secretary of the
board of education. Fraternally his affiliations are with
Belton Lodge No. 51 of the Knights of Pythias in Texas,
with the Brotherhood of American Yeomen and his
church is the German Lutheran.

On October 22, 1910, at Lawton, Oklahoma, Mr. Burk-
hardt married Miss Sadie S. Cory, daughter of W. H.
Cory, who resides at Douglas, Arizona, where he and his
son Walter C. Cory conduct a garage. Mr. and Mrs.
Burkhardt have two children: Frances Blandina, born
August 31, 1911; and Laureada Lavelle, born April 8,
1914.

Granville T. Ayers. In the year succeeding that in
which Oklahoma was admitted to statehood Mr. Ayers
became a teacher in the public schools of Beaver County,
and during the intervening period he has continued as
one of the prominent and influential figures in the edu-
cational affairs of this western section of the state, his
broad pedagogic experience and his marked executive
ability having met with consistent recognition when, in
the autumn of 1914, he was elected county superintendent
of schools, a position in which his administration is
fully justifying the popular choice for the incumbent of
this important office and is proving potent in advancing
the standard of general school work in Beaver County.
Mr. Ayers has been identified with educational work
for virtually twenty years and has honored his chosen
profession by his character, his scholarly attainments and
his worthy achievement. As one of the representative
citizens and valued officials of Beaver County he is
specially entitled to specific recognition in this history
of the state of his adoption.

In Wayne County, Illinois, Mr. Ayers was born on the
9th of April, 1874, and the place of his nativity was far
from being one of sumptuous order, though it was a true
home in which comfort and refinement were in evidence, —
a log house of the pioneer type being at the time the
parental domicile on one of the excellent farms of the
county mentioned and the place being owned and opera-
ted by the father of the future Oklahoma pedagogue.
Superintendent Ayers is a son of Robert S. and Sa-
mantha (Newman) Ayers, the former of whom was
born in Gibson County, Indiana, in 1831, and the latter
of whom was born in Kentucky, in 1841. Robert S.
Ayers is a son of Christopher Ayers, who likewise was
born in Indiana, where his parents settled in the earlier
pioneer era in the history of that state. The entire
active career of Robert S. Ayers has been marked by
close association with the basic industries of agriculture
and stQck raising, in connection with which he continued
his operations in Indiana until 1870, when he removed
with his family to Wayne County, Illinois, where he
developed and improved a valuable farm and where he
is now living retired, in the city of Fairfield, the county
seat, his eighty-fourth birthday anniversary having been
celebrated in 1915. He was a personal friend of Abra-
ham Lincoln, whom he accompanied on the latter’s can-
vass during the historic Lincoln and Douglas campaign,
in 1860. In 1855 was solemnized his marriage to Miss
Samantha Newman, a daughter of Turner Newman,
who was a native of Kentucky. Her grandfather, John
Henry Newman, was a native of England and came to
the United States in 1824 and settled on Duck River,
Kentucky, where he purchased 2,000 acres of valley
land, the original deed to this property being now in the
possession of his great-grandson, Granville T. Ayers,
subject of this review. Mrs. Samantha Ayers passed the
closing period of her gentle and gracious life at Fair-
field, Illinois, where she died in the year 1901. Of the
five children the only son is he to whom this sketch is
dedicated and who was the fourth in order of birth.
Estella, who was born in 1856, is the wife of John
McLain, and they have five children,- — Homer, Lena, Or-
rin, Paul and Kathryn. Wilmoth, who was born in 1858,
is the wife of Solon Hill and has three children,— Ayers,
Earl and Katerine. Jesse May, born in 1860, is the
wife of James Monroe and they have four children,
Orilla, who was born in 1862, is the wife of Robert
Lewis, of Louisville, Clay County, Illinois, and they have
one child.

After duly availing himself of the advantages of the
public schools of Wayne County, Illinois, Granville T.
Ayers completed an effective course of higher study in
Hayward College, at Fairfield, that county, and at the

HISTORY OP OKLAHOMA

1995

age of twenty-two years he initiated his pedagogic career
as a teacher in the public schools of his native state,
where he continued his labors as an educator for a, period
of twelve years, during two of which he was an instruc-
tor in the Illinois State Reform School, at Pontiac.

In 1908 Mr. Ayers came to Oklahoma and engaged
in teaching in the schools of Beaver County, his services
in this capacity having continued until he was elected
to his present office, that of county superintendent of
schools, in the autumn of 1914, since which time he has
worked with characteristic zeal and efficiency in the
broader field of educational activity. He is a stalwart
supporter of the cause of the republican party, iff
affiliated with the Masonic fraternity, and both he and
his wife hold membership in the Christian ‘Church.

On the 22d of October, 1914, was solemnized the mar-
riage of Mr. Ayers to Miss Mary White, who had been
a popular teacher in the schools of Clay County, Illi-
nois for eight years prior to her marriage. Mrs. Ayers
was born in Posey County, Indiana, on the 20th of Sep-
tember, 1885, and in the same county were born her
parents, Joseph and Mary (Montgomery) White. Mr.
and Mrs. Ayers represent a distinct intellectual and moral
force in their home community and also are zealous in
the furtherance of high civic ideals and all things that
make for the educational, moral and material welfare
of their home city and county, where their circle of
friends is coincident with that of their acquaintances,
Mrs. Ayers being a leader in church and social activities
at Beaver.

C. Guy Cutlip. While Mr. Cutlip has for a number
of years been successfully practicing law in Seminole
County, with office and home at Wewoka, he is a pioneer
white resident of old Oklahoma, and witnessed or parti-
cipated in three different land openings. He was with
his father at the beginning of settlement in the original
Oklahoma, was at the opening of the Kickapoo, Sac and
Pox reservations, the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Reserva-
tion, and the Cherokee Strip in 1893. He has interested
himself in many of the important activities of Oklahoma
during the last fifteen years, and though still young
occupies a position of prominence in his section of the
state.

He was born near Medicine Lodge, Kansas, April 6,
1881, a son of T. G. and Susan (Mills) Cutlip. His
father was born near Parkersburg, West Virginia, and
his mother in Tennessee. She was a daughter of Capt.
William N. Mills, who was in the Confederate army
under General Forrest, and after the war moved to Mis-
souri and still later to Kansas. T. G. Cutlip went to
Kansas in 1871 as a pioneer, was married near Medicine
Lodge, and for some years was actively engaged in the
cattle business in Western Kansas, until the destructive
year 1886 brought about the loss of all his stock. He
was a college graduate in law, and since then he has
been in active practice in Oklahoma. From Medicine
Lodge he moved to Kingfisher, Oklahoma, in 1889, the
year of the original opening of Oklahoma, and in 1895
located at Tecumseh, where his wife died in 1902 at the
age of forty-three. T. G. Cutlip is still living in Teeum-
seh and in the active practice of law. There were three
children: C. Guy; William, who is secretary of the

street railway at Muskogee and also at Shawnee; and
Roy, of Medicine Lodge, Kansas.

C. Guy* Cutlip lived at home with his parents until
1901. He had a common school education, later studied
law privately, and he and his wife also took several
courses in the University of Oklahoma. Mr. Cutlip has
been a resident of Wewoka since 1901.

As a young man he learned stenography and served

as court stenographer at Tecumseh for three years, serv-
ing under Judge J. D. F. Jennings, and then for a
number of years was with the firm of Cutlip & Blakeney.
He was admitted to the bar at Tecumseh and was later
given a license by the Supreme Court to practice in all
the courts of the territory and later of the state. He
was formally admitted to the Oklahoma bar January 21,
1908, soon after statehood.

For several years after moving to Wewoka Mr. Cutlip
was cashier of the Exchange Bank and was also in the
abstract business. After statehood he was appointed
deputy county attorney, a post he held until 1910, and
since that year he has been handling a large private
clientage as a lawyer. He also has some gas and oil
interests, and was one of the original stockholders and
helped secure the leaseholds of the Black Panther Oil
& Gas Company. At the present time he owns farming
lands, handles stock and controls the operation of nearly
1,000 acres. In politics he is a democrat and in Masonry
was for three years deputy grand master.

On March 22, 1903, Mr. Cutlip married Amo Butts at
Tecumseh, Oklahoma, a daughter of Judge A. W. Butts.
They have one child, Maxine, who is now ten years of
age. Mr. Cutlip is the possessor of one of the most
extensive literary libraries in the state.

Robert B. Bretz. In the year 1891, which marked
the opening of the newly organized Territory of Okla-
homa to settlement, by presidential proclamation, Robert
B. Bretz, the present county treasurer of the important
county designated by the name of Canadian, became
one of its pioneer settlers, and he has been closely and
worthily identified with the development and upbuilding
of this section of the state, where he owns and has
effected the excellent improvement of the fine tract of
land which he obtained by “making the run” when the
former district of the Cheyenne Nation was opened for
colonization. He has been one of the alert, progressive
and public-spirited citizens of Canadian County, has
given his co-operation in the furtherance of measures
and enterprises that have conserved civic and industrial
advancement, and that he has gained impregnable place
in popular esteem is shown by his having been ealled
to seive in the important fiscal office of which he is
the present incumbent and the duties of which he
assumed in July, 1915.

Of stanch German and Irish lineage, Mr. Bretz is a
scion of a family that was founded in Pennsylvania in
the colonial era of our national history, though he himself
is a native of the Province of Ontario, Canada, his birtli
having occurred in County Oxford on April 8, 1861.
He is a son of Gerhardt and Elizabeth (Jacobs)
Bretz, the former a native of the Province of Ontario,
Canada, and the latter of whom was born in the State
Of New York, of Irish lineage. Of the five children of
this union Annie and Eliza are deceased, and the three
surviving are Robert B., Elizabeth and William, all of
whom reside in the State of Oklahoma. The mother
passed the closing years of her life in the Province of
Ontario and years later the father came to Oklahoma,
where he resided in the home of his son, William, until he,
too, was called to eternal rest at a venerable age.
Gerhardt Bretz was a son of Jacob Bretz, who likewise
was born in the Province of Ontario and whose father,
Jacob Bretz, Sr., a native of Lancaster County, Pennsyl-
vania, was a member of a Mennonite colony that immi-
grated from the old Keystone State and settled in the
Province of Ontario, Canada, in the pioneer days. The
original progenitor of the Bretz family in America im-
migrated from Germany and settled in Pennsylvania
prior to the war of the Revolution, and the German

1996

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

language was retained by the family until the fifth
generation in America preceding that of which the sub-
ject of this review is a representative. Gerhardt Bretz
was a carriage and wagon maker by trade and followed
this vocation in the Province of Ontario for many
years.

Robert B. Bretz received a good common school educa-
tion in his native province, where also he completed a
course and was graduated in the Guelph Business College.
At the age of twenty-one years he assumed the position
of bookkeeper in a hardware establishment in the City
of Detroit, Michigan, but eighteen months later he re-
signed and joined a company of Canadian colonists who
went to the State of Louisiana and settled on the old
Stephanie Plantation, in St. Martin’s Parish. In the
purchase and operation of this plantation success failed
to attend the colonists, and the property was finally sold
to Kansas capitalists. Soon afterward, in 1891, Mr.
Bretz came to the Territory of Oklahoma, where he was
employed on the Mumford Johnston Ranch until the
opening of the Cheyenne District to settlement, when he
made the run and selected a homestead claim in what is
now Canadian County. For a period of five years there-
after he was compelled to make a vigorous contest to
retain his homestead, his claim to which was made a
matter of prolonged litigation, but he was eventually able
to perfect his title to the property, which he still owns
and which he has developed into one of the valuable
farms of the county, though he maintains his residence
in the City of El Reno, the county seat, where he estab-
lished his home prior to assuming his present county
office.

Mr. Bretz has been active and influential in public
affairs in Canadian County and is here a prominent and
influential figure in the local councils and activities of
the democratic party. In 1910 he was elected county
clerk, and the appreciative estimate placed upon his
administration of the affairs of this office was indicated
in his re-election in 1912 for a second term of two years.
His services as a public official were not permitted to
terminate upon his retirement from this post, as in the
election of 1914 he was chosen county treasurer. He
met formidable opponents in this election but the voters
of the county manifested their confidence and high
regard by according to him a splendid majority at the
polls, his assumption of office taking place in August,
1915, and the fiscal affairs of the county being assured
of most careful and effective administration during his
regime in this important office.

In the State of Louisiana, in 1910, was solemnized the
marriage of Mr. Bretz to Miss Edith Sowers, whose
parents were early settlers in Nebraska, whence they
came as pioneers to Canadian County, Oklahoma. Mr.
and Mrs. Bretz have two children — Daisy and William.

Col. John W. Jordan, of Cleveland, Oklahoma, is
one of the distinguished representatives of the old
Cherokee Nation. He has lived in what is now the
State of Oklahoma more than seventy years. In the
flush of young manhood he allied himself, like many of
his people, with the Confederate cause and fought gal-
lantly and bravely through the war. Since the close of
that struggle has come a period of half a century of
fruitful enterprise and as cattle man, oil producer, town
builder and land owner, he is widely known all over the
state.

Born December 9, 1843, his birthplace was six miles
east of the old Cherokee capital Tahlequah. His parents
were Levi and Malinda (Riley) Jordan. Levi Jordan
was born in the State of Maine of Scotch-Irish ancestry.
He was one of nine boys born to his parents, and it may
be that he thought nine were too many for one household,

since as a very young lad he ran away and made his way
west to Illinois. He was still a boy when he enlisted in
the regular army, becoming a member of the second
regiment of United States Dragoons. This regiment was
assigned to duty in Western Louisiana, along the border
between what was then the United States and the country
of Mexico. Soon afterward Texas undertook to win its
independence from Mexican dominion and the company
of which he was a member broke away from its command,
enlisted in the service of the Texas Patriots, and took a
part in the capture of Santa Ana and the winning of
independence for the Lone Star Republic. After five
years in the army Levi Jordan was honorably discharged
with his regiment at Fort Gibson, Cherokee Nation, then
one of the ffontier posts in what is now Oklahoma. He
remained in the Cherokee Nation after his discharge,
took up work as a brick mason, and married there one of
the Cherokee daughters. After two years she died, and
Levi Jordan went abroad to Europe. After the close of
the Civil war he returned to his native land, and died
some place in the West. By his wife Malinda Riley he
left one child, Col. John W. Jordan, who was reared by
his maternal grandmother Riley. The Riley family came
from the North of Ireland in colonial days and they
intermarried with the Cherokees before the removal of
the tribe west of the Mississippi.

Such were the circumstances of his birth and ancestry.
John W. Jordan grew up in the Cherokee Nation, at-
tended the Cherokee schools and learned both the English
and Cherokee languages. He was just seventeen years
of age when he enlisted in 1861 under the famous Gen.
Stan Watie. With that contingent of Indian troops
he served with the Confederacy until the close of the
war. He saw much fighting from first to last, and
did not escape unscathed. On July 17, 1863, at the battle
of Honey Springs, southwest of Muskogee on Elk Creek,
a minnie ball struck young Jordan in his belt and passed
through his body. He still has the belt, with holes
showing front and back. For two months a kindly
woman cared for him, and he is firmly convinced that
had he been taken to a field hospital his life could not
have been saved. When he had been nursed back to
comparative strength the young soldier returned to his
regiment and was with it until the close of the war.

Since the war Colonel Jordan has taken a very promi-
nent part in the United Confederate Veterans. At the
time of statehood he was serving as major-general of
the Indian Territory Division of the Confederate Veterans
organization, and he took his division to Richmond at
the unveiling of the Jefferson Davis monument during
the Confederate reunion in that city.

After the war Colonel Jordan went to Texas and be-
came extensively identified with the cattle business.
Representing a number of wealthy Texans in the handling
of their immense herds, he spent nine years on the free
range, a life he loved so well. In 1873, returning to the
Cherokee Nation, Colonel Jordan settled on a farm and
since then has occupied himself independently as a cattle
raiser. At the same time his service has been valuable to
his people. He served as a Cherokee special agent in
charge of the ‘ ‘ outlet ” or “ strip ’ ’ before its opening
to settlement in 1893. In safeguarding the property
rights of the Cherokees he carried a commission under
Federal Judge I. C. Parker and also a United States
Commission under Robert L. Owen, who wa^ United
States agent of the Five Civilized Tribes. He was the first
settler on Cherokee land west of 96 I. M. in 1883,
ten years before the strip or outlet was opened to
settlement. Many legal battles were fought in an effort
to remove Cherokee settlers from the land prior to the
formal opening, but Judge Parker’s ruling was favorable

(be^L

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1997

to those who entered that part of the domain before
the Cherokees sold the strip to the United 'States.

Concerning Colonel Jordan’s relations with what is
known as “the triangle country,” now part of Pawhee
County, Oklahoma, a recent writer in Sturm’s Oklahoma
Magazine tells the story and some quotations should be
made: “It was not until January, 1883, that any per-
manent settlement was made. At that time J. W. Jordan,
a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, built the first perma-
nent house in the triangle. He was the first Cherokee
settler and his daughter Miss Dixie Jordan was the first
Cherokee child born in the strip. This settlement had a
greater significance than the mere fact that in the triangle
was the first Cherokee settlement, for it also served as
the hinge upon which hung greater events. It will be
remembered that when David Payne organized his
‘boomers’ he first entered the Cherokee strip and was
several times removed. Mr. Jordan at the time held a
commission as special agent for the Cherokees, was deputy
United States marshal, and a scout under the war depart-
ment. ” The Cherokee Cattlemen’s Association occupied
the strip by lease, and when their case was brought to
trial Judge Parker ruled that the lands were given to
the Indians by patent in fee and that they had not
abandoned them inasmuch as they were held through
their agent, the cattlemen ; furthermore, he said that they
were not abandoned, because J. W. Jordan, a Cherokee
citizen, was an actual resident of the strip or outlet.

The same article recounts many of Mr. Jordan’s early
experiences with the outlaws, particularly members of
the Dalton gang, which in the early days infested the
regions of Northern Oklahoma.

Up to the opening of the Cherokee strip there were
few settlers, but after 1893 settlers came in rapidly and
a number of towns quickly developed. Prior to the
opening Dave Hendricks, a Cherokee, had a log cabin
where the City of Cleveland now stands.

Colonel Jordan was one of a colony of seventy families
receiving each an allotment of eighty acres by the
payment of a nominal sum, amounting to $112 apiece.
Colonel Jordan also bought from Dave Hendricks the
latter’s eighty acres for $1,200, and with Dr. G. W.
Sutton and E. L. Dunlop laid out the original townsite
of Cleveland. They formed the Cleveland Townsite
Company, taking in sixteen members at $100 each. Thus
Colonel Jordan was prominent in the founding and estab-
lishment of what is now one of the most thriving cities
of Northeastern Oklahoma. He was purchasing agent
for the Cherokee Townsite Company, and placed sev-
eral allotments as townsites on the line of the Eock
Island and Santa Pe railroads. Throughout his dealings
with the Cherokees Colonel Jordan has managed their
business not only with a high degree of skill but hon-
orably and fairly safeguarding the interests of all con-
cerned. He made five trips to Tampico, Mexico, securing
ranch land, and came out after President Madero was
assassinated.

At the present time Colonel Jordan owns a farm near
Cleveland, and that farm has some producing oil wells.
The first well struck in the vicinity was on the land of
William Lavery, and the second on the Jordan place.
At one time his farm contained five producing wells.

Though a lifelong democrat, Colonel Jordan has never
held office except by commission. He and his wife are
members of the Presbyterian Church, and he is a Knight
of Pythias. In September, 1866, in Texas he married
Sarah Thompson. She died near Muskogee, survived by
three sons, Eobert E. Lee, who is living in Vera, Okla-
homa; Thomas Jackson and James Lang,- both deceased.
In July, 1882, Colonel Jordan married Tennessee Jane
Eiley, a distant relative. Mrs. Jordan also has Cherokee

blood in her veins, the sixteenth degree. Into their
home have come five children : Dixie, who married

Charles Miller of Cleveland; John B., at home; Daisy
Lee, who died at the age of ten years; Eobert Owen and
Winnie Davis, both at home, the daughter being named
in honor of the daughter of Jefferson Davis.

Thomas Franklin Spurgeon, M. D. A successful
physician and surgeon who has practiced long enough in
Western Oklahoma to be considered a pioneer, Dr. Thomas
F. Spurgeon was one of the first members of his profes-
sion to locate in the new town of Frederick in Tillman
County as it is now, where he is recognized not only as
a capable medical man but a high minded and useful
citizen.

The Spurgeon family came from England during the
seventeenth century and settled in Massachusetts, whence
its descendants moved out in various directions, and are
found in Tennessee, Virginia, and many other states.
Doctor Spurgeon had ancestors who were soldiers on the
American side in the Eevolutionary war. Thomas
Franklin Spurgeon was born in Gasconade County, Mis-
souri, May 5, 1873. His father, W. M. Spurgeon, was
born in Tennessee in 1842, and died at Coyle, Logan
County, Oklahoma, in 1906. In 1852 at the age of ten
he was taken to Iowa and in the following year to Mis-
souri, and lived in that state as a prospering farmer up
to 1906, when he moved to Coyle. He was a democrat,
was a working member of the Baptist Church and had
seen service as a member of the Missouri State Militia.
W. M. Spurgeon married Miss C. C. Blevins, who was
born in Missouri and is now living at Coyle, Oklahoma.
Their children are: Allen, a retired farmer at Coyle;
Cora, who lives at Frederick and is the widow of James
Baxter, a blacksmith; Eliza, wife of James Nulty, a
farmer at Frederick; Dr. Thomas F. ; and G. M., a
farmer at Frederick.

Doctor Spurgeon attended the public schools of Gas--
conade County, Missouri, and a high school in Crawford
County of that state. Like many men who have made a
success in other callings, his first vocation was that of
teacher, and he taught five terms in Gasconade County
before entering the Barnes Medical College at St. Louis.
Doctor Spurgeon acquired his doctor of medicine degree
at Barnes College with the class or 1897, and in 1908
took post-graduate courses in the St. Louis University.
His practice began in Osage County, Missouri, in 1897,
but after fifteen months he removed to Crawford County
in the same state, and in December, 1898, identified him-
self with Western Oklahoma, practicing for eighteen
months at Cimarron City. He was at the opening of the
new Town of Coyle in 1899, and remained in practice
there three years. In February, 1902, he located at
Frederick, and has since built up a large general medical
and surgical practice in that town and surrounding
community. His offices are in the Guarantee Bank Build-
ing ;just north of Grand Avenue.

Always interested in local progress, Doctor Spurgeon
for ten years has served as a member of the Tillman
County School Board. He is a democrat, a member of the
Baptist Church, and affiliates with the Modern Woodmen
of America.

In 1896 in Dent County, Missouri, Doctor Spurgeon
married Miss Fannie Vaughan, daughter of the late Wil-
liam Vaughan, who was a Baptist minister. Two chil-
dren have been born to their marriage : Theron, living at
home; and Thelma, now in the public schools at Fred-
erick.

Levi S. Munsell, M. D. The exacting and all im-
portant profession of medicine has found many able,

1998

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

loyal and zealous representatives in the various counties
and communities of the vigorous young State of Okla-
homa, and Beaver, the judicial center of Beaver County,
is signally favored in having gained as a citizen a phy-
sician and surgeon of such distinctive technical attain-
ments and such broad experience as are defined in the
character and achievement of Doctor Munsell, who has
here built up a large and representative practice and
who holds high place as one of the leading members of
his profession in Western Oklahoma.

In ascribing to Doctor Munsell special distinction of
nativity the object is best attained by recalling the
humorous paraphrase of a familiar quotation that was
indulged in one of the famous post-graduate speeches
of Hon. Chauncey M. Depew, when he said : ‘ ‘ Some men
are born great, some achieve greatness, and some are born
in Ohio.” Under the last clause Doctor Munsell is able
to make classification, for he was born at Coldwater,
Mercer County, Ohio, on the 21st of September, 1841.
He is a son of William A. O. and Deborah (Gray), Mun-
sell.

William A. O. Munsell was born near Fletcher, Miami
County, Ohio, in the year 1812, and, as the date indi-
cates was a representative of one of the very early pio-
neer families of the old Buckeye State, where his father,
Levi Munsell, initated the reclamation of a farm from
the wilderness prior to the War of 1812, the original
American progenitors having come from England and
settled in this country in the early colonial days. Wil-
liam A. O. Munsell was reared to manhood in Ohio, and
though school facilities were very meager in the lo-
cality, and period, he provided advantages for himself,
and his alert and receptive mentality enabled him to
become a man of large intellectual force and broad mental
ken. He became a representative farmer in his section
of Ohio and also labored with consecrated devotion and
zeal as a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
in which he was what was commonly designated as a
‘ ‘ local preacher. ’ ’ During the climacteric period of the
Civil war he served as a United States marshal for the
Northwestern district of Ohio. In 1888 he removed to
Missouri, and he died at Cameron, that state, in 1902,
at the patriarchal age of ninety years. Early in his
career he had been prominently identified with the
promotion of railroad building in Ohio, and he was a
man of marked business ability as well as one of exalted
personal character.

In the year 1825 was solemnized the marriage of
Rev. William A. O. Munsell to Miss Deborah Gray, who
was born in 1818, a daughter of David and Sarah Gray,
and who was summoned to the life eternal in 1849. Of
this union were born two sons and two daughters, of whom
Elmore Y. and Mary Elizabeth are deceased, Doctor
Munsell, of this review, having been the third in order
of birth, and the eldest of the children being Sarah L.,
who is the wife of Stephen Frank, a representative
farmer near Cameron, Missouri.

The common schools of Ohio afforded to Dr. Levi S.
Munsell his early educational advantages, and at the
age of twenty-three years he was matriculated in the
Ohio Wesleyan University, at Delaware, in which he com-
pleted his higher academic studies. In preparation for
the profession of his choice he entered the medical depart-
ment of the University of Ohio, at Columbus, and in
this institution he was graduated as a member of the
class of 1870, and with the well earned degree of Doctor
of Medicine. Establishing his residence at Geneva,
Adams County, Indiana, he there continued in the active
practice of his profession nine years, and during the
ensuing nine years he was engaged in practice at Rock-
port, judicial center of Atchison County, Missouri, where

he was associated in practice with his brother, the late
Dr. Elmore Y. Munsell. In 1886 he removed to Wichita,
Kansas, where he built up a substantial practice and jl
where he remained until the latter part of the year
1889, when he came to Indian Territory, and became f
one of the pioneer physicians in the Old Chickasaw
Nation. When, in 1891, the present Town of Chickasha j
was founded, he became one of its first settlers, and there
he maintained his professional headquarters two years.

In 1897 he located at the old Town of Hardesty, Beaver j
County, where he remained until 1900, when he estab-
lished his home at Beaver, the county seat, where he
has since continued in active practice and where, in
point of years, he holds prestige as the dean of his
profession in this county. • He has been an active prac-
titioner for forty years, has kept in touch with the
advances made in medical and surgical science, has
honored his profession by his character and efficient
services and is worthy of special consideration in this
history as being one of the pioneer physicians and •
surgeons of Oklahoma. The Doctor has served as coroner
and also as health officer jo£ Beaver County and has in
all things closely identified himself with community inter-
ests, as a broad-minded and progressive citizen. His
political allegiance is given to the republican party,
he has attained to the thirty-second degree in the
Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of the Masonic fra-
ternity, as an affiliate of the consistory in the City
of Guthrie, and is identified also with the Knights of
Pythias and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. He
holds membership in the Methodist Episcopal Church,
of which his wife was a lifelong and devoted adherent.

He is a member of the Oklahoma State Medical Society '
and the American Medical Association.

At Coldwater, his native town in Ohio, the 1st of
March, 1866, recorded the marriage of Doctor Munsell to
Miss Elizabeth J. Young, daughter of Philip and Mary
(Plummer) Young, who passed their entire lives in Ohio.

Mrs. Munsell was born July 7, 1841, and the supreme
loss and bereavement in the life of Doctor Munsell came
when his cherished and devoted wife was summoned to
eternal rest, at Fred, Oklahoma Territory, on the 2d of
July, 1891, just five days prior to her fiftieth birthday
anniversary. Of their seven children Paul and Fusia
died young; Dayton is engaged in the banking business
at El Reno, this state; Pearl E. is the wife of Thomas
B. Carey, of Dallas, Texas; William O. is a resident of
the City of Portland, Oregon; R. Netta is the wife of
E. V. Roe, who maintains his residence at Caldwell,
Kansas, and is in the railway postal service of the United
States; and Grace A. is the wife of Robert Osborne,
their home being now in the City of Detroit, Michigan.

W. M. Adelhelm:. A prosperous farmer citizen of the
Holdenville community, W. M. Adelhelm has lived there
for the past fifteen years, and has busied himself with
the care and cultivation of his Indian wife’s allotment,
comprising one of the fine farms of Hughes County.

His parents, Christian and Maggie (Reece) Adelhelm,
were of German ancestry and were born in France. They
first met and became acquainted while crossing the ocean
to America and were married in Pennsylvania, where
Christian Adelhelm for a time worked in the mines.

He afterwards became an early settler at Burlington,
Iowa, where his son, W. M. Adelhelm, was born July
15, 1863. The father died when this son was a small
boy and the mother died later at Murray, Iowa. Their
four children were : Rika, wife of Anton Schall of

Murray, Iowa ; W. M. ; Tina, wife of Thomas Gore of
Murray, Iowa; and Lizzie, who is married and lives
in Oklahoma City.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1999

By the early death of his father W. M. Adelhelm was
thrown upon his own resources and had only limited
advantages in the way of an education. When most of
his age were at home and in school he was accepting
every legitimate means of earning his own livelihood,
and constant industry has been the keynote of his
success.

Coming to the Creek Nation in 1901, Mr. Adelhelm
has lived on his present place near Holdenville since
his marriage. The farm comprises his wife’s allotment
of 160 acres, and in the last fifteen years it has been
improved in many ways and rendered highly valuable
as a stock farm. Mr. Adelhelm raises some registered
and high grade horses and a number of cattle. The
farm is 3% miles north of Holdenville.

On February 22, Washington’s birthday, 1902, Mr.
Adelhelm married Jennie Tuttle. She was born on the
farm where she now resides, a daughter of Chester and
Betsy Tuttle. Her father was a white man, while her
mother was a fullblood Creek. Both died in what is now
Hughes County. Mrs. Adelhelm by her first marriage
to John McCaslin had four children, namely : Mrs. Mary

Harris of Henryetta; Mrs. Nettie Palmer of Yeager,
Hughes County; Mrs. Myrtle Long of Seminole; and
Mrs. Jessie McBride of Henryetta. To the union of Mr.
and Mrs. Adelhelm have been born four children, named
Chester, Charles, Tina and Louis. The two older were
born in time to receive allotments of Indian lands, but
the two younger were not sharers in that distribution.
Mrs. Adelhelm is a member of the Free Will Baptist
Church and she was educated in the Tallahassee Mission.

Frederick Ehler. One of the leading business men
of Kingfisher County, Frederick Ehler has the distinc-
tion of being the only merchant now in business at
Hennessey who was here when the town was founded in
1889. While mercantile pursuits have claimed the major
part of his attention, he has been interested also in
other business, agricultural and financial enterprises,
and in • each direction has won well-earned success, in
addition to conducting himself at all times as a practical,
progressive, sound-minded and public-spirited citizen.

Mr. Ehler was born December 23, 1861, at West Alex-
andria, Ohio, and is a son of Harmon and Catherine
(Schreel) Ehler. His father was born in Germany, in
1833, and was twenty-one years of age when he accom-
panied his mother to the United States, settling at West
Alexandria, Ohio, whpre he continued to follow his trade
of merchant tailor until his death, in November, 1900.
He was married in 1858 to Catherine Schreel, a native
of Ohio, born December 7, 1840, and they became the
parents of four sons and two daughters, namely: Fred-
erick, of this notice; George, born in 1863, who died in
1914; Mary, born in 1865, and now the wife of George
Emerick, of Dayton, Ohio; Sallie, born in 1867, and now
the wife of Lewis Herget, of Hennessey, Oklahoma;
Joseph, born December 7, 1878; and Harry, born July 21,
1883.

Frederick Ehler received his education in the public
schools of West Alexandria, Ohio, where he was gradu-
ated from the high school with the class of 1880, follow-
ing which he enrolled as a student at the Ohio State
University, Columbus, being graduated from that insti-
tution in 1884, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts.
During the same year he went to Anderson, Indiana,
where he became manager of a drug store, continuing in
that capacity for six years and gaining much useful
experience. However, Mr. Ehler felt that he was not
advancing fast enough, and, believing that better oppor-
tunities awaited him in the West, he went to Kingman,
Kansas, and secured employment as teller in the Kingman
National Bank. This position Mr. Ehler held until 1889,
Vol. V— 16

in which year he became a resident of Hennessey, here
opening the first general store of the town. This was
started in a modest and unassuming manner, but grew
in strength and size with the growth and development
of the city, and is now the most important department
store in Kingfisher County, occupying a store 100 feet
deep and with 100 feet front. This establishment,
growing Out of the needs of the community, has reached
the proportions of a necessary commercial adjunct. Its
success is due to the efforts and integrity of its proprie-
tor, who has studied the wants of his patrons and
supplied them with the best goods obtainable and at
reasonable prices. He is also president of the Hennessey
State Bank, one of the strong financial institutions of
the county, is president of the Hennessey Electric Light
Company, and has large farm holdings in Kingfisher
County. In every possible way he has contributed to
the upbuilding of the town and to the advancement of
the general welfare. He has served as mayor of Hen-
nessey, an office in which he secured a number of local
improvements. Mr. Ehler is one of the best known
Masons in Oklahoma, having been elected to the K. C. C.
H. degree in 1905, and receiving the thirty-third honorary
degree at Washington, District of Columbia, in October,
1907. He was one of the founders of the Scottish Bite
Consistory of Oklahoma, organized at Guthrie, in 1900,
and is a member of Indian Temple, Ancient Accepted
Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, of Oklahoma City.

Mr. Ehler was married at Hennessey, July 26, 1907,
to Mrs. Annette B. Haskett, daughter of Joseph Black-
burn. She was born in 1863, at Lawrenceville, Illinois,
and after the death of her first husband, James Haskett,
came as a widow to Oklahoma, in 1900, becoming prin-
cipal of the Hennessey High School, a position which
she held for four years. At the time of her marriage to
Mr. Ehler she was acting in the capacity of editor of
the Press-Democrat. Mrs. Ehler is prominent as a lit-
erary woman of marked talent, being the author of a
book of poems entitled ‘ ‘ The Fire Fly, ’ ’ and of a booklet
relating to the early history of Hennessey and to the
massacre of Pat Hennessey by Indians, in 1872, on the
site where the town now stands and for whom it is
named. Mrs. Ehler is likewise well known in club and
fraternal circles, being chairman of the literary com-
mittee of the Oklahoma Women’s Federated Clubs, and
grand worthy matron for Oklahoma of the Order of the
Eastern Star, in which organization she has filled all
the chairs.

Ben F. Avant. The name of this prominent farmer
and cattle man of Osage County, who has conducted his
operations in that vicinity of Oklahoma for the past
twenty years, has a permanent memorial in the little
Town of Avant, which was established as a station along
the Midland Valley Railroad some years ago, and was
given his name. The townsite comprises a part of the
allotment of Mrs. Avant.

Through a period of more than thirty-five years Mr.
Avant has been closely identified with the great cattle
industry of the Southwest, both in Texas and in Okla-
homa. He was born in Gonzales, Texas, January 6, 1868,
a son of Abner and Letha (Elder) Avant. The Avant
family is descended from French stock. Both parents
were born in Tennessee, his father at Nashville, and they
spent most of their lives in Texas. Abner Avant was in
the Confederate army during the war, and the spring
before he enlisted he branded 500 head of calves, but
owing to the unsettled conditions and ravages resulting
from the war this stock was all scattered or killed, and
after his return from the army he had to begin his
ranching operations with only a nucleus of about ten
calves. Abner Avant spent all his career as a farmer

2000

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

and stock raiser, and lived in the vicinity of Gonzales
until his death in 1901 at the age of seventy-two. His
first wife and the mother of Ben Avant died when the
latter was nine years of age. She was the mother of
six children: Mamie, the wife of M. E. Lowry of Tisho-
mingo, Oklahoma; A. M., who lives at Marfa, Texas;
Ella, wife of John E. Laird of Wrightsboro, Texas ; R. F.,
of Dilley, Texas; Ben; and Eula, wife of Charles Lory of
Del Rio, Texas. The father married for his second wife
Mattie Davis, and the one child of that union is Wallace
M., now living at Jourdanton, Texas.

The early life of Ben Avant up to the year 1890 was
spent in the vicinity of Gomzales, Texas. He acquired
his education from local schools and has lived close to
the activities of ranch and range all his life. In 1890
he went to Atascosa County, in the country south of
San Antonio, and was employed as a cowboy. On June 1,
1892, he came into the Osage country with the cattle
firm of Gussett, Brooks & Company, and remained in
their employ until the fall of 1893. In 1894 he took the
firm’s herd of horses into Arkansas, where he sold them,
and went back to Texas. In 1895 Mr. Avant returned to
Osage County and has lived in this locality practically
ever since. He was connected with the Skinner Cattle
Company for a time, but in 1896 began independent
operations as a cattleman and farmer. Like most men
engaged in the business, met adversities, and several
times has ‘ ‘ gone broke, ’ ’ but has had the courage and
persistence to begin over again and for a number of
years has been prosperous and one of the substantial
business men of Osage County. His home has been at
Avant since 1895 with the exception of two years when
he and his family resided in Tulsa in order that the
children might have proper educational advantages. Mr.
Avant has 200 acres of farming land, also owns 1,800
acres of grazing land, and keeps under lease about 1,200
acres more. He and his family reside in a modern home
which was built in 1911 just outside the corporation
limits of Avant.

When the Midland Valley Railroad was built through
Osage County a posto£S.ce was established and given the
name of Avant, and as already stated, the townsite,
where is now located a flourishing village, was originally
a part of Mrs. Avant ’s allotment.

In 1895 Mr. Avant married Rosa Lee Rogers. She
was born in Osage County July 8, 1877, a daughter of
Lewis and Ellen (Ross) Rogers. Her mother is now
deceased and her father resides at Pawhuska. Mrs.
Avant ’s mother was a member of the Osage tribe, while
her father was of Cherokee birth and extraction, but
was adopted into the Osage tribe. Mr. and Mrs. Avant
have two children: Theodore, born March 22, 1898;

and Ethel, born February 16, 1901.

Adam Bert Fair, M. D. When the Kiowa and Co-
manche country was opened to settlement in 1901,
among the thousands of new comers, including profes-
sional men of all classes, there was perhaps no better
equipped physician who selected the new town of Lawton
as his home than Dr. Adam B. Fair, who a few years
later removed to Frederick, now in Tillman County, and
has since developed not only a large professional prac-
tice as a physician and surgeon, but has also made him-
self a factor in the varied social life and enterprise of
that community.

While Doctor Fair may be properly regarded as a
pioneer of Southwestern Oklahoma, earlier generations of
the same family earned similar distinctions in the ter-
ritory and State of Iowa. Doctor Fair was born at
Agency, Iowa, November 22, 1870. His father, E. D.
Fair, was born in Maryland February 15, 1846, and has
had his home at Agency almost continuously since he

was ten years of age. The grandfather, John Fair,
was a native of Pennsylvania, where the Fair family J
settled in colonial days on coming from Germany. John j
Fair was born about 1809, and after living in Pennsyl-
vania a number of years took his family out to the new
State of Iowa in 1856, and was one of the pioneer farmers I
in that locality, where he died at the age of eighty- [
three. E. D. Fair has been a bridge contractor, a manu-
facturer of iron bridges, and at one time operated a 5
factory at Ottumwa, not far from Agency. He is now
living retired in the latter city. The maiden name of
his wife was Sarah E. Giltner, who was born near Agency
in 1848. Her father, William Giltner, a native of
Indiana, moved out to Iowa Territory about 1840, and
was one of the first farmers in the vicinity of Agency.

He was a prominent factor in that section of Iowa, known
for his influential part in civil and political affairs, and
reared a large family, his descendants being now scat-
tered over that and other states. Doctor Fair was the
oldest of the six children born to E. D. and Sarah E.
Fair. His sister Loie is the wife of C. E. Adams, who is
a stockholder and employee in the J. W. Edgerly Whole-
sale Drug Company at Ottumwa, Iowa, where they reside; J
Amy married O. E. Slater, who lives in Fort Dodge, Iowa,
where he is an assistant railroad superintendent; Jessie
married Roy W. Johnston, an Ottumwa manufacturer,
and the son of A. W. Johnston, who invented the John-
ston Ruffler and other devices that have had an extensive
manufacture and sale; Pearl is the wife of Dr. Benjamin
Erb, a dentist at Anamosa, Iowa; William E., a resident
of Cheyenne, Wyoming, is assistant bank examiner in
Wyoming.

Adam Bert Fair grew up at Agency, attended the
public schools there, graduating from the high school in
1887, and soon afterward entered the University of Iowa.

In 1893 he was graduated Ph. B., having in the mean-
time pursued medical studies one year, and in 1895 was
graduated M. D. from the medical department of the
university. He took a prominent part in the student life
of the university, was a member of the Irving Institute,
a literary society, belonged to the University Band, was
active in Young Men’s Christian Association work, and
also interested in athletics. In the past twenty years
Doctor Fair has never abated his ambition for con-
tinued acquisition of scientific knowledge. He has taken
several courses at the Chicago policlinic and one post-
graduate course at the West Side Post-Graduate School
in Chicago, where he specialized in diseases of the eye,
ear, nose and throat.

His practice as a physician began at Danville, Iowa,
in 1895, and he had a profitable business when he left
there six years later. At the opening of the Southwest-
ern Oklahoma country in 1901 he came to Lawton, but
after three years in that city removed in 1904 to Fred-
erick. The occasion of his location in that town was
his appointment as health officer for what was then
Southwest Comanche County, which was then being
ravaged by an epidemic of smallpox. After strenuous
efforts he succeeded in getting the plague well under
control, and equal success has followed his efforts in
building up a large general medical and surgical prac- a

tice. He is a member of the County and State Medical fc

societies and the American Medical Association, and in i(I

1912 was honored with the position of vice president of |

the State Medical Society. He also served as censor of (jt

the Fifth District Society, comprising the counties of „„

Kiowa, Tillman, Comanche, Stephens, Jefferson, Greer ^

and Jackson. He has served as city health officer at |„

Frederick.

Doctor Fair is independent in polities, and in his home ^
church, the Methodist, has served as trustee and steward ^
since the society built it and was president of the build- Ug

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2001

, I ing committee. Doctor Pair is a stockholder in the Bank
j 1 of Commerce at Frederick and has always allied himself
with movements for local improvement. He was formerly
c | a member of the Business Men ’s Association at Frederick.
3 In Masonry he is a past master by service of Frederick
Lodge No. 249, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and
]. belongs to Frederick Chapter No. 41, Royal Arch Masons,
a and Frederick Commandery No. 19, Knight Templars, of
, which he is now recorder. Other affiliations are with the
Modern Woodmen of America, the Knights and Ladies of
v Security, the Royal "Neighbors, the Modern Brotherhood
of | of America, and he was formerly a member of the Inde-
pendent Order of Odd Fellows.
v On June 24, 1896, at Iowa City, Iowa, Doctor Fair
ra married Miss Clara R. Harvat, a graduate of the col-
nd legiate department of the State University of Iowa. She
it. died October 22, 1911, leaving three children: Claude,
he Helen, and Robert, all of whom are attending school at
£ Frederick. In September, 1912, Doctor Fair was mar-
jj ried at Frederick to Miss Alma Boyd, daughter of J.
)e. M. Boyd, now a resident of Oklahoma City. Mrs. Fair
|e. was for several years a 'clerk in the Frederick postoffiee,
vj and is talented in vocal and instrumental music.

Roscoe Rizley. Oklahoma is essentially a young and
vigorous commonwealth, and in its field of professional
and commercial activities, as well as in the domain of
productive industrial enterprise, there are found enlisted
a notably large number of progressive, energetic, able
and loyal young men of high civic ideals and sterling
attributes of character. Among such young men who
are doing their part in upbuilding the high standard of
the bar of the state Beaver County affords its due
quota, and a prominent and popular younger member
of the legal profession who has here found a desirable
stage for his activities is Roscoe Rizley, who is engaged
tte in active general practice at Beaver, the county seat.

Further interest attaches to his career by reason of the
ate, fact that he is a native of this county and a scion of
one of the sterling pioneer families of this section of the
itate.

Mr. Rizley can claim as the place of his nativity no
sumptuous domicile, for he was ushered into the world
n the little sod house, or dug-out, on the new homestead
laim of his father, on Clear Creek, Beaver County, where
le was born on the 5th of July, 1892. He takes just
oride in reverting to the fact that he is thus a true
epresentative of pioneer conditions in the state to which
le pays high appreciation and unfaltering fealty, and the
jassing years will but add historic interest to the story
ie can tell relative to the conditions that compassed him
it the time of his birth.

Mr. Rizley is a son of Robert M. and Belle (McCown)
itizley, and he doubly honors his parents for the courage
md determination which they manifested in enduring the
lardships and vicissitudes incidental to establishing a
tome in a new frontier country. His father was born
n Washington County, Arkansas, on the 16tli of Novem-
>er, 1861, at which time that state was the stage of
tiuch of the military conflict incidental to the early opera-
ions in the Civil war, his parents having removed from
Tennessee to that state in an early day. Robert M.
tizley was reared and educated in Arkansas, with such
dvantages as could be given to him by parents in very
loderate circumstances. In 1885, as a young man of
bout twenty-four years, he came to Indian Territory,
our years prior to the opening of the new Territory of
Iklahoma to settlement, and he made the neutral strip
:nown as No Man’s Land, in the' western part of the
erritory, his destination. On land twelve miles south of
he present thriving town of Beaver he located on a tract

of land and turned his attention to farming and stock
growing, the land duly coming into his possession and
his title being perfected after the organization of Okla-
homa Territory, in 1890. He has developed one of the
well improved and valuable farms of Beaver County and
still resides on his homestead, which is devoted to diversi-
fied agriculture and to the raising of live stock. He is
a republican in politics and has been active and influen-
tial in public affairs in Beaver County, as shown by the
fact that four years of effective service were given by him
as a member of the board of county commissioners. His
marriage to Miss Belle McCown was solemnized in the
year 1882, his wife having been born in Illinois, in 1864,
and her death having occurred June 8, 1902, in a hospital
in Kansas City, Missouri, where she had been taken for
treatment. She had been a devoted wife and mother,
was a woman of abiding Christian faith and practice,
and she had the warm esteem of all who came within the
sphere of her influence. Of the three children the
subject of this review was the second in order of birth
and is the only son; Alta, who was born on the pioneer
homestead in Beaver County, January 27, 1887, is the
wife of Oscar Gardner, a farmer of Beaver County, to
whom she was united in wedlock on the 20th of January,
1908, their two children being Velma and Bernard; the
younger daughter, Verne Elizabeth, born August 13,
1896, remains with her father on the old homestead.

After having availed himself fully of the advaiitages
of the public schools of Beaver County, Roscoe Rizley
gained through his own well directed efforts and industry
the financial reinforcement which made possible the
attainment of his ambition. Through his own resources
he defrayed the entire expense incidental to the prosecu-
tion of a full course in the Kansas City School of Law,
where he applied himself with characteristic diligence
and with that deeper appreciation that ever comes when
desired objects have been gained through personal effort.
In this institution he was graduated on the 7th of June,
1915, and after receiving his degree of Bachelor of Laws
he immediately returned to his native county, where he
was forthwith admitted to the Oklahoma bar and has
since been in active and successful general practice at
Beaver. He has already won his spurs and proved himself
a careful and resourceful trial lawyer and well fortified
counselor, so that his continued advancement in his pro-
fession is fully assured. Mr. Rizley subordinates all
else to the work of his profession, but takes a lively
interest in community affairs of a public nature, the
while he is found arrayed as a staunch and effective advo-
cate of the principles of the republican party, in the
faith of which he was reared.

Robert H. Richardson. Almost universal is a natural
inclination toward some one line of effort, and in the
lives of many individuals this becomes so compelling an
impulse that it must be followed, thereby bringing in-
ward satisfaction and contented existence. Other talents
may bring success in a practical way, but no man feels
entirely free until he can pursue the path that nature
indicates. Thus, for a time, the law, civil engineering
and honorable public service absorbed the time and
attention of Robert H. Richardson, the present able
editor of the Democrat at Erick, Oklahoma, but jour-
nalism was his secret ambition and the printing office
training a coveted stepping-stone. He has shown him-
self a man of versatility and in the profession that now
claims him he has displayed conspicuous ability.

Robert H. Richardson was born in Jackson County,
Florida, December 18, 1869, and is a son of H. H. and
Martha A. (Easterling) Richardson. The maternal an-
cestry may be traced to Scotland, but the Richardsons

2002

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

came to America from England and for many generations
have left an impress on the best citizenship of many
states of the Union.

H. H. Richardson was born in 1826, in Georgia, and
died in 1871, at Campbelltown, Florida. Following his
marriage to Martha A. Easterling, who was born at
Social Center, Georgia, in 1834, he moved to Jackson
County, Florida, where he engaged in farming and
raising stock during the rest of his life. For many years
he was identified with the Masonic fraternity. Of his
children but three reached maturity, James N., Elizabeth
B. and Robert H., the last named being the only survivor.
The mother of the above family died in 1890, at Bir-
mingham, Alabama.

Robert H. Richardson attended the public schools and
in 1886 was graduated from the high school of Marianna,
Florida, following which he applied himself to the study
of law for eight months at Montgomery, Alabama, in the
meanwhile giving attention to the study of civil engineer-
ing and making practical use of his knowledge along
this line in Alabama, Texas and Iowa, until 1890, with-
out determining to make this profession a life career.
On the other hand circumstances so arranged his life
that in that year he was able to enter a printing office at
Cerrillos, New Mexico, and after becoming proficient in
this trade he followed the same over New Mexico, Texas,
Colorado and California. In 1898 he went into business
for himself at Breckenridge, California, where he edited
the Breckenridge Bulletin for one year.

In 1901 Mr. Richardson enlisted in the United States
army and with his regiment went to' the Phillipine
Islands, serving three years, being attached to the
adjutant-general’s department. During this time his
newspaper talent only slept and shortly after his return,
in 1904, he became connected with a newspaper at Jack-
son, California, remaining there six months, and after-
ward, until 1907, worked on other papers in that state,
and during two subsequent years worked on Texas papers,
in 1909 buying the Kemp News, which journal he edited
with vigor and ability for three years. In 1912 Mr.
Richardson removed to Sweetwater, Texas, where he again
invested, purchasing a one-third interest in the Sweet-
water Reporter, which he retained for five months and
then disposed of it and moved to Kaufman and for one
year was associated there with the Kaufman Daily and
Weekly Post.

Mr. Richardson then became interested elsewhere, con-
ducting a newspaper at Winona, Texas, for six months,
and for the same length of time, the Times at Chandler,
Texas. In 1914 he came to Oklahoma and was connected
with the Leader at Ryan until April 1, 1915, when he
leased the Democrat at Erick and has had charge of all
departments of the paper ever since. Democratic in
politics, it has been established for eleven years, during
which time its fortunes have fluctuated as have those
of many other publications, but under Mr. Richardson’s
control and editing it has made rapid strides forward
in public popularity and circulates all over Beckham
County and also has a list of outside subscribers. Mr.
Richardson recognizes the fact that he is conducting a
modern newspaper, and realizing from a wide experience
that the general intelligence of the present day demands
much of a newspaper, it often being the single intel-
lectual resource at hand, leaves no stone unturned to
satisfy his readers.

In Jauary, 1909, Mr. Richardson was married, at
Neches, Texas, to Miss Bertha E. Conerly, who is a
daughter of O. F. Conerly. Mr. Conerly owns a valuable
farm in Anderson County, Texas, but makes his home
with Mr. and Mrs. Richardson. They have four children :
Robert H., who was born January 26, 1910; Elizabeth,
who was born May 20, 1911 ; Owen Lester, who was born

September 11, 1913 ; and Wilson Ewing, who was born
in March, 1915. Mr. Richardson and family are members
of the Methodist Episcopal Church and he is superin-
tendent of the Sunday-school.

Always a democrat in his political views, he has done
yeoman work for his party in his newspapers, his trench- ||
ant pen loyally assisting his party’s candidates. At the ]|
same time his editorial ability is exercised in other (I
directions than political, and his advocacy of civic re-
forms, his calling attention to worthy charities and his
appeals for educational and religious progress for the
city have met with general approval. Fraternally Mr.
Richardson is both a Knight of Pythias and an Odd ij
Fellow. He is a member, in the former organization, j
of Kemp Lodge, of Kemp, Texas, of which he has
served two terms as chancellor commander; and as an 1
Odd Fellow belongs to the lodge at Erick and is past i
noble grand of the lodges at Kaufman and Chandler, <•
Texas. He longs also to the Praetorians.

Phineas F. Wright. The vital spirit that has ani-
mated those who have pushed forward the march of
development and progress in America from the early 1
colonial era through the stages that have marked the !■'
advance of civilization as the star of empire has led
its westward course, has been distinctly shown in the
character and achievement of Phineas Finch Wright, ,
who became a settler of Oklahoma Territory in the yean 1
that the first section of the former Indian Territory.!
was thrown open to white settlement and who has done 1
well his part in connection with the marvelous civic5 I
and material development and upbuilding of a great and
prosperous commonwealth. That he proved well 1 1

equipped for such pioneer activities is specially interest- J|
ing to note in view of the fact that he was reared under -
pioneer influences, his parents having established their |
home in the wilds of Wisconsin when that state was
still under territorial government. Mr. Wright, who
has but recently compassed the psalmist’s span of three
score years and ten, is senior member of the representa-
tive firm of P. F. Wright & Son, engaged in the hard-
ware and agricultural implement business in the Village
of Wakita, Grant County, and his valued co-adjutor in
the control of the substantial and prosperous enterprise !i
is his elder son, Fred C., who is an alert and progressive
business man.

Mr. Wright was born at Potosi, Grant County, Wis-
consin, on the 1st of April, 1845, and not until three
years later was Wisconsin admitted as one of the 1
sovereign states of the Union. He is a son of Phineas
and Amanda (Finch) Wright, the former of whom was
born in the State of New York and the latter in the
Province of Ontario, Canada. The father of Mr. Wrightit
became one of the influential pioneer settlers of Grant II
County, Wisconsin, where he obtained land and reclaimed
the same to cultivation, besides which he identified him!
self also with other important lines of enterprise that I
tended to foster the development and prosperity of I
the community. He owned and operated a flour mill I
and was also concerned to a considerable extent with
the lumber industry of Wisconsin in the pioneer days;
both he and his wife having continued their residence^
in the Badger State until their death.

Phineas F. Wright, the immediate subject of this re-
view, attended the common schools of his native county! )
until he had attained to the age of fourteen years, and
he early began to assist in the work of his father’s flour !
mill. The great lumber industry was then at its height'1
in Wisconsin and young Wright soon became identified.'
with work in the timber forests and the operation of
sawmills, with which line of enterprise he continued his
association until he had attained to the age of twenty*'

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2003

six years. Thereafter he was for a few years engaged
in the general merchandise business at Whitehall, Trem-
pealeau County, Wisconsin, and while a resident of that
place he became active and influential in local politics
and served two years as sheriff of the county, his
allegiance having been given unreservedly to the repub-
lican party, to the cause of which he has given his stanch
support during the long intervening years.

In 1881 Mr. Wright removed with his family to Win-
field, Cowley County, Kansas, where he continued to be
engaged in the mercantile business until 1885, when, he
became one of the founders of the Town of Bluff City,
Harper County, that state, where he established himself
in the general merchandise business and where he re-
mained thus engaged until 1889, when he became one
of those progressive and ambitious men who took advan-
tage of the opening of Oklahoma Territory to settlement,
the formal organization of the territory having occurred
in the following year. Mr. Wright was one of those who
‘ 1 made the run ’ ’ with the great throng that pushed for-
ward into the new territory to enter claims for land on
the memorable 22d of April, 1889, and he obtained a
homestead claim 10% miles southeast of Hennessey, in
what is now Kingfisher County. He reclaimed and im-
proved this land, perfected his title to the same, and
after the lapse of two years he made an advantageous
sale of the property. He then returned to Bluff City,
Kansas, where he continued to be engaged in the hard-
ware business until 1895, when he came again to Okla-
homa Territory and became one of the pioneer settlers
of the new Town of Wakita, Grant County. He erected
the second business building in the town and became
one of the first merchants of the place, so that all of
pioneer honors are his in connection with this now
thriving and progressive village, which is the trading
center for an extensive district of an important and
prosperous farming community.

Mr. Wright has from the beginning been one of the
most influential and honored citizens of Wakita, and his
hold upon popular confidence and esteem is shown by
the fact that he served for a long period as a member
of the village council and thereafter gave a number of
years to specially effective service in the office of mayor
of the town. He has been liberal and public-spirited in
giving his co-operation for the furtherance of all meas-
ures and enterprises that have tended to advance the
social and material progress and prosperity of the village
and county, and through his well ordered activities as a
business man he has achieved substantial success. Dur-
ing virtually the entire period of his residence at Wakita
Mr. Wright has here been actively engaged in the hard-
ware and agricultural implement business, and in asso-
ciation with his older son he controls a trade that extends
throughout the wide area of country normally tributary
to Wakita.

In 1873 Mr. Wright wedded Miss Lottie Brush, who
was born in Wisconsin, in the year 1855, a daughter of
Benjamin and Mary Brush. Mrs. Wright was sum-
moned to the life eternal, and is survived by two children,
Florence and Fred C. Florence, who was born April
29, 1875, is now the wife of Dr. Charles W. Middleton,
and they have one child, Jack Wright Middleton, who
was born December 20, 191(1,

Fred C. Wright was born at Whitehall, Trempealeau
County, Wisconsin, on the 7th of November, ,1878, and
acquired his early education in the schools of Kansas,
after which he completed a thorough course in a business
university at St. Joseph, Missouri, in which institution
he was graduated as a member of the class of 1895. As
already noted, he is now junior member of the firm of
P. F. Wright & Son, of Wakita, and in addition to
being thus concerned with the hardware and implement

business he is also the owner of the Wakita electric
light plant, of which he has had control since 1913 and
which he maintains at a high standard of efficiency.
On the 12th of January, 1912, he married Miss Cora
Palmer, of Lyndon, Osage County, Kansas, she being
a young woman of exceptional talent and gracious per-
sonality. Mrs. Wright completed her musical education
in the City of Berlin, Germany, and has fine ability as
a pianist and vocalist. She is a daughter of Thomas
J. Palmer, concerning whom specific mention is made on
other pages of this work. Mr. and Mrs. Wright have
two children — Lois Janet, who was born May 4, 1913,
and Robert Hardy, who was born February 3, 1915.

The second marriage of Phineas P. Wright was
solemnized at Anthony, Kansas, on the 23d of November,
1897, when Miss Kate Lewis became his wife. Mrs.
Wright was born in the State of Ohio, on the 18th of
May, 1874, and in the same state were born her parents,
Elisha and Rachael (Chamberlain) Lewis, who removed
to Kansas when she was a girl. Mr. and Mrs. Wright
have three children — Ollie E., who was born March 27,
1899; Lewis Wayne, who was born August 30, 1901; and
Geneva Ruth, who was born July 16, 1911.

Henry Schmale. One of Pawnee County ’s most
sterling, upright and honored citizens was the late Henry
Schmale, who had lived in Oklahoma since 1893 and had
gained a large amount of material prosperity and the
esteem of hundreds of friends and business associates
before death took him on May 12, 1916.

During his residence in Oklahoma he was primarily a
farmer. In that occupation he showed the characteristic
German industry, enterprise and good judgment. He
had a long and active career, served as a young man
in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, but after coming
to America more than forty years ago became one of
the country’s most loyal citizens, and was first and last
devoted to the land of his adoption.

He was born in Hessen-Darmstadt, Germany, August
27, 1845, and was therefore in his seventy-first year
when he died. His parents Henrieus and Mary ( Weifen-
bach) Schmale spent all their lives in Germany. On both,
sides the respective families had been German farmers-
for many generation^. Henrieus Schmale was one of
the substantial tillers of the soil in Hessen-Darmstadt,
now known as the Grand Duchy of Hesse.

The oldest of five children, the late Henry Schmale
was the only one to come to America. His elder sister,
Mrs. Maria Deling, is still living near the old German
homestead, the wife of a prosperous farmer. The younger
sister, Mrs. Sophia Stein, is also the wife of a German
farmer. The son George resides upon the old farm and
occupies the house in which the children were born
and reared. Fred was a farmer in that district until
his death.

The late Henry Schmale spent his first twenty-eight
years on the old homestead with his parents. He at-
tended the excellent schools of his native land up to the
age of fourteen and as a youth served an apprenticeship
at the trade of shoemaker in the City of Darmstadt. He
became a skilled workman. In the meantime he was also-
called upon to serve his country in accordance with the
laws of the Fatherland, and it was to his honor that he
served faithfully and well in the German army during
the Franco-Prussian war.

Mr. Schmale came to the United States in 1873. He
soon went west and remained -a few months in Muscatine,
Iowa, but in June, 1874, returned to New York City.
There he found employment as a journeyman at his
trade for about five years. Industry was the keynote to
his success in life, and he was pre-eminently a man of
action, willing to get success only as a result of personal

2004

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

ability and well directed endeavor. He possessed a
strong intellect and broad views and it is noteworthy that
as a boy engaged in learning his trade he attended a
medical school three years, taking up the study of this
science chiefly during the evening hours.

Mr. Schmale was married in 1877 and as a bridal trip
returned to Germany. They remained in that country a
little more than a year, and on coming back to the
Unitfed States Mr. Schmale established a shoe store on
Pulton Street in the City of Brooklyn. Starting with a
modest capital, he soon had a trade, and made a specialty
of fine custom work in the manufacture of boots and
shoes. He was one of Brooklyn’s merchants until the
late ’80s. He then moved to the City of Chicago and
established a shoe store on the west side of that city.
He was in the shoe business until the spring of 1893.

At the opening of the Cherokee strip or outlet in
September, 1893, Mr. Schmale made the run into the
new territory and made his destination the present Town
of P.erry in Noble County. He did not enter a claim,
but on the 23d of November the same year filed a claim
to his homestead in Pawnee County. He at once settled
down to the hard and practical life of a homesteader
and in clearing up his land he found a great many Indian
relics and assembled a very interesting collection of such.

In the course of years Mr. Schmale developed one of
the model rural estates of Pawnee County. He endured
in the meanwhile the responsibilities and burdens which
fell to the lot of the pioneer, and it was well for him
that he had a trade and could make use of it in providing
for himself and family during the early years of stress
and comparative poverty. The first two years he spent
on his claim, he walked to and from his house to the
City of Jennings, 3 % miles away, and made boots and
shoes and repaired them in order to earn a living for
his household. It is said that he arose at 4 o’clock in
the morning, spent several hours working on his land,
and then walked to the village and applied himself
steadily to the work of his trade oftentimes until late in
the evening. To such men success comes as a natural re-
sult and as a richly merited reward. Smiling prosperity
crowned the efforts of Mr. Schmale long before his death.

Before his death he had about fifty acres of his land
under cultivation, and all his farm under lease for oil
development purposes. Hence he was in independent
circumstances and was well able to retire, though his
active spirit did not allow him to forego work altogether,
and he spent much time in supervising his farm. For
some years he had been a successful grower of Percheron
draft horses, had sold a number of fine animals of that
type, and a short time before his death owned a herd
of about ten head. He also raised a number of mules
on his farm. Another feature of his farm was dairying,
and he kept for that purpose a herd of Jersey cattle.
He was also known in Pawnee County as a successful
poultryman, and for several years he had made a specialty
of raising chickens and selling eggs. Each season he
had two modern incubators employed for hatching.

After taking out his naturalization papers, Mr. Schmale
began voting with the democratic party. After the
campaign of 1876 he became a republican, but finally
gravitated back into the ranks of the democratic, party
and to that gave his allegiance the rest of his days.
While never a seeker for political office, he was several
times o-iven local offices of public trust and was a man
who could be depended upon in every such position.
Both he and his wife were members of the Lutheran
Church.

In New York City in 1877 he married Miss Annie
Eeckert. Mrs. Schmale was born in Westphalia, Germany,
June 22, 1856, and died at her home in Pawnee County,

October 16, 1915, thus preceding her husband to the
beyond about six months. She had come alone to the jj
United States at the age of nineteen and found em- fl
ployment in New York City until her marriage. She I
was a devoted wife and mother, and was a loyal and -f
effective aid to Mr. Schmale in his successful career. |
She was christened in the Lutheran Church as an infant
and was confirmed at the age of fourteen.

The late Mr. and Mrs. Henry Schmale had five chil-
dren. The oldest, Fred, died at Guthrie, Oklahoma, at
the age of sixteen. The daughter Marie is the wife of
Henry Eapp, and they reside at DeQueen, Sevier County,
Arkansas. Henry Jr. now has the active supervision of
the home farm and also leases an adjoining farm. The
younger children, Frieda and Martha, are still at home
and in school.

F. E. Thurman was one of the alert and enterprising
young men who were attracted to the southwestern i
oil fields at the beginning of exploration and ex-
ploitation, and for ten years has been a resident of
Bartlesville. Formerly in the oil business, he now gives
most of his attention to the insurance, surety bond
and loan firm of Mcllheny & Thurman. In insurance i
circles he is one of the most prominent men in Okla- •
homa, and has been officially identified with several I
organizations covering the activities of that business.

F. E. Thurman was born at West Union, Ohio, March i
9, 1872, a son of J. M. and Mary Elizabeth (McCormick)
Thurman, both natives of Ohio. His father died October i
4, 1915, in West Union, while the mother died when F. ,
E. Thurman was seven years old. J. M. Thurman has
for the greater part of his active career been a banker:
at West Union and also for a long time has served as
treasurer of Adams County. F. E. Thurman is the only
survivor of two children, his brother William having died)
at the age of thirty-eight.

During the seventeen years that he lived at home he
gained a substantial public school education, and hiss
career was early directed to business affairs. His first:
practical experience was in the Cincinnati branch office.'
of the Dun’s Mercantile Agency, and he was soon after-
wards sent out as traveling representative, spending Severn:
years with that firm. At the beginning of the oil excite-
ment he came to Neodesha, Kansas, and for two years-
was connected with the Prairie Oil & Gas Company in the'
producing department. Then for five years he was con-
nected with the Barnsdall Oil Company, after which)
he entered business for himself in the general insurance,
surety bond and loan field. This has been his principal
activity since December, 1912.

Mr. Thurman is secretary of the People’s Savings &S
Loan Association, and has held that office since the organ-
ization of the association. He is also president of thei
State Association of Local Fire Insurance Agents and
president of the Local Fire Prevention Association. Since:
May, 1909, he has served as clerk of the board of educa-i
tion at Bartlesville, and can always be found among:
those working for the welfare of the city and state. Hisi
Masonic connections include the Blue Lodge of which he-
is a past master, the thirty-second degree consistory, the:
Mystic Shrine and the Eastern Star. He is also a mem-i
ber of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
During the Spanish- American war he was in the Fourthl
Ohio Infantry as corporal, and saw some active cam-i
paigning in Porto Eico. During that experience he
acted as correspondent for the Portsmouth Daily Blade
On October 31, 1904, Mr. Thurman married Miss Lucilel
Elizabeth Calvert, who was born in Kentucky and is s
daughter of Isaac Calvert.

Sis:

fl,

fo:

cai

no:

tee

Mi
ran
rat
j for
r to
|he
the
fb
I

F„
eng:
to 1
Clivei
mar
tie
■Gov
He
and
that
, was
all

I H
field
■Okie
(Pn
Mrs,
Scho
'■ nois
was
work
of c
addi
iofh
nine
state
ini
null
[in 8
•was
a te
first
toiy

pis,
at tl

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2005

Charles French Twyford. Now serving as county
attorney of Beaver County, Mr. Twyford has been known
in different sections of Oklahoma both as a newspaper
man and as a lawyer. He has made a splendid record
both in his private practice and in the administration
of his official duties since locating at Beaver. It is a
matter of interest that Mrs. Twyford, his wife, is a
graduate physician. The Twyford family has had many
interesting associations with Oklahoma affairs ever since
the year of the original opening. His father was one of
Oklahoma’s Eighty-Niners, while his mother has long
been distinguished as having taught the first regular
public school in Oklahoma Territory, and for her varied
achievements and influence in both educational and mis-
sionary fields.

It was on a cotton plantation in Pontotoc County, Mis-
sissippi, that Charles French Twyford was born, December
1, 1875, a son of Samuel B. and Lucy E. (French) Twy-
ford. His father was born April 1, 1843, at Terre Haute,
Indiana, a son of Charles C. and Lucy (Belt) Twyford,
who were natives of the State of Delaware and of Scotch
ancestry. Samuel B. Twyford had a varied and active
career. In early years he was a railroad man. At the out-
break of the Civil war he was living at Champaign, Illi-
nois, and there enlisted with the Eleventh Illinois Volun-
teer Cavalry. After serving three months with that
regiment he was transferred to Company M of the Fifth
Missouri Cavalry, and was given scout duty with the
rank and pay of a captain. He remained in active service
until the close of the war. He then lived in Illinois
for a few years, but in 1872 with an ox team wagon he
drove from Illinois to Marion County, Kansas. There
he was a grade contractor during the construction of
the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe . Railroad through
that part of Kansas.

In 1873, two years before the birth of his son, Charles
F., he removed to Pontotoc County, Mississippi, and
engaged in cotton planting there until 1879. Returning
to Kansas he resumed farming in Marion County, and
lived in that state until 1889. In that year, which
marked the opening of Oklahoma Territory, he joined in
the rush, and was fortunate in locating a good tract of
Government land near the present Town of Edmond.
He was one of the best types of early Oklahoma settlers
and was a progressive farmer and respected citizen of
that locality until his death on March 28, 1898. He
was an active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church
all his life.

His wife, Lucy E. French, whom he married at Green-
field, Illinois, December 1, 1874, was born, at Hamilton,
Ohio, March 17, 1844, a daughter of John and Jane
(French) French, who were natives of Hastings, England.
Mrs. Twyford is a graduate of the Illinois State Normal
School at Bloomington and took special work in the Illi-
nois State University at Champaign. For five years she
was a teacher in St. Louis and later did missionary
work for ten years in Mississippi, organizing a number
of churches and also conducting schools. In 1879, in
addition to the burdens of her household and the care
of her children, she began teaching in Kansas, and for
nine years conducted schools at different points in that
state. Soon after coming to Oklahoma with her family,
in 1889, she organized and directed as teacher the first
public school opened in the territory. The session began
in September following the opening in April, and that
was Edmond’s first public school. It was conducted for
a term of nine months, and this school graduated the
first eighth grade class graduated in Oklahoma Terri-
tory or Oklahoma State. This class, all of whom were
girls, and eleven in number, made up the first enrollment
at the Central State Normal of Edmond. During the

First Territorial Legislature Mrs. Twyford was one of the
committee of five named by the governor to draft school
laws and apportion school districts. In 1891 she took
up church work under the auspices of the Congregational
Church, and was engaged in organizing and building
churches up to 1901. In the year that she retired from
active responsibilities she had completed more than
thirty years of active service in behalf of schools and
religion. While in Oklahoma she was the prime factor
in the erection of five rural churches in the vicinity of
Edmond. She was regularly ordained to the ministry
in 1891, and filled the pulpit in each of the churches which
she organized. Since she retired in 1901 she has been
regarded as one of the most useful women Oklahoma
ever had. She now lives at 1015 North Kelly Street
in Oklahoma City. To her marriage with Mr. Twyford
were born five children: Charles French; Mary A., born
August 5, 1877 ; Ethel, born June 20, 1879, and died in
infancy; Theresa, born June 17, 1881; and James S.,
born June 5, 1882.

The atmosphere of culture and good ideals, every incen-
tive to a life of integrity and honorable activity, were
afforded Charles F. Twyford from childhood up. He
obtained his education at the Central State Normal in
Edmond and at Kingfisher College. He paid his way
while in college by work as a printer, a trade which
afforded him his livelihood for a number of years. Sub-
sequently he became one of the editors and publishers
of the Oklahoma Labor Signal and the Oklahoma Farmer.
In 1903 he established the News at Bridgeport, con-
ducted it twelve months, and then went to Topeka,
Kansas, where he was employed at his trade as printer
three years.

In 1909 Mr. Twyford entered the Epworth University
School of Law at Oklahoma City, remained in attendance
three years, and was admitted to practice June 12, 1911.
In 1913 he located at Beaver, and has already secured
a satisfying share of practice and his thorough qualifica-
tions were the basis for his successful candidacy as repub-
lican nominee for the office of county attorney of Beaver
County in 1914. Fraternally he is a member of the Alva
Lodge of Elks.

On September 17, 1913, at El Dorado, Oklahoma, Mr.
Twyford married Miss May Drew, daughter of William
H. and Ethelda (Wilson) Drew, who were natives of the
State of Michigan. Mrs. Doctor Twyford was born in
Greer County, Oklahoma, September 15, 1892, was edu-
cated at Fort Worth, Texas, in the university there, and
with the class of 1913 graduated from the medical depart-
ment of the University of Oklahoma and was awarded
the degree Doctor of Medicine.

Clifford G. Miller. Having won a place among the
progressive newspaper men of Western Oklahoma solely
through the medium of his own efforts, Clifford G.
Miller is eminently entitled to the confidence and esteem
of his fellow men which he enjoys. Like the greater
number of newspaper men in this part of the state,
he has worked his way to the top from the most humble
position, having commenced his career as a pressman’s
apprentice and being at this time proprietor and editor
of a publication which has its acknowledged place among
the journals of Beckham County — the Elk City Leader.

Mr. Miller belongs to a family which originated in
France, and the American progenitor of which was his
great-grandfather, David H. Miller, who was a pioneer
of Missouri and homesteaded land on the present site
of the City of St. Joseph. His son, Jonas Miller, was
born on the Missouri farm, residing, there until the period
of the Civil war, when he went to Texas and became a
pioneer of Grayson County, where he owned a gristmill

2006

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

and also followed the trade of blacksmith and wheel-
wright. Later he moved to Carroll County, Missouri,
and there his death occurred about the year 1908, when
he was sixty-one years of age.

J. W. Miller, son of Jonas Miller, and father of Clif-
ford G. Miller, was born December 3, 1859, in Grayson
County, Texas, and in 1865 was taken to Carroll County,
Missouri, where he passed many years in agricultural
pursuits. In 1898 he went to Buchanan County, Mis-
souri, where he continued his farming and stock-raising
operations until 1906, since which time he has been a
resident of Elk City/ employed in the construction de-
partment of a railroad. He is a member of the Inde-
pendent Order of Odd Fellows at Elk City. Mr. Miller
was married in 1883 to Miss Hattie E. Teter, of Dewitt,
Carroll County, Missouri, who was born in that county
in 1863. Four children have been born to this union:
Clifford G.; Russell W., who is a general workman and
resides at Elk City; and Jenevieve and Joe W., who
reside with their parents.

Clifford G. Miller attended the public schools of Car-
roll County, Missouri, being graduated from the high
school at Saxton Station, Buchanan County, in the class
of 1904. In 1905 he attended Hill’s Business College
at St. Joseph, Missouri, but in the meantime, in the
fall of 1903, had entered upon his business career as
an employe in the general offices of the Burlington Rail-
road at St. Joseph, remaining there for about two years.
Mr. Miller received his introduction to the printing busi-
ness as an employe of the Combe Printing Company at
St. Joseph, where he acted as pressman’s apprentice from
1905 until October, 1906, when he came to Elk City,
Oklahoma. He first worked at various jobs, accepting
such honorable employment as came his way until he
could gain a foothold, and in the spring of 1909 joined
the Sayre Headlight, with which he was connected only
for a short time. Later he was with the George Winn
Printing Company until October 1, 1909, and then with
J. W. McMurtry, printer, for two months, and December
3, 1909, went to Clinton, where he helped George Rhine-
hart start the Clinton Times. From Clinton Mr. Miller
went to Arapaho, where for two years and two months
he was connected with the Arapaho Bee, with J. W.
Wagner, editor, and in November, 1914, returned to Elk
City. Here, December 28, 1914, he bought a one-half
interest in the Elk City Leader, and published the first
edition January 7, 1915. Nine days after its appear-
ance G. F. Stayton bought the other one-half interest, and
the partners continued the publication of this sheet until
August 3, 1915, when they sold out. On the 30th, how-
ever, Mr. Miller was given the opportunity of buying the
paper again, and, the deal being consummated, he has
continued to publish the Leader to the present time.
The paper is independent in politics and circulates in
Beckham and the surrounding counties, already having
a respectable foreign list. The plant is situated on
Jefferson Street and is modernly equipped for the pub-
lication of a neat, clear and attractive newspaper. The
Leader has proven an excellent advertising medium, and
under Mr. Miller’s able management is daily growing in
public favor and confidence.

Mr. Miller was married April 16, 1911, at Arapaho,
Oklahoma, to Miss Dovie M. Miller, daughter of G. W.
Miller, an extensive farm and ranch owner of Custer
County, Oklahoma. They have no children.

Robert N. Thomas. A member of the banking fra-
ternity of Blaine County who has gained a substantial
position in the confidence of the people of his community
is Robert N. Thomas, cashier of the Greenfield State
Bank of Greenfield, who became connected with this
institution in 1909 as bookeeper and after three months

was promoted to his present capacity. Mr. Thomas be-
longs to the young and enthusiastic element which has
been mainly instrumental in the development of the
town, and has been a leading factor in educational
affairs here, having been an instructor before entering
upon his career as a banker.

Robert N. Thomas was born at Osage City, Osage
County, Kansas, September 18, 1884, and is a son of
Jesse and Hattie (Jones) Thomas, and a member of a
family that, originating in Wales, emigrated to this
country at an early day and became pioneers of Mis-
souri. His father was born in 1833, near Springfield,
Clark County, Ohio, and from his native state re-
moved to Detroit, Dickinson County, Kansas, where
he was married. After some years passed in agricultural
pursuits there he removed to Osage City, Kansas, in
1882, and continued as a farmer and stock raiser until
1892, then coming to Oklahoma and taking up a home-
stead of 160 acres, 3% miles northeast of Greenfield, in
Blaine County, which still belongs to his estate, and on
which he died in 1910. Mr. Thomas was a stanch demo-
crat and good citizen, and was fraternally connected
with the Masons. Mrs. Thomas was born in Wales in
1855, and when fourteen years of age came to this
country with her parents, the family settling near De-
troit, Kansas. She still survives and makes her home at
Stillwater, Oklahoma. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas became the
parents of seven children: Mary, who is the wife of

Harry Ellenwood, of Williamstown, Vermont, formerly a
contractor, but now an agriculturist; Alice, who is the
wife of C. C. Walker, a farmer near Greenfield; Jesse
R., a graduate of Stillwater (Oklahoma) Agricultural
College, class of 1915, and now a demonstrator for that
institution, with his residence at Medford, Oklahoma;
Robert N. ; John J., who died at Greenfield, aged seven-
teen years; Olive Branch, a senior at the Agricultural
and Mechanical College, Stillwater; and Martha O., a
member of the sophomore class at the same college.

The early education of Robert N. Thomas was secured
in the public schools of Greenfield, following which he
took a course in the Central Normal School, Edmond,
Oklahoma. In 1908 he came to Greenfield as principal
of the public school, but after one year gave up teaching
to engage in banking, entering the Greenfield State
Bank as bookkeeper. His abilities soon recognized, after
three months he was made cashier of this institution,
a position which he has retained to the present time, the
other officials being: George M. Matlock, president;

and E. G. Demunbrun, vice president. This bank was
founded in 1909 as a state institution by I. E. Hem-
mingway and has grown steadily since its inception,
being regarded as one of the safe and reliable concerns
of Blaine County, managed in a conservative way by men
whose fortunes and reputations are wrapped up in its
success. It has a capital of $10,000, with a surplus of
$5,000, and owns its own handsome bank building on
Main Street, which was erected in 1906. It is a recog-
nized factor in the business life of the community and is
well patronized by the thrifty people of the county.

Mr. Thomas is a republican, but his activities in a
political way are limited to an effort to secure good men
and beneficial measures for his community. He is fra-
ternally affiliated with Watonga Lodge No. 176, A. F. &
A. M., in which he has made many friends, and is a
member also of the Oklahoma State Bankers Association.
He is unmarried.

John A. Wimberley. An Oklahoma eighty -niner,
John A. Wimberley ’s name was found in the annals of
some of the first political conventions held in the old
territory of Oklahoma and he has been actively identified
with the territory and state both in business and politics

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2007

for more than a quarter of a century. For the past ten
years Mr. Wimberley has lived at Pawhuska, and has
extensive business interests in that locality.

A Tennessean, he was born in Henry County of that
state April 20, 1865, and represents some fine old south-
ern ancestry. His parents were Noah and Martha (Lee)
Wimberley, who were married in Tennessee and in 1866
moved to Illinois. His father was a Union soldier, having
served for four years and three months in the army. By
occupation he was a farmer, was a member of the
Methodist Church and a democrat in politics and his
death occurred in Massac County, Illinois, in 1879. His
wife, who was a member of the prominent Lee family of
old Virginia, died in Massac County, Illinois, in 1870.

The youngest of five children, John A. Wimberley
spent the first sixteen years of his life on an Illinois
farm and during that time acquired all his school train-
ing. In every sense he is a self-made man. In 1882 he
went out to Kansas and was engaged in farming with a
brother in Kingman County until 1889. In that year,
which marked the opening of the original Oklahoma
territory, he located at Kingfisher and secured a Govern-
ment homestead, whose cultivation he directed and on
which he lived until 1900. After a short time at Pawnee
he again participated in 1901 in a land opening, when
the Kiowa and Comanche reservation was allotted to
permanent settlers. For several years Mr. Wimberley
lived at Anadarko, but in 1905 came to Pawhuska, which
has since been his home. He has extensive interests as a
farmer and stock raiser and for a number of years has
also handled real estate, operating in lands not only in
Osage but in several other counties of Oklahoma.

Though Mr. Wimberley can properly claim a diploma
only from the post-graduate school of hard experience,
he has seldom been unsuccessful in his business under-
takings and has shown a great deal of enterprise and
persistence in carrying out everything to which he directs
his attention. This is a fine business trait, and it has
been responsible not only for his success but for the
useful part he has been able to play in local affairs
and in politics in general. Throughout his career he
has been identified with the republican party.

His public service makes his name notable in political
annals of Oklahoma. He served as a member of the
Territorial Legislature for two terms from 1891 to 1895,
having taken his seat in the second year after the
organization of the territory. The political history of
Oklahoma during those trying first years after settle-
ment should be read, as recounted on other pages of this
publication, bearing the fact in mind that Mr. Wimberley
was one of the most influential and active members of
the State Legislature at the time. He was also a mem-
ber of the board of regents at the Agricultural and
Mechanical College from 1892 to 1894. During 1902-03
he was a member of the board of county commissioners
in Caddo County. A fact that connects him especially
with early political history is that he was a delegate
to the first republican convention held in Oklahoma.
This convention met at the old Town of Frisco in June,
1889, only a few weeks after the original opening. He
was also chairman of the first republican convention
ever held in Caddo County.

On January 1, 1890, he was married at Kingfisher to
Miss Martha J. Gillam, who was born in Montgomery
County, Indiana, in 1867, and was reared principally in
that state. To their marriage have been born four chil-
dren: Fern, who was born at Kingfisher June 18, 1892,

is a graduate of the State Normal School at Edmond;
Letha, born August 12, 1894, graduated from the Paw-
huska High School and is now the wife of Frank Johnson
of Oklahoma City; Jonnie Margaret, born in 1898, died

in 1903; Martha Alice was born at Pawhuska in 1907
is still in school. Mr. Wimberley also has a grandson
named John A. Wimberley Johnson.

J. F. McIlheny. Now one of Bartlesville’s leading
business men, Mr. McIlheny began his career many years
ago as a telegraph operator. For about thirty years
he was a private operator and secretary for the late
Michael Cudahy, the Chicago packer and capitalist, and
first came to Oklahoma as the representative of the
Cudahy interests in the oil district about Bartlesville.
Mr. McIlheny in recent years has been in business for
himself and is now head of the firm of McIlheny &
Thurman, insurance, surety bonds and loans.

J. F. McIlheny was born at Middletown, Ohio, Decem-
ber 15, 1854, a son of R. K. and Sarah (Monfort) Mc-
Ilheny. His father was a native of Pennsylvania, and
the mother was born in Ohio but was reared and mar-
ried in Pennsylvania. They lived for a number of
years after marriage in Ohio, and about 1880 moved
to Chicago, and in October, 1903, came to Bartlesville,
Oklahoma. J. F. McIlheny was their only child And his
parents lived with him for many years. The father died
at Bartlesville in April, 1904, and the mother on Novem-
ber 5, 1913. At his death he was eighty-two years of
age and she was in her eighty-sixth year. While a resi-
dent of Ohio he had followed the grocery business.

Mr. McIlheny left school and took up practical work
at the age of sixteen, when he learned telegraphy and
was soon employed in the regular service. For several
years he was train dispatcher on the Big Four Railway
at Cincinnati, and then went to Chicago as a private
operator for Michael Cudahy. The Cudahy interests sent
him to Oklahoma as purchasing agent and later as local
manager in the oil fields. He continued one of the active
and trusted lieutenants of the Cudahy people in Okla-
homa from 1903 to 1908, when the Cudahys sold their
holdings to the National Refining Company. Mr. Mcll-
heny was in the service of Mr. Cudahy for more than
thirty years and finally retired, going into business for
himself. Since 1908 he has been in business for himself
as a general insurance man and loan agent. He was first
associated with H. C. Moore, but since December, 1911,
has been at the head of the firm of McIlheny & Thurman,
his partner being F. E. Thurman.

Mr. McIlheny has been one of the men of affairs at
Bartlesville since the early days, and served two terms
on the city council when Bartlesville was a small town.
During territorial days he was a member of the Re-
publican County Central Committee. He stands high in
Masonic circles being affiliated with the Blue Lodge,
Royal Arch Chapter, Knights Templar Commandery,
Eastern Star Chapter, and the Mystic Shrine, and is also
a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
On April 24, 1886, Mr. McIlheny married Miss Anna
Sneed, of Rushville, Indiana.

Claude Tilden Smith. A lawyer -who now enjoys a
lucrative private practice in Beaver County, Claude
Tilden Smith also distinguished himself by a vigorous
administration as county attorney for two years, and is
the recognized leader of the democratic party in Beaver
County.

He is of an old Southern family, long represented in
the State of Maryland. He was born at Wakefield, Mary-
land, March 26, 1877, a son of James E. and Martha
A. (Beach) Smith. His father was born July 17, 1850,
at Warfieldsburg, Maryland, a son of James and Mary .
(Harmon) Smith, who were natives of Maryland. James
E. Smith during his younger years was a very active demo-
cratic leader in Maryland, and held several state offices.

2008

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

He is now living at Westminster, Maryland. He mar-
ried, April 16, 1876, Miss Beach, who was born August
3, 1849, at Leesburg, Virginia, a daughter of James and
Elizabeth (Higdon) Beach, both natives of Loudon
County, Virginia, and of prominent Virginia stock.
Claude Tilden Smith was the oldest of five sons. The
others were: Bozier Gorman, born in 1879 and died in
1880; Grover Boberts, born in 1884 and died in 1885;
John Bay, born in 1886, died in 1903; and James E.,
Jr., who was born in 1891, was married in 1915 to Beulah
Ogle, and now lives with his father. That the family has
been strongly democratic in politics will be observed
from the fact that several of the sons were named for
some of the great leaders in that party during the last
three or four decades.

Claude Tilden Smith was given a liberal classical edu-
cation at Western Maryland College in Westminster,
where he graduated A. B. with the class of 1896. He
took up the study of law at first under Judge James A.
C. Bond and later under Beifsnider & Beifsnider at
Westminster for three years. His preceptors subse-
quently. filled places on the bench. He was admitted to
practice before the Court of Appeals of Maryland on
October 14, 1899. He soon had a promising law practice
in his native state, and in 1903 was appointed examiner
in equity causes for Carroll County, and in 1908 held
office as city solicitor for Westminster. He resigned
these positions June 26, 1909, on his removal to Beaver,
Oklahoma.

At the present time Mr. Smith is state committeeman
in the democratic organization from Beaver County. In
1910 he was the nominee of his party for county attorney,
and in 1912 was again nominated and this time elected,
leading his ticket. He remained in the office two years,
but in his third campaign was defeated, largely on account
of the fact that he had shown an unusual ability and
fearlessness in the vigorous enforcement of all laws and
the additional fact that Beaver County has a republican
majority. Since leaving office he has looked after the
interests of an extensive private practice. He is affiliated
with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the
Knights of Pythias.

On June 12, 1907, at Sparrow Point, Maryland, he mar-
ried Miss Amelia E. Owings, who was born June 16,
1884, at Coekeysville, Maryland, a daughter of Perry
Thomas and Margaret Stuart (Watson) Owings, the
former a native of Baltimore County, Maryland, and the
latter of England. Mrs. Smith is a descendant in the
maternal line from the royal family of Stuarts of Eng-
land and Scotland, and another branch of her ancestry
was the fighting McKays of Scotland. Daniel Henry
Stuart McKay, her grand-uncle, was the grand master
of the Orange Society in the counties of Antrim and
Londonderry, Ireland, for a number of years. Mr. and
Mrs. Smith have four children, two sons and two daugh-
ters, namely: James Owings, born June 5, 1908; Claude
Tilden, Jr., born September 22, 1909; Martha Amelia,
born December 26, 1911; and Elizabeth Stuart, born
December 1, 1913. The three youngest children were
born in Beaver, Oklahoma.

While a resident of Maryland Mr. Smith took a very
active part in military affairs. He was the organizer of
Company H, First Maryland Infantry, Maryland National
Guard, and he resigned from the office of captain when
he came to Oklahoma.

Viegil F. Carleton. Of the men who are lending
practical encouragement to the industries and institu-
tions of Custer County, few are contributing in more
helpful degree to the general progress and advancement
than is Virgil F. Carleton, who is engaged in the real

estate and insurance business at Clinton. A resident
of the county since 1897, and during a large part of
this time engaged in farming operations, he is thor-
oughly conversant with values, and in several positions
of public trust has evidenced the possession of traits
which have made his reputation firm in the community.

Mr. Carleton was born on a farm in Bay County, Mis-
souri, February 5, 1875, and is a son of L. M. and
Frances M. (Tunnel) Carleton. His grandfather was
G. M. Carleton, a native of England who emigrated to
the United States and settled first at Haverhill, Massa-
chusetts, subsequently moving as a pioneer to Bay
County, Missouri, where he passed his remaining years
in the pursuits of the husbandman. L. M. Carleton was
born in 1826, at Haverhill, Massachusetts, and was
twenty- three, years of age when the news of the discovery
of gold in California reached his New England home.
Contracting a severe case of “gold fever,” he packed
his belongings, took a ship around the Horn, and joined
the adventurous souls who were laboring to secure the
precious metal. After about four years of indifferent
success as a miner and prospector, Mr. Carleton re-
turned to the East, but after a short stay migrated to
Bay County, Missouri, where he preempted a homestead
of 160 acres. There he continued to follow the pursuits
of farming and stock raising until his death, in 1876,
winning success through his industry, integrity and in-
telligent management. Mr. Carleton was a republican i
but not a politician. He married Miss Frances M. Tun-
nel, who was born near Knoxville, Bay County, Missouri,
who survives her husband and resides near Elk City, in i
Custer County. They were the parents of four children,
namely : Alpha, who married W. C. Cowherd and resides

on a farm in Custer County; L. M., who conducts the
Fay Mercantile Company at Fay, Oklahoma; Virgil F.; ;
and G. M., who lives on the old homestead in Bay
County, Missouri.

Virgil F. Carleton attended the public schools of Bay
County, Missouri, while assisting in the work of the
home farm, and in order to further prepare himself forr
a commercial career took a course in the Lexington
(Missouri) Business College, where he was graduated!
in 1896. In that year he returned to Bay County and I
again resumed farming, but in February, 1897, came-
to Washita Township, Custer County, Oklahoma, and, ,
settling near Elk City, filed on a homestead of 160 acres, ,
a tract of land which he still owns. He resided on this-;
farm until 1907, when he removed to Clinton, Oklahoma,,
and first engaged in the cattle business, in addition too
holding an interest in a planing mill, and in 1909 was*
elected mayor of Clinton, in which office he served dur-
ing that and the following year. At the close of his;
term of office he embarked in the real estate and insur-
ance business, a line in which he has continued to bei
engaged to the present time, having offices in the Jeteri
Building. As an official Mr. Carleton gave Clinton one*
of the best administrations which it has known, and
while a resident of Washita Township he rendered excel-l
lent service as a member of the school board. He is a;
democrat in his political views, but has not allowed party;
prejudices to interfere with the performance of the duties;
of citizenship. In business circles his name is an;
honored one, due to the straightforward and honorable;
manner in which his transactions have always been car-r
ried on. Mr. Carleton is well known fraternally, being a;
member of Clinton Lodge No. 339 of the Masonic Order;
Clinton Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows;
Elk City Lodge of the Benevolent and Protective Order
of Elks; the Brotherhood of American Yeomen, and the
Knights of the Maccabees.

Mr. Carleton was married in February, 1895, in Bay
County, Missouri, to Miss Olga M. Smallwood, daughter

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2009

:e-

to.

its

76,

in-

oil

oii,

i in

ren,

ides

tie

Eay

Ray
the
ifoi
igton
ated
and
came
aid,
acres,
l this
homa,
.onto
9 was
1 dm-
of his
insni-
to he
i Jeter
oa one
n, and
[ excel-
leisa
1 party
e duties
is an

notable
:en car-
being a

[Order;;
fellows j
•e Order
and the

, in Raj
daughter

of Dr. P. C. Smallwood, a practicing physician and
surgeon of near Carpenter, Oklahoma. To this union
there has been born one son, E. V., who is attending
the public schools.

David Preston Parker is one of the acknowledged
leaders of the Harper County bar, and for a young man
has gone far in his profession, has accomplished a great
deal in spite of difficulties and adversities which en-
cumbered his early progress.

A North Carolina man by birth, he was born May 23,
1876, in a log house on a farm in Johnston County, a son
of King Henry and Sarah Anne (Beasley) Parker. His
father was of the Israel Putnam stock of New England-
ers, but spent all his life in North Carolina. In 1905
he retired from his work as a farmer. He was born
January 5, 1848, in Johnston County and died there
March 27, 1911. In 1867 he married Sarah Anne Beasley,
daughter of Enoch O. and Edith (Avery) Beasley, both
natives of North Carolina. Mrs. Parker was born Oc-
tober 8, 1851, in Johnston County. To the parents were
born a large family of fourteen children, eight sons and
six daughters. Nancy Anne, born in 1869, died in 1873
as a result of severe burns; Sarah Anna, born September
28, 1871, was married in 1908 to David T. Lunceford;
James Daniel, born March 23, 1874; David Preston who
is the fourth in order of birth; Mary Ella, born July 23,
1878, married in 1904 N. G. Rand; the sixth in birth,
a daughter, died in infancy; Joseph P., born September
1, 1881; Edith Ellen, born September 20, 1883, was mar-
ried in 1911 to P. A. Putnam who died in 1915; Geneva,
born December 23, 1885, married in 1909 Henry L.
Graves; Mordecai, born June 5, 1887, died December 26,
1897; Ezra, born July 4, 1889; Henry Almond, born
December 18, 1891; and the two youngest, Nehemiah and
Horace Virgilius, both died, in childhood.

David P. Parker spent his boyhood on a North Carolina
farm. He grew up in a home of wholesome ideals but of
limited comforts and few advantages except such as the
members were able to secure for themselves. He at-
tended the public schools in Johnston County, the Tur-
lington Institute at Smithfield in that state, and was
graduated with the class of 1900 and the degree A. B.
from the State University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill. In 1901 he was given the degree of Master of
Arts. He distinguished himself as an orator and debater
while in university, and in 1900 won the Willie P. Man-
gum medal for oratory, and was also one of the successful
North Carolina debaters in the interstate debating con-
test between North Carolina and Georgia. His scholar-
ship standing while in university is well indicated by the
fact that he is a Phi Beta Kappa, being a member of the
Alpha Chapter of North Carolina. Though he was leader
in school and university circles, he paid most of his way
by teaching between terms. He was a teacher in the
states of North Carolina and Texas from 1893 to 1909,
held several superintendences in Texas and in 1907 was
a member of the state board of summer normal exam-
iners of Texas. In 1909 he removed to Oklahoma City,
and on December 9, 1909, was admitted to practice by
the Supreme Court at Guthrie.

In January, 1910, Mr. Parker located at Buffalo, Har-
per County, and the favorable impression he created soon
brought him a paying and profitable practice. The same
year he located there he was nominated on the republican
ticket and elected county attorney of Harper County, and
was re-elected to the office in 1912. His administration
was characterized by exceptional vigor and impartiality,
but after four years of service he declined a third nomi-
nation, and resumed the private practice of law, in which
he is still engaged.

On July 30, 1905, Mr. Parker married at El Paso,

Texas, Miss Mary Louise Potts, daughter of Charles B.
and Elizabeth (Shirley) Potts. Her father was born in
England and her mother in Mississippi. Mrs. Parker
was born April 7, 1880, in Parker County, Texas. To
their marriage have been born three children. David
Preston, Jr., born September 20, 1907 ; Elizabeth Shirley,
born May 27, 1911 ; and Annette, born October 25, 1914.
Mr. Parker is affiliated with the Knights of Pythias, and
he and his family are members of the Presbyterian
Church, of which he is an elder. He has been president
of the Harper County Sunday School Association con-
tinuously since 1911, and takes great interest in the
work.

John Williams Duke, M. D. A widely known and
prominent physician and surgeon of Guthrie, Dr. John
W. Duke has practiced medicine in Oklahoma for many
years and has been vitally identified with some of the
larger movements connected with the public health of
the state. He is also one of the most prominent Masons
in the State of Oklahoma.

He was born at Scoby, Mississippi, June 5, 1868, and ,
received his literary and professional education in his
native state and in Tennessee and New York. In 1891
he graduated M. D. from the Memphis Hospital Medical
College, and in 1893 received a diploma from the medical
department of the University of New York. Since then
he has been in active practice and most of his years
have been spent in Oklahoma. He is a man of wide
experience, of unusual natural gifts, and a natural
leader in his profession.

From 1911 to 1915 Doctor Duke served as secretary of
the Oklahoma State Board of Medical Examiners, and
at the present time is state commissioner of health at
Guthrie. He served that city as mayor from 1905 to
1907. For ten years he was surgeon-general of the Okla-
homa National Guard.

Doctor Duke is a democrat. He took his first degrees
in Masonry in Connecticut about 1896. In 1897 he
became a Knight Templar in Shrine Commandery No. 8
at Middltown, Connecticut, and in 1900 completed the
course of the thirty-two degrees of Scottish Rite at Guth-
rie. In 1909 he was honored with the supreme thirty-
third degree in Scottish Rite Masonry at the House of the
Temple in Washington, D. C.

On January 30, 1901, in the State of Connecticut,
Doctor Duke married Isabelle Perkins, daughter of Doc-
tor Edward Perkins, of Wallingford, Connecticut.

William R. Barry, M. D. A forcible illustration of
pluck and determination leading a man to success is found
in the career of Doctor Barry of Bradley, who after
completing a course in the Agricultural and Mechanical
College of Mississippi set out without means to make
his way through a medical school and establish himself
in a profession. Probably nine-tenths of the successful
business men of Oklahoma have won their way through
adversity from the beginning of their education. Doctor
Barry earned every dollar of the money that was required
to complete his medical education.

Born at Oxford, Mississippi, January 8, 1867, he is
the son of James J. and Margaret E. (Nichols) Barry.
His father, a native of South Carolina, settled in Mis-
sissippi in the early ’30s, and in 1848, following the dis-
covery of gold on the Pacific coast, went to the California
mines, but returned before the outbreak of the Civil
war to enter the Confederate army, in which he served
three years, part of the time as a captain under Gen-
eral Forrest. Captain Barry was a successful farmer
before and after the war, and a well known man in his
state. The grandfather of Doctor Barry was a slave
owner and a prosperous South Carolina planter before
the war.

2010

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

After completing a common school education in the
public schools of Mississippi Doctor Barry entered the
Agricultural and Mechanical College of that state, gradu-
ating with the degree A. B., July 6, 1887. Later for
one term he was in the Memphis Hospital Medical Col-
lege at Memphis, Tennessee, and then used his acquired
knowledge and skill to practice medicine as a necessary
means of earning the money required for the completion
of his training. He was given the degree Doctor of
Medicine at Memphis in 1889, and began his regular
practice in his native state. He next removed to Camp-
bell in Hunt County, Texas, remained there ten years,
and in 1900 came to Bradley, Oklahoma, where he has
since been in practice. Doctor Barry is a successful
man from a professional standpoint, and his practice
covers a large and fertile territory around Bradley. He
is a member of the Grady County Medical Society, of
the Oklahoma Medical Society, of the Southern Medical
Society and the American Medical Association. He has
held the office of township treasurer in his county and
as chairman of the board of education in his school
district.

Doctor Barry was married in Hunt County, Texas, to
Miss Maggie M. Phillips. They are the parents of four
children: Lucile, Merle, Louise and an infant as yet
unnamed. The oldest daughter, aged thirteen, has com-
pleted the eighth grade in the Bradley public schools.
A brother of Mrs. Barry is Ben P. Phillips, chief of police
at Chiekasha, Oklahoma. Doctor Barry is a member of
the Presbyterian Church, and of the Masonic and Odd
Fellows lodges, and is master of the former in Bradley.
He is also a member of the Mutual Aid Society for
Agriculture. Having been a factor in the promotion of
such public enterprises and the establishment and bet-
terment of public schools, highway building, town
improvement, he ranks among the leading and most sub-
stantial men in the eastern part of Grady County.

Correl C. DeGraw. The present court clerk of
Beaver County, one of the most popular residents of
that section of the state, is an original Oklahoma eiglity-
■ niner, though he was only a child at the time. The De-
Graw family settled in Kingfisher County, and its mem-
bers have been closely associated with developments here
for more than a quarter of a century. The DeGraw
family came to Oklahoma from Kansas. Correl C. De-
Graw was born in a stone house on a farm in Potta-
watomie County, Kansas, July 26, 1879, a son of Byron
and Anna (Bothsell) DeGraw. His father was born in
1847 in Iowa, a son of Joseph and Jane DeGraw, the
former a native of Canada and the latter of Pennsyl-
vania. Byron DeGraw has been a farmer all his life,
combining that occupation with stock raising. He went
from Iowa to Kansas in 1872, lived in Pottawatomie
County a number of years, and in 1883 moved to Staf-
ford County, where he was engaged in farming until the
notable year of 1889. Though he was not a participant
in the grand opening of Oklahoma, he arrived in August,
about four months after the opening, and secured a tract
of government land in Kingfisher County near the pres-
ent City of Hennessey. That was his home for eight
years, and he is now engaged in farming in Dewey
County. Miss Anna Bothsell, whom he married in 1876,
was born September 22, 1852, at Quincy, Illinois, a daugh-
ter of Joseph Bothsell, also a native of Illinois. Mrs.
DeGraw died August 17, 1897, at Hennessey, Oklahoma.
There were seven children, four sons and three daughters,
mentioned briefly as follows: Correl C. ; Joseph Parks,
born January 10, 1881, now a farmer in Beaver County;
Guy, born August 20, 1884, a farmer in Blaine County,
Oklahoma; Flossie, born December 23, 1887, married in

1903 John Dugan, and they now live in Blaine County;
Ionia, born December 23, 1889, and died January 23,
1890; Bessie, born March 3, 1893, who was married in
1914, and lived in Kansas City, Missouri; Rector, born
March 15, 1895, and now engaged in farming in Dewey
County.

Correl C. DeGraw was ten years of age when he came
to Oklahoma with his parents. His subsequent education
was obtained from the public schools of Hennessey, and
his early youth was surrounded by the conditions typical
of an Oklahoma farm during the decade of the ’90s. In

1904 Mr. DeGraw took the Civil service examination
the Indian school service, and soon afterward was ap-
pointed an industrial teacher at the Pierre Indian
Schools in Pierre, South Dakota. He remained in that
work in South Dakota for three years. In 1907, having
returned to Oklahoma, he located at Beaver, and en-
gaged in, merchandising. In 1911 he bought a farm
two miles north of Beaver, and that is where he now
makes his home.

For a number of years he has taken an active part
in republican politics, and it was on the republican ticket
that he was chosen to his present office. In 1912 he was
appointed clerk of the County Court of Beaver County,
an office lie held two years. In 1914 he was elected
court clerk of the same county. He is a member of the
Masonic Order and the Independent Order of Odd Fel-
lows.

On August 1, 1900, at Watonga, Oklahoma, Mr. DeGraw
married Miss Laura Boston, who was born September
21, 1882, in Johnson County, Missouri, a daughter of
James W. and Eva (Thistle) Boston, both of them natives
of St. Louis. Mr. and Mrs. De Graw are the parents of
three children, two sons and one daughter, namely:
Correl James, born May 14, 1901, at O’Keene, Okla-
homa; Alva Byron, born September 11, 1904, at O’Keene;
and Fern, born July 10, 1910, at Beaver.

George E. Kerr, M. D. Now established in a suc-
cessful practice as a physician and surgeon at Chat-
tanooga, Doctor Kerr is one of the older physicians of
Oklahoma, having begun practice in Grant County fifteen
years ago. He was also one of the early settlers of
Chattanooga, where he is well known not only for his
skill and ability as a doctor but for his varied interests
in the life and activities of the town.

A Canadian by birth, Dr. George E. Kerr was born at
' Tilbury, Ontario, February 3, 1867. His grandfather,
James Kerr, spent his life in County Donegal, Ireland,
where his business was that of fisherman. He rose to
the rank of colonel in the English army under the great
Duke of Wellington in the Napoleonic wars, and at the
decisive battle of Waterloo was wounded. The son of
this old soldier was George Kerr, who was born in
County Donegal, Ireland, in 1803, and died at Tilbury,
Canada, in 1886. He came to America when a young
man and was a pioneer farmer and stock raiser at Til-
bury. In politics he was a conservative. George Kerr
married Julia Weldon, a native of County Monaghan,
Ireland, whence she came to Tilbury when a young
woman. She is now living at Deerfield, Michigan. She
became the mother of five children: James, who is a

collector of internal revenues at Windsor, Ontario;
Elizabeth, whose first husband was Joseph Daniels, a
farmer, now deceased, and who is now living with John
Witt, a retired farmer at Deerfield; Mary, who married
Jerry Vipond, a contractor and builder at Detroit, Michi-
gan ; the fourth child is a nurse in the Dearborn Hospital
at Dearborn, Michigan, and the youngest is Doctor Kerr
of Chattanooga.

The public schools of Tilbury, his birthplace, supplied

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2011

Doctor Kerr with his early education, and he graduated
from the Chatham High School with the class of 1885.
Four years later, in 1889, he finished the course of the
Komoeo Seminary at Gault, Canada, and while there
matriculated for a course in the Detroit College of
Medicine, where he was given an excellent preparation
for his chosen calling and was graduated M. D. with
the class of 1894. For a year and a half Doctor Kerr
had the many benefits gained by service as interne in St.
Mary’s Hospital, and in 1895 took up active practice at
: Deerfield, Michigan, where he remained until 1900. Dur-

ing the first seven years of his residence in Oklahoma
Doctor Kerr was located in Grant County. In August,
1907, he moved to Chattanooga, where he was one of the
first physicians and surgeons to locate, and is now well
established in his business, having his offices in the
I Chattanooga State Bank Building. He is a member of
the County and State Medical societies and the American
Medical Association, and is now serving as deputy health
I officer.

Doctor Kerr was a member of the school board at
Chattanooga up to 1915. He is a republican in politics,
I is past master of Chattanooga Lodge No. 349, Ancient,
I Free and Accepted Masons, a member of Chattanooga
Chapter of the Eastern Star, of the Modern Woodmen
[ of America, the Woodmen of the World, the Woodmen
I Circle and the Brotherhood of American Yeomen at
Chattanooga and was formerly affiliated with the Inde-
pendent Order of Odd Fellows.

In 1904, in Grant County, Oklahoma, Doctor Kerr mar-
ried Miss Mary Kearney, who formerly lived in Illinois.
Their four children are: Irene and Mabel, both attend-

ing the public schools at Chattanooga; George, who died
in infancy, and James, the youngest.

W. B. Tilton, M. D. The roll of medical practitioners
of Custer County includes the name of Dr. W. B. Tilton,
of Clinton, a capable representative of his profession who
has been engaged in practice since 1912. He came to
Clinton in December, 1913, and since that time has been
successful in building up a very satisfying practice in
medicine and surgery and in winning the confidence of
the people of his adopted field of labor.

Doctor Tilton belongs to a family which has been in
America since colonial days, having been founded in
Maine by an emigrant from England. He was born at
Allendale, Missouri, June 3, 1884, and is a son of John L.
and Margaret (McElvain) Tilton. John L. Tilton was
born on a farm in Harrison County, Missouri, in 1861,
and when a small boy was taken by his parents to the
Town of Allendale, where he grew to manhood, secured
a public school education, and established himself in
, business as a merchant. Later he also branched out into
banking and became one of the prominent and influential
men of Allendale, where he resided until 1896, in that
year removing to his present home at Grant City. Here
also he is well known in commercial and financial circles,
being the proprietor of a store and interested in a bank-
ing concern. He is a member of the Baptist Church, is
well known in Masonry, in which he has attained the
thirty-second degree, and is also an Odd Fellow. At
Allendale he was married to Miss Margaret McElvain,
who was born in Worth County, Missouri, in 1863, and
they have been the parents of four children, as follows:
Dr. W. D. ; Grace, who is the wife of Rev. W. A. Schullen-
berger, pastor of the Christian Church at Mexico, Mis-
souri ; Calvin, who resides with his parents at Grant City,
Missouri; and Hale, who is a student at the Grant City
High School.

Early in life W. B. Tilton decided upon a professional
career, and with this end in view set about to fully pre-
pare himself for his vocation. After attending the pub-

lic schools, he entered the famous William Jewell College,
at Liberty, Missouri, from which he was graduated in
1906, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and following
this he attended the medical department of the University
of Chicago for two terms. He was graduated from
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, in 1912,
with the degree of Doctor of Medicine, and his first field
of practice was the town of Freeport, Illinois, where he
spent one year. In 1913 he first came to Oklahoma, as
offering a better field for the display of his abilities
and learning, and remained at Erick, Beckham County,
until December of that year, which time marked his
arrival at Clinton. Here he has well appointed offices
in the Schaffer Building, equipped with all modern
appliances. He is a constant student, a careful prac-
titioner and a skilled surgeon, and holds membership in
the Custer County Medical Society, the Oklahoma Medical
Society and the American Medical Association. His
religious connection is with the Baptist Church. Doctor
Tilton is unmarried.

James M. McComas, M. D. Elk City, the metropolis
of Beckham County, has been fortunate in gaining as
one of the leading representatives of the medical pro-
fession in this county Dr. James Milton McComas, who
has here been engaged in general practice as a physician
and surgeon of marked ability and zeal since the spring
of 1901, and whose character and achievement have lent
dignity and distinction to his profession, the while he
stands exponent of loyal and progressive citizenship and
maintains lively and helpful interest in community affairs
in general.

Doctor McComas is a scion of a sterling family that
was founded in Virginia in the colonial era of our
national history, and the lineage traces back to staunch
Scottish origin. He himself is a native of Kentucky,
and his father, Charles Lewis McComas, was born in
Greenbrier County, Virginia, in 1795. In the colonial
days two brothers of the name immigrated to America,
from the north of Ireland, one settling in Virginia and
the other in Maryland, the Virginian figuring as the
ancestor of him whose name introduces this article.
Becoming a resident of Kentucky when young, Charles
L. McComas was there married, in Morgan County, to
Miss Clara Wells, who was born in that county in 1796,
and from the old Bluegrass State they finally removed to
Indiana, where Mr. McComas became a prosperous
farmer. He later removed with his family to Illinois,
where his wife died in 1856 and where he himself passed
to the life eternal in 1860, both having been zealous and
devout members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and
he having been for many years staunchly arrayed as an
old-line whig in politics. He prepared himself for the
legal profession and served for a protracted period in
the office of justice of the peace. Of the children the
eldest was William Hamilton, who went to California in
the early days, the other members of the family having
eventually lost all trace of him; Sarah Ann, Frances
Araminta, Elizabeth, Louisa, Clinton, and Albert S. are
deceased; George met his death in a railroad accident;
Charles Carroll resides in the City of Los Angeles,
California, where he has long held prestige as a repre-
sentative member of the bar and where he formerly
served as prosecuting attorney of Los Angeles County;
and Dr. James M., of this review, is the youngest of the
number.

Doctor McComas was afforded in his youth the ad-
vantages of the common schools of the City of Louisville,
Kentucky, and at Danville, that state, he was graduated
in Central College as a member of the class of 1867.
During this period he was also giving close attention

2012

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

to the study of medicine, under the effective preceptor-
ship of leading physicians in his native state, besides
which he availed himself of the advantages afforded in
the city dispensary of Louisville. He has received the
degree of Doctor of Medicine from each the medical
department of the University of Pennsylvania, the Ken-
tucky School of Medicine, the Kentucky Hospital College
in Louisville, and the medical department of the Uni-
versity of Louisville, Kentucky. This statement shows
his zeal in fortifying himself through the best available
post-graduate courses, and his success in the practical
work of his exacting profession has been on a parity
with his recognized ability and unfaltering devotion to
his chosen vocation.

Doctor McComas initiated the practice of his pro-
fession at Sturgeon, Boone County, Missouri, later prac-
ticed in St. Louis, and from 1888 to 1891 he was a
successful practitioner in the City of Los Angeles, Cali-
fornia. He then returned to St. Louis, Missouri, where
he continued his professional labors until the autumn of
1900, when he came to Oklahoma Territory, his residence
at Elk City having continued since April of the following
year, where he holds precedence as a pioneer physician
and surgeon as well as one of the leaders in the ranks of
his profession in this section of the state. His offices are
maintained in the Postoffice Building and he has at all
times stood exemplar of the most advanced thought and
most approved methods in medical and surgical science,
with deep appreciation of the responsibilities of his chosen
vocation and with insistent determination to uphold right
loyally its unwritten ethical code, so that he has always
commanded the respect and confidence of his confreres
as well as of the public in general. In 1906 the doctor
did effective post-graduate work in connection with the
clinics at the great Augustana Hospital in the City of
Chicago, and he has on several other occasions taken
similar post-graduate work in leading institutions in
that city and St. Louis. He was one of the foremost in
effecting the organization of the Beckham County Medical
Society, of which he was elected the first president — an
office which he held consecutively until 1915, since which
time he has not abated in the least his active zeal in the
work of the society. He is identified also with the
Oklahoma State Medical Society, the Southwestern
Medical Society and the American Medical Association.

Doctor McComas is unwavering in his allegiance to
the democratic party and though he has had no desire
for public office his civic loyalty caused him to give
most effective service during his incumbency of the posi-
tion of member of the Elk City Board of Education. He
is affiliated with Elk City Lodge No. 182, Ancient Free
and Accepted Masons; Elk City Chapter No. 50, Royal
Arch Masons; and Elk City Commandery, No. 15, Knights
Templar.

Of the two children of the first marriage of Doctor
McComas the elder is Arthur Bochford, who was grad-
uated in the University of Missouri with the degree of
Bachelor of Arts, after which he was graduated in the
medical department of St. Louis University, with the
degree of Doctor of Medicine. He is now engaged in
the successful practice of his profession at Sturgeon,
Missouri. The younger son, Judge Edwin Gaillard
McComas, is now serving on the bench of the County
Court of Beckham County, Oklahoma, and is individually
mentioned on other pages of this work.

A. T. Brown was in that great concourse of people
who in Oklahoma are known as Eighty-niners. He
developed a homestead in Canadian County. He was a
pioneer of the Kiowa and Comanche Indian country,
where other farms were developed. He became sub-

sequently the leading merchant of the town of Bradley.
These are the primary facts in the career of Mr. Brown
in Oklahoma. He is now senior member of the firm
of Brown & Stephens, dealers in general merchandise at
Bradley. His success as a merchant is best attested by
the fact that the firm has one of the largest stores
handling general merchandise among any of the small
towns of Oklahoma, and in addition operates' three other
stores in the same town, carrying flour, feed and furni-
ture. The firm’s trade is well distributed over a large
section of the fertile valley of the Wachita River in
one of the most productive and prosperous regions in the
state.

A. T. Brown was born in Clermont County, Ohio, in
1875, a son of Adam and Catherine (Garland) Brown.
His father is also a native of Ohio, and with his family
came to Oklahoma at the time of the first opening
in 1889, settling near Yukon in Canadian County, where
he located a homestead and gained his title from the
United States Government. He assisted in rebuilding
the United States Government remount station at Fort
Reno, and has done other important construction work
in the state. A brother of Adam Brown is W. J. Brown,
one of the best known pioneers of the original Oklahoma
and an influential capitalist living at Kingfisher. A.
T. Brown has four brothers and two sisters: G. S. Brown,
who is associated with the National Livestock Commis-
sion Company at Oklahoma City; G. E. Brown, a farmer
at Wynnewood, Oklahoma; W. O. Brown, a plumber in
the employ of the National Stockyards Company at Okla-
homa City; G. F. Brown, a farmer near Marlow; Mrs.

E. J. Bailey, wife of a farmer near Rush Springs,
Oklahoma; and Mrs. Wesley Armstrong, whose husband
is a merchant at Marlow.

Mr. A. T. Brown received his public school education
in Ohio, Kansas and Oklahoma, and began life for him-
self as a farmer in Canadian County. At the opening
of the Kiowa and Comanche Indian country in 1901 he
settled in Comanche County on a farm twelve miles
west of Marlow. There he bought other land and
successfully farmed and raised livestock until 1912, at
which date he transferred his vocation from farming to
mercantile lines. He came into Bradley and soon took
the lead as a merchant. He was associated with J.

F. Bell until the latter’s retirement from business on
March 1, 1915.

Mr. Brown was married in 1900 in Ohio to Miss Lorena
Ball. Their three sons, Adam F., Loren B. and Truman,
are all now attending public schools. Mr. Brown is presi-
dent of the board of education at Bradley, and one of
that town’s most enthusiastic boosters. Besides his
business he operates two fine farms in the western part
of Grady County. It is interesting to note that his
life in Oklahoma began under primitive conditions when
Indian tepees were more frequent than houses and red
men more numerous than white. Homes were far apart,
and it was not unusual for the inhabitants to be fright-
ened by rumors of Indian raids. Now he lives in a highly
civilized and prosperous community, the result of trans-
formations wrought by the last quarter of a century,
and has a growing and happy family and is prospering.

Charles W. Morrison, who has been a resident of
Hinton, Oklahoma, since 1902, is a Baptist minister
by profession and in addition to his work as a preacher
he is serving most efficiently as town clerk of Hinton.
He also owns and operates a finely improved farm of
160 acres just east of Hinton and he has ever been on the
alert to forward all measures and enterprises projected
for the good of the general welfare.

Of Scotch origin, Reverend Morrison is the grandson

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2013

in,

isi-

his

ait

his

ken

red

ait,

-to-

ns-

my,

tag.

: of
star
del
don.
i of
i the
icted

dson

of Tandy Morrison, who came from Scotland to Virginia
with his parents when he was a mere child. As a young
man Tandy Morrison removed from the Old Dominion
commonwealth to Hancock County, Kentucky, where he
was successfully engaged in farming until his demise.
John A. Morrison, father of the subject of this sketch,
was born in Hancock County, Kentucky, in 1835, and he
is now living at Horse Branch, Kentucky, where he has
followed agricultural pursuits all his life. He is a mem-
ber of the Baptist Church and in politics gives his alle-
giance to the democratic party. He married, first,
Basha Barnett, a native of Kentucky, where she was
born in 1837 and where she died in 1860. This union
was prolific of four children: Charles W. is the subject
of this sketch ; Edward M. is a printer and resides at
Evansville, Indiana; and Mary C. and Aremus both died
young. For his second wife Mr. Morrison married
Bettie Stevens, who died in Kentucky and who is sur-
vived by one daughter, Ida.

Reverend Morrison was born at Owensboro, Davis
County, Kentucky, November 1, 1856, and he was
reared to maturity on his father’s farm. He attended
the public schools of Davis County and studied for the
Baptist ministry. In 1884 he left Owensboro and located
in Comanche County, Kansas, where he was engaged in
agricultural pursuits until 1889. He then came to Okla-
homa and was a pioneer Baptist minister in the vicinity
of Oklahoma City. In 1892 he removed to Yukon,
Oklahoma, preaching in a Baptist Church there for the
ensuing eight years. From 1900 to 1902 he preached in
Watonga, Blaine County, Oklahoma, and in the latter
year he came to Hinton, where he has since maintained
his home. He came to this section before the Town of
Hinton was started and bought a farm of 160 acres
right on the edge of the townsite. This farm is splen-
didly improved with modern buildings and cotton, oats
and Kaffir corn are raised, in addition to which a specialty
is ma<je of livestock. Reverend Morrison is a democrat in
politics and since 1907 he has been town clerk of Hinton.
He still preaches and in this connection alternates at
Greenfield and Laverty.

In Kentucky, in 1876, Reverend Morrison married Miss
Annie Phillips, a daughter of J. B. Phillips, a farmer in
Hancock County, Kentucky. Reverend and Mrs. Morri-
son have two children : Floy E. is assistant cashier in the
Hinton State Bank; and Zada Belle is the wife of L. E.
Brown, postmaster at Tuttle, Oklahoma.

Reverend Morrison is a man of fine mentality and
jroad human sympathy. He thoroughly enjoys home life
md takes great pleasure in the society of his family and
iriends. He is always courteous, kindly and affable,
md those who know him personally accord him the
lighest esteem. Mr. and Mrs. Morrison’s lives have been
Exemplary in all respects and they have ever supported
hose interests which are calculated to uplift and benefit
lumanity, while their own high moral worth is deserving
>f the highest commendation.

Lawbence Niles Houston. A pioneer attorney and
ine of the oldest members of the Enid bar, Lawrence
liles Houston has been much in public life, and prob-
,bly no citizen of Enid has more stanch friends and well
Fishers. For about eight years Mr. Houston was register
if the land office at Guthrie, and in that federal office
le satisfied the predictions of his friends who had so
nany reasons to appreciate his public ability through his
arlier work as city attorney at Enid.

Lawrence N. Houston was born in Manhattan, Kansas,
'uly 9, 1858. His father, Samuel D. Houston, was prom-
nent in the early days of “Bleeding Kansas,” and had
! ;one to that vexed territory in 1853 from Ohio. Samuel

D. Houston was a cousin of the great Texas statesman,
Sam Houston, and represented a family of Scotch-Irish
ancestry, originally settled in Pennsylvania and furnish-
ing many ministers and lawyers in the different genera-
tions. Samuel D. Houston was the first receiver of the
land office at Junction City, Kansas, and for seventeen
years gave a capable administration to that position.
In 1859 he was a member of the Kansas Constitutional
Convention, associated with John J. Ingalls, Gen. James
G. Blunt, and other prominent Kansans at that time.
He made himself a prominent figure in the political life
of early Kansas, and was one of the best known resi-
dents of Manhattan. At the beginning of the war he
abandoned his duties as receiver of the land office in
order to enlist at Fort Leavenworth. Lincoln ordered
him under arrest and sent him back to his official duties
at Junction City under a guard of soldiers. The Presi-
dent believed his services were more important in that
office than they would be in the army. Later in life he
removed to Kingfisher and also lived at Enid for a
time, but died at his old home city, Manhattan, at the
age of ninety-two. Samuel D. Houston married an
Ohio lady, a well educated woman, who in the early days
taught school at Weston, Missouri. She was devoted to
her home, reared a family of seven children, and was an
active church worker.

L. N. Houston grew up in Kansas, attended the State
Agricultural College at Manhattan, and at the age of
twenty was admitted to the bar and began practice
at Concordia. He was county clerk of Cloud County six
years and assistant county attorney there for four years.
While in that section of Kansas he made a name for him-
self both in the law and in polities, and lived there
from 1877 to 1893. He had served as census enumerator
and in other capacities became well known at Concordia.

Mr. Houston participated in the opening of the Chero-
kee strip on September 16, 1893. He came to Enid on
a cattle train from Hennessey, and almost at once took
up the practice of law, so that he is now one of the
oldest attorneys in the city. For four years he was
city attorney, a period in which the most important
public improvements were inaugurated. An Enid paper
recently called attention to the fact that he furnished
the legal advice and drew up the contract by which
the Frisco Railway got $25,000 of the waterworks funds
in return for running the railway to Enid. For this
service Mr. Houston received a salary of ten dollars a
month, with no extras for clerk’s hire or stenographer.
The same paper gives an interesting account of how he
came to occupy the office of register of the land office
at Guthrie. In 1902 the republicans held a county con-
vention in which Mr. Houston' was chosen chairman of
the county central committee. During the four years in
that office he filled the court house with republicans, and
in 1904 was chosen to manage the republican campaign,
with the result that Bird McGuire was elected to con-
gress. Congressman McGuire rewarded the services of
Mr. Houston by securing his appointment as register
of the Guthrie Land Office. President Roosevelt nomi-
nated him to that office in 1906, and he served as such
until April, 1914. Though with two years more to
serve he voluntarily resigned, and returned to his former
home in Enid and has resumed the private practice of
law. Mr. Houston is interested in the development of oil
fields in Eastern Oklahoma, and has made his mark as a
lawyer and public spirited citizen. Having lived in
Oklahoma for more than twenty years he has sound
reasons for his splendid faith in its great future.

In 1880 at Savannah, Missouri, Mr. Houston married
Miss Alice Selecman. She was born in Kentucky, but re-
ceived most of her education in Missouri, being a gradu-
ate of the University of Missouri. Mrs. Houston is active

2014

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

in the work of the Methodist Episcopal Church and in
various charities. There are three children: Blanche,

wife of John P. Cook, president of the Oklahoma State
Bank of Enid; and Harold W. and Hazel K.,
the former a banker at Bisby, Oklahoma, and the latter
of these twins being the wife of G. L. Levers, in the
railway mail service with home at Tulsa.

Milo Melville MacKellar, M. D. Nearly twenty
years ago Doctor MacKellar was a regular graduate in
medicine, but devoted nearly all the following four
years to continued study and an experience which has
greatly increased his qualifications for skillful and
thorough practice. Doctor MacKellar has been in prac-
tice in Oklahoma for the past fifteen years, and is
now the leading physician and surgeon at Loveland, in
Tillman County. He is also a leader in educational move-
ments and popular in social and fraternal life.

Born in Fayette County, Iowa, December 28, 1874,
Doctor MacKellar is a son of Peter MacKellar, and
grandson of Hugh MacKellar, who was born in Invery
Castle, Scotland, emigrated to America and lived for
a time in the village where is now found the great city
of Chicago, and subsequently was a pioneer blacksmith
and farmer in the State of Iowa. Peter MacKellar
was born in the State of Ohio in 1842, when a young
man moved out to Highland, Iowa, was a farmer and
stock raiser all his active career, and quite recently
moved from Highland to Elgin, Iowa, where he is now liv-
ing retired. In politics he is a republican and an active
member of the Presbyterian Church. The maiden name
of his wife was Samantha Moore, who was born in
Ohio in 1858, and died at Highland, Iowa, in 1894. Her
ancestors came from Ireland prior to the American Devo-
lution, and for many years lived in Ohio. The children
of Peter MacKellar and wife were: Orville W., who
was graduated from the medical department of the Iowa
State University in 1885, and is now practicing as a
surgeon in Chicago; L. W., a farmer at Elgin, Iowa;
Hattie, who lives with her father; Dr. Milo Melville;
John D., who graduated from the medical department
of the University of Illinois in 1900, is now a physician
in Chicago, and is secretary of the General Medical
College in that city.

Milo Melville MacKellar attended the public schools
in Fayette County, Iowa, grew up on a farm and in 1894
was graduated Bachelor of Science from the Upper Iowa
University at Fayette. With this substantial literary
training he entered the College of Physicians and Sur-
geons at Keokuk, Iowa, from which institution he
obtained his Doctor of Medicine ^degree with the class of
1896. The years from 1896 to 1900 were spent in Chi-
cago, where he practiced medicine and was also instructor
of anatomy in the General Medical College, and almost
continuously was pursuing post-graduate studies in the
Chicago Policlinic.

From 1900 to 1903 Doctor MacKellar practiced at
Cement, Oklahoma, was then at Tulsa, Oklahoma, up to^
1907, and has since become established in a large prac-
tice, both in medicine and surgery, at Loveland. He is
a member of the Loveland School Board, and that is
now one of the most important positions in the com-
munity, since several districts have recently been con-
solidated and plans and preparations are being made for
the erection of a handsome new schoolhouse to serve
this consolidated district. He is thus a member of the
first board of education of Consolidated School District
No. 5 in Tillman County. Doctor MacKellar is a mem-
ber of the county and state medical societies and the
American Medical Association, is a republican in politics,
is master of Loveland Lodge No. 392, Ancient Free and
Accepted Masons, and a member of Frederick Chapter

No. 41, Royal Arch Masons, and of Frederick Council,
Royal and Select Masters. He was formerly a member
of the Modern Woodmen of America, the Knights of
Pythias, the Order of Praetorians, and the Fraternal
Order of Eagles. He also belongs to the International
Travelers’ Association of Dallas, Texas. On June 3,
1914, at Wichita Falls, Texas, Doctor MacKellar married
Miss Jennie Huggins. Her father was the late J. H.
Huggins, who at the time of his death was serving
as president of the Loveland Farmers and Merchants
State Bank.

Romney E. Johnston, M. D. Other men’s services
to the people and the state can be measured by definite
deeds, by dangers averted, by legislation secured, by
institutions built, by commerce promoted. The work of
a doctor is entirely estranged from these lines of enter-
prise, yet without his capable, health-giving assistance,
all other accomplishment would count for naught. Man ’s
greatest prize on earth is physical health and vigor : ]
nothing deteriorates mental activity so quickly as pro-
longed sickness, hence the broad field for human helpful-
ness afforded in the medical profession. The successful!
doctor requires something more than mere technical train-
ing, he must be a man of broad human sympathy and
genial kindliness, capable of inspiring hope and faith in
the heart of his patient. Such a man is he whose name ;
initiates this article.

Dr. Romney E. Johnston, who has been a resident of
Bridgeport, Oklahoma, since 1908, was born at Harrods-
burg, Indiana, January 22, 1884. He is a son of A. H.i
and Debbie Jones (Morgan) Johnston, both of whom
were born in the vicinity of Harrodsburg, the former in
1861 and the latter in 1859. A. H. Johnston is a farmer
and stockman in Monroe County, Indiana, and he is a
deacon in the local Methodist Episcopal Church. He and
his wife are the parents of eleven children, brief data
concerning whom appears in the sketch of Judge C. R.
Johnston, of Caddo County.

To the public schools of Harrodsburg and Danville,;
Indiana, Doctor Johnston is indebted for his early edu-
cational discipline. He attended the normal school at
Valparaiso, Indiana, for one year, and in 1904 was matric-
ulated as a student in the University of Louisville, in
the medical department of which he was graduated in

1907, duly receiving the degree of Doctor of Medicine.}
While in the university he belonged to the Students']1
Club, of which he was a charter member. Doctor Johns-
ton entered upon the active practice of his profession at I
Harrodsburg, Indiana, and remained there until May,;

1908, which date marks his advent in Bridgeport, Okla-
homa. Here he has built up a splendid medical and
surgical practice and in addition to his professional workl
he owns and conducts the only drug store in this city)
The doctor is a democrat in politics and although elected^
health ofiicer he declined to serve in that capacity. He
has been a member of the Bridgeport School Board for
the past five years and in religious faith is Methodist
Episcopal. He affiliates with Bridgeport Lodge, No.)
229, Ancient, Free & Accepted Masons, of which he is
master, and he formerly belonged to the Harrodsburg!
Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

December 14, 1909, in Edinburg, Indiana, was solem-i
nized the marriage of Doctor J ohnston to Miss Helen San-
burn, a daughter of William Sanburn, now deceased, a
painter and decorator at Bloomington, Indiana. Doctor
and Mrs. Johnston have two children: Frank Woodrow;
born April 4, 1912 ; and Maxiene, born September 4, 1914

William Taylor. It has been but a matter of coursi;
that many of the older commonwealths of the Union havf
made valuable contribution to the citizenship of th<

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2015

vital new State of Oklahoma, and a representative
farmer and progressive citizen of Pawnee County who
claims the old Buckeye State as the place of his nativity
and who is a scion of families early founded in the
South, is William Taylor, the close of the year 1915
marking the twentieth year of his residence on his
present well improved homestead, which is eligibly situ-
ated in the vicinity of the Village of Jennings, in sec-
tion 10, township 20, the place having been well
improved by him and his son George A., now hav-
ing charge of the practical operations of the farm, the
income from which has in recent years been augmented
by the extending of leases for oil development on the
property. Mr. Taylor further merits special consider-
ation by reason of having served as a valiant soldier
of the Union in the Civil war, and in all of the relations
of citizenship he has shown the same loyal spirit that
thus prompted him to go forth in defense of the nation’s
integrity.

William Taylor was born in Vinton County, Ohio, on
the 21st of July, 1840, and though he is now venerable
in years he retains much of his pristine physical and
mental vigor and in the gracious evening of life enjoys
the good health that marks the result of right living
and right thinking. He is a son of Andrew and Sarah
(Loving) Taylor, the former of whom was born in Green-
brier County, West Virginia, on the 4th of February,
1813, his native state having at that time been still an
integral part of Virginia, and his wife having been
born within the limits of the latter state as at present
constituted. Both were young at the time of the immi-
gration to Ohio, he having been a young man at the
time and having severed the home ties to cast his lot
with the pioneers of the Buckeye State, while his wife
had removed with her parents to that commonwealth,
their marriage having been solemnized in Vinton County.
In the autumn of 1841 Andrew Taylor removed with his
family to Sycamore County, Illinois, and in 1843, he
became one of the pioneer settlers in Keokuk County,
Iowa, a section then on the very frontier of civilization.
He became one of the early representatives of the
agricultural and live-stock industries in the Hawkeye
State, where he continued his residence for nearly half
a century. In 1884 he and his wife removed thence
to Oregon, and they passed the closing years of their
lives at Drain, Douglas County, that state. Andrew
Taylor devoted his active life to farming and milling,
and though he was blind during the last sixty years of
his life he was able to attend to business affairs and
to supervise practical details of farm work, even as he
had no difficulty in driving about with a team and unac-
companied. He never swerved from his allegiance to
the democratic party, and both he and his wife held
membership in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Con-
cerning their children who attained to maturity the fol-
lowing data are available: John is a resident of Oregon,
in which state he established his home in 1862; the next
in order of birth was William, subject of this review;
Jame became the wife of Enos Rushton, and was a
resident of Kansas at the time of her death; David
died in the City of Los Angeles, California; Newton
is a resident of Grand Junction, Colorado; and Mary
Elizabeth is the wife of Mason E. Hindman, of Mount
Idaho, in the State of Idaho.

William Taylor remained at the parental home until
he had attained to his legal majority and in the mean-
while not only gave effective aid in the work and man-
agement of. the home farm, but also made good use of
the advantages afforded in the pioneer schools of Iowa,
in which state he was reared to adult age.

At Fairfield, Jefferson County, Iowa, in September,

1861, Mr. Taylor wedded Miss Martha Ann Woodward,
who was born in Indiana, as were also her parents, Silas
and Sarah (Leonard) Woodward, who established their
home in Iowa when she was still a child, her mother
having died in that state and her father having been
a resident of Kansas at the time of his death and
having been a pioneer farmer in both Iowa and Kansas.

Shortly after his marriage Mr. Taylor subordinated
all personal interests and left his grieving but loyal
young wife to tender his aid in defense of the Union.
On the 9th of August, 1862, he enlisted in Company B,
Nineteenth Iowa Volunteer Infantry, Harry Jordan
having been captain of the company, and he continued in
active service with this gallant command until the close
of the war, his honorable discharge having been received
by him in July, 1865. He participated in all of the
many engagements in which his regiment was involved.
He took part in the battle at Prairie Grove, Arkansas,
in December, 1862, and also in the siege of Vicksburg
and the siege of Spanish Fort, besides many minor
engagements. He held 'the office of corporal during all
but the first year of his service in the ranks and proved
himself a faithful and gallant soldier, his record having
been such as to reflect lasting honor upon his name.

After the close of the war Mr. Taylor resumed farm-
ing operations in Wayne County, Iowa, until 1882, when
he removed his family to Cloud County, Kansas, where
he was a renter and where he continued successful opera-
tions as an agriculturist and stock-grower until the
autum of 1894, when he came to Oklahoma Territory and
became one of the pioneer settlers of Pawnee County,
where he has resided upon his present homestead since
the spring of 1895, his energy and good judgment hav-
ing been brought into effective play in the development
and improving of the farm, which is now one of the
valuable places of this section of the state.

Mr. Taylor has always exemplified the best type of
loyal and public-spirited citizenship, is a stalwart demo-
crat in his political proclivities, has been affiliated with
the Independent Order of Odd Fellows for nearly half
a century, and vitalized the more pleasing associations
of his military career by his active affiliation with the
Grand Army of the Republic, that noble organization
whose ranks are being rapidly thinned by the one
invincible foe, death. The first wife of Mr. Taylor did
not long survive, as she was summoned to eternal rest
in February, 1864, while he was still serving as a soldier
of the Union. Their only child, William E., is now a
resident of Minnesota.

On the 10th of September, 1865, was solemnized the
marriage of Mr. Taylor to Mrs. Eliza R. Ryckman,
who was born in Indiana, and whose death occurred in
Wayne County, Iowa, on the 9th of August, 1871. Of
the three children of this union Rosa became the wife
of W. A. Robertson, and her death occurred in Iowa,
she having been survived by three children; .Eli, the
second child, is a resident of the City of Lewiston, Idaho ;
and Alva maintains his home at Concordia, Kansas.

On the 9th of December, 1873, Mr. Taylor contracted
a third marriage, when Miss Malinda C. Chapman
became his wife, she having been born in the State of
Iowa, where her parents settled in the pioneer days.
Mr. and Mrs. Taylor became the parents of eight
children, of whom Arthur and Rena died in infancy;
Sarah C. is the wife of Bert Hart, of Custer County,
Oklahoma; Cora is the wife of Daniel Hart, of Drum-
wright, Oklahoma; George A. has charge of the home-
stead farm of his parents; Eva is the wife of John
Miller, of Ellis County, Oklahoma; Nellie married Jay
Hart; and Fay is the wife of Lemuel Sugg, of Okla-
homa. Mr. Taylor has twenty-nine grandchidren.

2016

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Oran D. McCray, M. D., holds prestige as one of the
most skilled young physicians and surgeons in Caddo
County, where he has been engaged in a general medical
practice for the past decade. He now resides at Binger
and here controls a large and lucrative patronage. The
McCrays are of Scotch-Irish descent and trace their
ancestry to the wealthy and noted family of that name
at Hedges, Scotland. The first McCrays in America came
hither in the early colonial days of our national history
and settled in Virginia.

Doctor McCray was born at Putriamville, Putnam
County, Indiana, November 23, 1874, and he is a son of
George S. McCray and Mary Alice (Sellers) McCray,
the former of whom was born in the old Hoosier State
in 1851 and the latter in the same place in 1855. In
1882, about ten years after 'his marriage, Mr. McCray-
established the family home in Saline County, Missouri,
where he was a farmer and stockman until his demise,
at Marshall, that county, in August, 1906. He was -an
elder in the Presbyterian Church, was affiliated with the
time-honored Masonic fraternity ■ and in politics was a
stalwart democrat. His wife, whose maiden name was
Mary Alice Sellers, survives him and maintains her
home at Marshall, Missouri. Mr. and Mrs. McCray had
but one child, namely, Oran D., of this notice.

After completing the curriculum of the public schools
of Marshall, Missouri, Doctor McCray was matriculated
as a student in the Missouri Valley College, in which
excellent institution he was graduated in 1897. He then
attended the University of Missouri, at Columbia, for
two years, at the end of which he entered the University
Medical College, at Kansas City, Missouri, being gradu-
ated in that institution in 1901, with the degree of
Doctor of Medicine. Doctor McCray received his initial
practice as a physician and surgeon at Carrolton, Mis-
souri, where he maintained his professional headquarters
for two .years. In 1903 he came to Caddo County and
for one year practiced at Anadarko, whence he removed
to Binger, where he has since resided with the exception
of one year spent in Clovis, New Mexico. His offices
are on Elm Street and in connection with his life work
he is a member of the Oklahoma State Medical Society,
the Caddo County Medical Society and the American
Medical Association. His political allegiance is given
to the democratic party and in 1907 he was elected
coroner of Caddo County and he held that office until
it was abolished by the Legislature. He served for
several years as health officer at Binger and in every
way possible he contributes of his time and means to
the general weal. He is a member of the Congrega-
tional Church and affiliates with Anadarko Lodge,
Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons. He is an ex-mem-
ber of the following organizations : Independent Order

of Odd Fellows, Benevolent and Protective Order of
Elks, Brotherhood of American Yeomen, and the Ancient
Order of United Workmen.

At Binger, in 1906, Doctor McCray was married to
Miss Florence Biseh, a daughter of William Risch, a
retired business man at Binger. This union has been
prolific of two children: George, born January 19,

1909; and Kenneth, born January 6, 1912.

Porter T. Ragland. The experiences of Mr. Ragland
as a pioneer of Oklahoma are not only interesting and
serve to throw light on early conditions in the terri-
tory, but are also instructive and encouraging to the
ambitious youth of the present time. He lived in the
territory under adverse and trying conditions but is
the character of man who profits by experience and
makes each obstacle only a stepping stone to higher
and better things.

Born in Barren County, Kentucky, June 13, 1876,

Porter T. Ragland when a small boy came west with I
his father, driving overland to Southwestern Kansas,
where the family lived for six years. Before leaving 9
Kentucky he had attended one term of school and spent I
three terms at Springfield, Kansas. The Ragland home. I|
in Kansas, established in 1884, was the first built in 1
Seward County. In 1889 his father was one of the |
pioneers of the original Oklahoma Territory, and at the I
opening of public lands acquired town lots in King- jj
fisher. Later the family located on a farm immediately |
west of Oklahoma City, that farm being now included 1
within the corporation limits. The elder Ragland later
made the run into what was known as the Pottawotamie
County, entering at Tecumseh, then into the Cheyenne
and Arapaho Indian country through Cloud Chief, then
into the Cherokee strip through Perry, and finally into
the Kickapoo country. This probably establishes a
record for entering public land areas opened to settle-
ment such as few men in Oklahoma have equalled. Mr. J
Ragland's father is now living on a fine farm near the
town of Harrah in Oklahoma County.

Porter T. Ragland, who was thirteen years old when
he came to Oklahoma, attended one of the first public
schools organized in Oklahoma County. It was taught
by Mrs. B. F. Crozier in a ten by twelve room of her little
home near Oklahoma City. There were no desks, and the I
pupils sat on rude benches. The next term of school |
he attended was taught by William Guernsey in his lit- I
tie home on the site of the present Washington School
in Oklahoma City. The family then moved to a farm
six miles northwest of the city, and while there he at-
tended school two years more, equipping himself for
teaching and receiving his first certificate at the age of
seventeen. For a number of years Mr. Ragland followed
teaching as a profession and there are many men and
women in Oklahoma who sat under his instruction and
have grateful memories of his schoolmastership. His first
school was in the Pleasant Hill district six miles south-
east of Edmond during the year 1894-95. The salary
paid him, $28.00 a month, was the highest given to
any teacher in the rural district at that time. Subse- I
quently he taught two terms twenty miles east of Purcell
in a log building. This building was 20 by 24 feet, ■
there was no chinking between the bare logs, and
humble and rude though its accommodations were the.
school had an enrollment of 114 pupils. O. G. MeGehee,
treasurer of the board of education of the district, was
one of his pupils, and twenty of the scholars were older
than the teacher. During the summer following the ,
second term Mr. Ragland attended a business college ,
in Oklahoma City, following which he taught three ,
terms in the Star district of the former Kickapoo Indian ,

country, This was followed by a term at Harmony and 0

for three years he was superintendent of schools at . I j,
Harrah. In 1904 Mr. Ragland was nominee of the j
republican party for county superintendent of schools, ,j
and was defeated by Laura Whistler, the democratic j
nominee, by 156 votes.

About that time he made up his mind to leave educa- jj
tional work and establish himself in some permanent j,
business or profession. With that object in view in
1905 he entered the School of Pharmacy of the Uni- j.
versity of Oklahoma, and was graduated June 13, 1907.
Four days later he found himself in the employ of the j
Carson Drug Company at Tecumseh. On June 17, 1909,

Mr. Ragland, with his wife, his baby; fifty cents in money
and a bull dog, entered the drug business in Harrah. Six
years have passed, and in that time he has built up a I
profitable business. His is the only drug store in the
town, and the stock is as large, varied and up to date ^

as can be found in any other store in towns of the same ' <

size in Oklahoma. Mr. Ragland celebrated a quarter

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2017

century ’s continued residence in Oklahoma in the Thanks-
giving season of 1915, and during all that time he has
never crossed the state borders. During his residence at
Harrah he served four and a half years as postmaster,
and in 1915 was honored by election to the office of
mayor. While in Tecumseh he was for one term police
judge. As a citizen of Harrah he has been energetic,
public spirited and progressive, and partially due to his
efforts the town has one of the most modern brick school
buildings found in any of the small towns of the state,
constructed at a cost of $10,000.

In Oklahoma City, January 27, 1897, Mr. Eagland mar-
ried Miss Clare House. Their two children are Oscar,
aged fifteen, and Marguerite, aged three. Mr. Eagland
has three brothers and one sister : E. E. Eagland, a farm-
er living near Harrah; Neil Eagland, in the lumber and
milling business at Arrow Springs, Colorado; E. M.
Eagland, who lives with his father on the farm near
Harrah; and Mrs. Eoss Wood, of Oklahoma City.
Mr. Eagland is a member of the Christian Church, is
affiliated with Lodge No. 375, Ancient Eree and Ac-
cepted Masons, at Harrah, with the Modern Woodmen of
America, and belongs to the Oklahoma Pharmaceutical
Association. He is also president of the board of. educa-
tion of Harrah, a position for which his long experience
as a teacher has given him eminent qualifications.

C. A. Eisher. The career of C. A. Eisher is an expres-
sion of practical and diversified activity, and in its
range has invaded the realms of education, business,
finance and politics, all of which have profited by the
breadth and conscientiousness which are distinctive char-
acteristics of his character and labors. Mr. Eisher came
to Oklahoma with the opening of the Cherokee Strip, in
1893, and for several years was engaged as an educator,
following which he spent several years in Texas in a
business venture. Since 1900 he has been identified with
financial affairs in Oklahoma, and has been a factor in
the development of one of the soundest institutions of
Kiowa County, the Eirst National Bank of Gotebo, of
which he is cashier.

Mr. Eisher belongs to a family which came to America
during the seventeenth century from England and settled
in North Carolina, from whence its members spread to
various states in the South and Middle West. His father,
James A. Eisher, was born in Ohio in 1840, and as a
young man removed to Pine Valley, Warren County,
Indiana, where he was married to Anna H. Bradley,
who was born in 1844 at Winchester, Virginia. After
many years passed in agricultural pursuits in the Hoosier
state, Mr. Eisher removed to Seward County, Kansas,
where he located on a farm in the vicinity of the village
of Liberal, and there continued to be engaged in farm-
ing and stock raising until his death, which occurred in
1893. Mrs. Fisher, who survives her husband, resides
at Port Arthur, Texas, and is seventy-one years of age.
During the Civil war, James A. Fisher joined the Union
army, enlisting from Warren County, Indiana, in the
110th Eegiment, Indiana Volunteer Infantry, with which
he served three years, proving a faithful and valiant
soldier. He was a lifelong member of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, to which Mrs. Eisher still belongs.
They became the parents of four children, as follows:
C. A., of this review; Clinton, who was a stockman
and farmer near Liberal, Kansas, and died at the
age of twenty-seven years; L. B., who is a druggist
and merchant at Port Arthur, Texas; and Mabel M.,
who is the wife of Eugene Davis, who is in the refining
department of the Texas Befining Company, at Port
Arthur.

C. A. Fisher was born at Pine Valley, Warren County,
Indiana, January 1, 1865, and was reared on his father’s

farm, where he spent the summer months in assisting in
its operation, while in the winter terms he attended the
district schools. Later he supplemented this training by
a course at Purdue University, Lafayette,- Indiana, and
on leaving that institution entered upon his career as
an educator. For three years Mr. Fisher taught schools
in various parts of Indiana, Missouri and Kansas, and
in 1893, when the Cherokee Strip was thrown open,
came to Enid, where he was appointed superintendent
of schools. This office he retained for three years, as
one of the popular and efficient instructors of the new
country, but in 1896 he gave up the cap and . gown of
the educator to enter business life, as the proprietor of
a real estate venture at Port Arthur, Texas, which he
continued until 1900, when he became assistant cashier
of the First National Bank. His promotion to the
cashiership soon followed, he being the incumbent of
that position from 1902 until 1908, and in the latter
year he came to Gotebo, Kiowa County, Oklahoma, to
accept the office of cashier of the Bank of Gotebo. In
1913, with other progressive business men and financiers
of this place, Mr. Fisher, founded and organized the
Eirst National Bank of Gotebo, which threw open its
doors to the public in May of that year. This has grown
consistently and is now one of the recognized institu-
tions of the county and one which has won and retained
the confidence and patronage of the people. The institu-
tion has a capital stock of $25,000, with $3,000 surplus,
and its present officers are: president, M. F. Pierce, a
leading farmer and stockman of Kiowa County, well
known in Gotebo, where he has large interests; vice
president, C. M. Haxton; cashier, C. A. Eisher, and
assistant cashier, T. J. Howe. The modern bank build-
ing, a handsome and substantial structure, was completed
in September, 1913, and in the building the postoffice
also has quarters. Mr. Eisher is an experienced, capable
and careful financier, who safely conserves the interests
of the bank’s depositors, and in whom they have learned
to place the fullest trust. In addition to his duties
at the bank, he is also looking after the people’s finan-
cial interests in the capacity of city treasurer, an office
to which he was elected on the republican ticket. His
fraternal connections include membership in Gotebo
Lodge No. 305, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and
Lodge No. 881, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks,
of Hobart, in both of which he has numerous friends.

On April 3, 1888, at Lancaster, Missouri, where he
was teaching school, Mr. Eisher was united in marriage
with Miss A. M. Potter, daughter of the late W. S.
Potter, a farm owner of Lancaster, now deceased. To
this union one child, Helen, was born, March 6, 1909,
she now being a student in the graded school at Gotebo.

Ben W. Eiley. While he has been successful in busi-
ness throughout a period covering at least forty years in
various southwestern states, Ben W. Eiley has also been
successful in politics, though not so much from the stand-
point of elective offices as of influential participation in
governmental affairs for the sake of the public welfare.
Ben W. Eiley is an eminent representative of that
class of Americans who advocate playing the political
game square. His success probably is best attested
by the fact that in the four years he was secretary and
chairman of the state election board there were few
criticisms of his work and no contest, a record that
brought him unsolicited an unqualified endorsement from
Governor Cruce, under whom he served. Mr. Eiley has
lived in Oklahoma for about thirteen years, was formerly
a resident of El Eeno, and is now in Oklahoma City, his
office being in the Mercantile Building and his home
at 1501 West Thirty-first Street.

Ben W. Eiley was born at Sutton, Worcester County,

2018

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Massachusetts. His mother’s family were the Wood-
burys, who for generations have been prominent in New
England affairs. Through his mother Mr. Riley is
descended from the first settlers of Massachusetts. One
of them was the first representative of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony to England, and protected those charged
with witchcraft at Salem and assisted them in reaching
safety in the Roger Williams Colony in Rhode Island.
Two of the ancestors were minute-men and participated
in the first fight at Lexington and Concord. One was
the first collector of port at Boston. The old Woodbury
home, surrounded by eighty acres, granted by the Massa-
chusetts Bay Colony, is still in possession of the family
at Sutton, Massachusetts. Mr. Riley’s sisters have taken
an active interest in the Daughters of the American
Revolution and Colonial Dames. One sister is the wife
of C. A. Pratt, an active banker and business man at
Little Rock, Arkansas, and for a number of years a
director in the Iron Mountain Railway. Mr. Riley’s
father’s family were early settlers of Rochester, New
York, and materially assisted in the growth of that city.

When Mr. Riley was a baby his parents settled in
Sandusky, Ohio. His father was an ardent supporter
of Yallandingham, the Ohioan who led the opposition
to the prosecution of the Civil war in the North, and
in consequence of this affiliation Mr. Riley ’s life in
Sandusky was not in harmony with the people during the
Civil war, and about the close of that struggle the
family removed to Jefferson City, Missouri. The recol-
lections of Ben W. Riley of Reconstruction days are
not pleasant, owing to the bitter feeling that remained
after the war between the adherents of both sides. In
the meantime he had received his education in common
schools, and during the late ’70s he attended school at
the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for two years,
and finished his education in Holy Cross College at
Worcester, Massachusetts. Mr. Riley’s father was a
Catholic and his mother a Protestant, and though bap-
tized and confirmed as a Catholic he has himself not
been an active member of any church.

Mr. Riley studied law at Jefferson City, Missouri, but
never entered formal practice, choosing a business career
instead. He served a term as state librarian of Missouri
and first became interested in polities in that state during
the campaign for governor between Crittenden and
Hockaday. He was a member of the convention which
nominated Governor Crittenden, and represented that
governor at the registration of voters in St. Louis dur-
ing a trying political period. Later Mr. Riley became
identified with the Gould railway system in the hotel
and eating house business conducted along the lines, and
was in the business through Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas
and Texas.

He lived for a number of years at Little Rock, Arkan-
sas, and was especially active in democratic politics
while there. He served as a member of the city council
and took part in the campaign ,that resulted in the
election of United States Senator Clarke. While living
in Texas he took an active part in the campaign that
resulted in the nomination and election of “Buck”
Killgore for Congress, and was also a persistent sup-
porter of James Hogg in his campaign for attorney -
general and later for governor. He helped to organize
and was first lieutenant of the Eagle Light Battery in
Arkansas, and was a member of the Reagan Guards
of Texas.

Mr. Riley came to Oklahoma in 1902, locating in El
Reno and engaging in the hotel business. He was mayor
of the city during the closing territorial days and during
the first few years of statehood. During his administra-
tion the installation of the city ’s paving and sewer system
was begun and practically completed. He was a member

of the El Reno Board of Education and served a term
as president of the Commercial Club. Mr. Riley took an
active interest in all conventions in Oklahoma to bring
about statehood. He supported the policy to make an
individual state of old Oklahoma Territory. He has
attended every democratic convention since statehood,
and was temporary and permanent secretary of the con-
vention which ratified Governor Cruee’s nomination. He
contributed much in money and influence towards Cruce ’s
election in 1910, and was a member of the finance com-
mittee in that campaign. Governor Cruce after his
inauguration appointed Mr. Riley secretary of the state
election board, and towards the close of the administra-
tion he was made chairman of the board. The success
he achieved in these positions was marked because of the
opposition he encountered at the hands of the republican
party and owing to his diplomatic and praiseworthy
handling of the innumerable details involved in the
appointment of county election boards and the conduct
of many special elections. Mr. Riley has never been a
candidate for any state office, and the only one he has
filled was under Governor Cruce. For six years he
served as chairman of the County Central Committee of
Canadian County, and was an active member of the
campaign committee both times that Senator Robert L.
Owen was elected United States senator.

Joseph Mosier. The Osage tribe has had few more
prominent names among its citizens than that of Mosier.
Several of the family are named in this publication
and one of them requiring individual reference was
Joseph Mosier.

Joseph Mosier was a son of Thomas Mosier, a French-
man, who identified himself with the Osage people in the
last century and worked as a blacksmith among the
tribe. He married an Osage woman, Basille Ahsinkuh.
In the early ’50s they moved to Neosho County, Kansas.

It was in Neosho County, Kansas, that Joseph Mosier
grew up. He received his early education in the Jesuit
Mission of that county, and as a young man received
one of the head-rights in the lands of Kansas. The
Mosiers were one of twenty-five Osage families who were
allotted land in that state by the government. Joseph
Mosier and his two brothers, Thomas and John, all
enlisted in the Union army, being members of the Ninth
Kansas Cavalry, and they were in active service through-
out the conflict along the Kansas-Missouri border and
in Arkansas and Indian Territory. They were finally
mustered out in 1865.

Joseph Mosier, who was born August 5, 1841, had
a very brief though honorable career. His death occurred
near the old Osage Mission in Southern Kansas, January
7, 1871. His home was attacked in the night time when
twelve inches of snow covered the ground. He was
dragged in his night clothes, the house was set on fire,
and he and his wife, who carried her son William, then
eighteen months of age, in her arms, walked five miles
to the nearest house barefoot and scantily clad. Joseph
Mosier never left his bed after that, and died of pneu-
monia. Due to exposure and internal injuries received
his widow died nearly six years later, on October 31,
1876. She was born in 1848.

Thomas Mosier, who in his time was one of the
most prominent members of the Osage tribe, and who
died at Pawhuska, September 20, 1912, was one of the
children of Thomas Mosier by his Osage wife, and was a
brother of Joseph Mosier, mentioned elsewhere in these
pages.

Born among the Osages in Southern Kansas, December
18, 1843, Thomas Mosier grew up there, received his
education in the old Osage Mission, and was a youthful
soldier with his brothers in the Ninth Kansas Cavalry

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2019

of the Union army. After the war he returned to South-
ern Kansas and remained with his tribe until they gave
up their lands there and moved across the line into
Indian Territory in 1872.

His name is of particular importance because of his
prominent activities as an Osage citizen. He filled many
official positions such as delegate to Washington, as
national secretary of the Osage Council, national inter-
preter, United States interpreter in the Federal courts
of Topeka, Fort Smith and other court centers, and
was also connected with the department in charge of
the leasing of Osage lands at Pawhuska.

William Thomas Mosier, who spent practically all
his life in those various sections of country occupied by
the Osages, both in Kansas and Oklahoma, has been
primarily a merchant, for many years clerked in the
agency store of the Osage country and latterly was
engaged in merchandising on his own account, and is
now one of the chief owners of improved real estate
at Pawhuska.

it a was born at Neosho County, Kansas, November
1, j.<567, a son of Joseph and Nancy (Waller) Mosier,
and a member of the prominent Mosier family elsewhere
referred to. After the death of his parents he was
reared in the home of his uncle, the late Thomas Mosier,
until he was fourteen years of age. Since then he has
made his own way in the world. He had some school-
ing in the Pawhuska. Government School, and spent
part of two terms, during 1883-84, in the old Osage
Mi in, now St. Paul, Kansas. On July 5, 1885, he
loea.jd at Pawhuska, and during the summer was engaged
in running a mowing machine, and secured work for the
winter in a general merchandise store trading with the
Osage Indians on the Osage Reservation. For ten years
he was an employe in one store at Pawhuska, begin-
ning with wages of eighteen dollars a month and board
and finally being paid seventy-five dollars a month. He
was hired on account of his ability to speak the Osage
tongue, though otherwise he had no experience in mer-
cantile life. In 1901 Mr. Mosier engaged in business
for himself with two partners. He bought at the
administrator’s sale the stock of E. B. Gravelt. After
six months in business he incorporated the firm of the
Osage Mercantile Company, and was its vice president
until he sold his interests in 1914. Mr. Mosier had been
closely and actively indentified with merchandising at
Pawhuska for fifteen years up to 1914.

’His present interests are of large scope and import-
ance. He is vice president of the Mercantile Real Estate
Company, which owns the Osage Mercantile Company
Building, the best business structure at Pawhuska. This
company also owns the postoffiee or Oklahoma Building.
Mr. Mosier is a director in the Pawhuska Oil and Gas
Company. Individually he owns the Osage Agency
Building at the corner of Main and Osage avenues.
This is the chief landmark in the city, having been
built by the government in 1872. It is a venerable stone
structure, and within and around it are associated mueh
of the history and life of the Osage people during the
past forty years. Mr. Mosier also owns a substantial
home at 133 Osage Avenue, in which he has lived for the
past fifteen years. He and members of his family
through allotment have 4,200 acres of Osage land. For
four years he was a director in one of Pawhuska ’s banks.

In politics Mr. Mosier has been throughout most of
his career a good democrat. He served on the first city
council at Pawhuska and was one of the members that
drafted the present charter providing for a commission
form of government. During 1891-92-93 he was clerk
of the Osage council and prior to that had been permit

clerk. In earlier days he knew every person residing
on the Osage reservation. Mr. Mosier was reared in
the Catholic Church. He is now the second oldest living
Mason among the Osage Indians. He was one of the
charter members of Washesha Lodge No. 110, A. F.
and A. M., at Pawhuska, and has also taken thirty-two
degrees in the Scottishr Rite, being affiliated with the
Consistory at Guthrie, the Knight Templar Commandery
at Pawhuska, and Akdar Temple of the Mystic Shrine
at Tulsa. He was also one of the charter members of
the local Elks lodge, but his since given up that affilia-
tion.

On ' May 29, 1895, at Pawhuska Mr. Mosier married
Louisa Prudom. She was born on the Caney River in
Osage County in February, 1877, and is also of Osage
Indian blood mingled with French. Her parents were
Charles N. and Lydia (Nowberry) Prudom, both of
whom were born in Kansas and are now living in Texas.
The children born to Mr-, and Mrs. Mosier are enumer-
ated as follows: Charles Prudom Mosier of Pawhuska

married Louisa Plomondom, youngest daughter of Mr.
and Mrs. Moses Plomondom. The other children are
John Thomas, Edwin P., Luther P., Christeen A., James
Russell, and the youngest, Margaret, died in infancy.

George William Frass. One of the interesting young
men of half Indian blood in the western part of Okla-
homa is George William Frass, whose operations as a
stock man and farmer and whose good citizenship has
made him an important factor in the community of
Calumet. He represents one of the best families pro-
duced by the commingling of sturdy white stock and
the native Indian, and while the members of the earlier
generations were closely identified with the life of the
plain and the frontier, the younger ones exhibit that com-
bination of energy and culture which are the features of
modern Oklahoma.

It was in an Indian camp on the Cheyenne and
Arapahoe Indian Reservation that George William Frass
was born October 29, 1878. His father, William Frass,
who was born at San Antonio, Texas, in 1850 of German
parentage, and who died at Kansas City, Missouri, April
24, 1909, was a picturesque character in the old Indian
Territory. For a number of years he lived as a cowboy
on ranch and range, and later became a military beef
contractor at old Fort Supply, Fort Reno and the
Cantonment. From about 1873 he engaged in the cat-
tle business on the open range of Indian Territory, and
his interests as a cattle man continued until his death.
William Frass in 1874 married a northern Cheyenne
Indian woman. She was the mother of three children:
Emma, now the wife of A. Kinsley, who is of Winnebago
Indian blood and is now in the United States Indian
service at Cantonment, Oklahoma. Rosa is the wife of
Isaac Seneca, who carries the blood of the New York
tribe of Seneca Indians, and is now in the United States
Indian service at Chilocco, Oklahoma; and George
William Frass, who is the youngest and the only son.
It should be noted that Isaac Seneca, who married
Mr. Frass’ sister, was a graduate of the Carlisle
(Pennsylvania) Indian School, and is well remembered
by devotees of inter-collegiate football since he was one
of the strongest players of the Carlisle team and won a
place on the All-American Football team.

George William Frass received his education in the
Government Indian school at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and
the Haskell Institute at Lawrence, Kansas. He finished
with a business course in Oklahoma City, and then re-
turned to western Oklahoma and has since been active
as a cattle man at Calumet, and owns some valuable
farming interests in that section. He inherited from his

2020

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Indian forebears a natural expertness in all the vigor-
ous sports of outdoors, and from youth up has been an
expert horseman. For a number of years he traveled
with a wild west show as a cowboy rough rider. Frater-
nally he is a member of the Masonic Order, and is very
active in the Baptist Church, being a member of the
Gospel team of that church. He married Miss Asie B.
Lazzelle, of Oklahoma City.

Hartson D. Fillmore, M. D. Few members of the
Oklahoma medical fraternity have a broader range of
experience and training for their profession than Doctor
Fillmore, who has practiced in this state nearly fifteen
years, and is now the leading physician and surgeon at
Martha, in Jackson County.

A few interesting facts should be recorded concerning
his ancestry. The Fillmores are of Seotch-Englisli
descent, and have been in America since colonial days.
Doctor Fillmore ’s great-grandfather was a cousin of
Millard Fillmore, the Vice President who succeeded Gen-
eral Taylor in the presidential chair. The branch of the
family to which Doctor Fillmore belongs has given a
number of names of more than local reputation to musical
circles. From the vicinity of Buffalo, New York, this
branch of the Fillmores moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where
Doctor Fillmore’s grandfather spent all his life. He
was a mechanical engineer, and for many years served
as tax assessor in the City of Cincinnati.

Doctor Fillmore himself was born at Newport, on the
opposite side of the Ohio River, in Kentucky, April 25,
1877. His father, Ebenezer Fillmore, was born in Ohio
in the early ’50s, and died at Cincinnati in 1878, the
year following Doctor Fillmore ’s birth. He was a steam-
boat captain, and had command of the steamboat Bos-
tonia, which plied between Cincinnati and New Orleans,
his headquarters being in the former city. Captain Fill-
more- was a member of the Methodist Church. He mar-
ried Zuba Dustin, who was born near Lexington, Ken-
tucky, in 1847, and now lives with her only son and child,
Doctor Fillmore, at Martha.

In 1880 the widowed mother removed to Lawrence
County, Tennessee, where Doctor Fillmore spent his youth
and gained his early education, graduating from high
school in 1895. Unlike most boys of that age, he had
fully determined upon his future profession, and in order
to secure the best possible advantages and at the same
time pay his own way, he went to New York City and
found a position in the city dispensary, in which he
remained as an employee until 1897. In the meantime
he attended lectures in the medical department of the
University of New York, and on November 19, 1895,
entered the City Hospital, from which he received a
diploma May 19, 1897.

In April, 1898, at the beginning of the war against
Spain, he sailed from New York in charge of the hospital
on board the auxiliary cruiser Panther, with the First
Marine Battalion. The Panther touched at Key West,
and soon afterwards engaged in the bombardment of
Matanzas and Cardenas, Cuba. The vessel then sailed
to the Bay of Guantanamo, where the first actual land
battle took place between the Americans and Spaniards,
Colonel Eliott being in command of the First Marine
Battalion. Throughout the entire course of actual war-
fare in Cuban waters Doctor Fillmore was connected with
the United States Navy, and was then transferred under
contract to the United States Hospital Ship Missouri,
and remained in that service as long as the hospital
was in commission.

His experience as a medical student in New York
and in the hospital service there and in the navy depart-
ment was of itself a broad and liberal equipment for
professional work, but after being released from the

navy he entered the University of Tennessee and was
graduated from the medical department with his degree 1
M. D. in 1901. Doctor Fillmore began practice at ]
Lawrenceburg, in Lawrence County, Tennessee, in the |
spring of 1901, but in the same year moved out to I

Oklahoma, and became one of the pioneer physicians in |
Johnson County. He practiced in that section until 1911,
and for the following two years was health officer in
Coal County, Oklahoma, and during 1913 spent a short
time in Ada, and since 1914 has been located at Martha,
where he is already well established in a medical and
surgical practice, his home and offices being on Main
Street.

Doctor Fillmore is a democrat, is a member of the
Methodist Eniseopal Church, belongs to the county and
state medical societies, and in fraternal matters is affili-
ated with Martha Lodge No. 278, Ancient Free and
Accepted Masons, with McAlester Consistory of the
thirty-second degree Scottish Rite, and with Martha
Camp of the Woodmen of the World. On May 17, 1905,
in Johnson County, Oklahoma, he married Miss Annie A.
Hill, who came to this state from Arkansas. They are
the parents of two children: Hartson William, born
September 1, 1907; and Clyde Chastaine, born November
25, 1909.

James A. Utterback. The successful man in any
walk of life is he whose vigilance enables him to recog-
nize opportunity when she comes a-knocking to make
the most advantageous circumstances. Mr. Utterback,
through his persistence and determination to succeed,
has built up a splendid business at Bridgeport, where
he owns one of the largest and best general merchandise
stores. He is interested in public affairs and at one time
gave efficient service as city councilman.

At Riverton, Fremont County, Iowa, October 14, 1872,
occurred the birth of James A. Utterback, whose ances-
tors were natives of Holland, whence they immigrated to ;
America in the colonial times and located in Pennsyl- <
vania. He is a son of Harrison and Mary (Allison) '
Utterback, the former of whom was born in Illinois, in s
1847, and the latter was born in Missouri. Harrison Utter- <
back accompanied his parents to Riverton, Iowa, in 1853, : J
at which time he was but six years of age. He has j
resided in the vicinity of Riverton during the major por-
tion of his life thus far and has devoted his attention to s
farming and to conducting a general store. Although "
very young at the time, he served for four months in the *
Union army in the Civil war, just prior to its close. He N
is a democrat in politics and is deacon in the Christian ®
Church at Riverton. He and his wife have seven children, If
concerning whom the following brief data are here in- ! E
corporated: William resides at Binger, Oklahoma, being 311
a farmer and banker; Jesse lives at Tulsa, this state; Pr
James A. is the subject of this sketch; Simpson con- P
ducts a telephone exchange at Imogene, Iowa; Emaline is 118
the wife of George Zimmerman, a farmer near River- 1118
ton, Iowa; Mary is the wife of Hawes Yates, of River- *ja
ton; and Myrtle is married and resides on a farm in P11
Iowa. 111

James A. Utterback passed his boyhood and youth on 1
his father ’s farm and attended the public schools of I®
Riverton, Iowa. After reaching his majority he operated i 11118
his father ’s farm for seven years and in 1900 came to i Ja!
Oklahoma, taking up a claim at Colony, in Washita l .
County. In .1903 he sold his claim and located in the **
vicinity of Bridgeport, where he farmed for two years, , 01
at the end of which he opened up a general store in this °?
city, the same being located on Market Street. In ^
recent years he has enlarged his place of business andi .
he now has the distinction of conducting one of the best' 111
equipped and most modern general stores in this section. ®

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2021

He caters to a high-class trade in both Caddo and Blaine
eounties. In politics he is a stalwart democrat and he
served as city councilman. He affiliates with Bridgeport
Lodge, No. 229, Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons ; and
with the Valley of Guthrie Consistory, No. 1, being a
thirty-second degree Mason. He is an ex-member of
the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. Mr. Utterback
is an up-to-date business man, thoroughly alive to every
chance for advancement.

In Eockport, Missouri, in 1892, was celebrated the
marriage of Mr. Utterback to Miss Ida Davis, a daughter
i of the late Benjamin Davis, formerly a farmer in Mis-
souri. Mr. and Mrs. Utterback have two children: Leta
: is the wife of Francis Labounty, a merchant at Watseca,

1 Illinois; and Cleo is at home with her parents.

George Barnett has been closely associated with Okla-
e homa City’s growth and development for nearly twenty -
i five years, having located in that prairie town about two
5, years after the opening. As a merchant he conducted a
1 business which made him familiar to thousands of local
re citizens, and since retiring from business he has given
'n his time partly to the administration of public affairs
tr as a county commissioner and also to his private invest-
ments in local real estate.

George Barnett was born in New Orleans, Louisiana,
iy February 28, 1859, a son of Joseph and Theresa (Hart)

ig- Barnett, his father a native of Berlin, Gernlany, and his

te mother of Leeds, England. Joseph Barnett joined the
ik, Confederate Army during the Civil war, and saw two
«1, years of service under General Beauregard. Both be-
!te fore and after the war he was prominently identified
ise with business affairs in New Orleans,
me George Barnett finished his education in the Central
Boys’ High School in New Orleans, and at the age of
IJ2, eighteen entered the cotton business, following that two
:es- years. His business career has made him a cosmopolitan,
I to and he is not only familiar with all the larger trade

syl- centers of America, but has spent much time abroad,

on) This experience was gained largely during his work as a
, in silk buyer in foreign countries. He imported large
ter- quantities of silk to the United States, and for several
S3, years was engaged in the business of selling silks to
has jobbers in the United States.

poi. When George Barnett came to Oklahoma City in the
nto spring of 1891 he found a raw western town,, but one
with a promise of splendid development, and it was with
^ an eye to the future that he determined upon making it
ge his permanent home. All the older citizens of Oklahoma
jjjj,, City will recall his place of business as a wholesale and
jteil Tetail cigar dealer, which was first in the Grand Avenue
e C Hotel, and later in the fine store at the corner of Grand
jj. and Broadway in the City Building. He was the active
ate!l proprietor of that business until he sold out to it's
c#’ present owner in 1907. In the meantime Mr. Barnett
. y had invested extensively all the capital he could com-
LJ mand in real estate, and for many years has been a
v buyer and seller, and still owns some very handsome
;1T. properties. Mr. Barnett still maintains a business office
111 in the State National Bank Building.

In 1912 Mr. Barnett was nominated by the democratic
I j party and elected a member of the board of county eom-
® °i missioners. This was an unusual distinction, since he
etae was the first democrat ever elected to this office from
;° the city district. His two years of service were marked
j™"1 with faithful and conscientious work for the reduction
12 Le of tax burdens and the placing of the county’s affairs
Je® on a purely business basis. Mr. Barnett claims and is
in tins given credit for reducing the assessment values from
& “ $129,612 to $94,928 in 1913 and from $118,322 to $92,771
§ and jn 1914. While this reduction was obviously in the inter-
lie» est of the tax payers, at the same time he directed his
section

efforts to another phase of the county’s fiscal affairs so
that public administration did not thereby suffer. As a
result of reforms brought about during his membership
on the board the county warrants, which had for several
years been circulating often a number of months after
issue and bearing 6 per cent interest, were placed on a
cash basis, which saved many thousand dollars of interest
charges. In other ways expenses of the fiscal adminis-
tration were reduced so as to approximate a savings to
the tax payers of $500,000 during the two years Mr.
Barnett was on the board.

At Little Bock, Arkansas, January 18, 1880, Mr.
Barnett married Miss Corinne Winter, daughter of Moses
and Sarah Winter of Fort Smith, Arkansas. Mrs. Bar-
nett’s father was born in Hungary, and her mother in
Alsace-Lorraine, France. They have two sons: Joseph,
born in 1890, and now in the State School Land Depart-
ment of Oklahoma; and Louis, born in 1892, now in
the county treasurer’s office of Oklahoma County. While
Mr. Barnett is not an orthodox in religion, he is a
humanitarian in principle and action, and has done good
wherever and whenever he could. Fraternally he is affili-
ated with the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks
and the Knights of Pythias. He and his family reside
at 217 West Fifth Street.

James A. Emmons. On the Eural Eoute No. 3 out
of Pawnee, on a beautiful country homestead known as
Wildflower Farm, lives one of the most interesting char-
acters in Oklahoma, a pioneer of thq Cherokee Strip,
and with a record of experience in the West such as few
living men can now equal.

James A. Emmons was born December 29, 1845, at
Guyandotte, Virginia, a son of James and Nancy Smith
Emmons. He was the first in a family of nine children.
Some of his maternal forebears were early settlers in
New England, probably at Boston, since a family of
the name has been identified with business affairs in that
city for many years. Some of them moved to New
Jersey and thence on to Philadelphia. Mr. Emmons ’
grandfather was a soldier under Washington in the Con-
tinental army, and after the close of the war took up
his home in Philadelphia, where he learned the trade of
cabinet or furniture maker. In a few years there opened
a prospect for taking up his revolutionary land grant,
and he started for the border. At that time the Indians
were troublesome in the Ohio Territory, and in the
meantime he awaited for quiet at Guyandotte, Virginia.
There he married a Miss Holenbaugh, whose family had
come from North Carolina for the same purpose, namely
to settle in 1 the Northwest. The fruit of this marriage
was James A. Emmons, Martin Luther Emmons and a
daughter Sarah Emmons, respectively the father, uncle
and aunt of James A.

James Emmons was born at Guyandotte, Virginia,
May 20, 1810, and died in the fall of 1888. He grew to
manhood and at the age of thirty-five in 1844 married
Miss Nancy Smith, who was born at Staunton, Virginia,
and died at Tecumseh, Nebraska, in the fall of 1902.
Miss Smith was a beautiful woman, with bright blue
eyes and coal black hair and fair complexion. She was
also of revolutionary stock.

In the brick home of these parents James A. Emmons
first saw the light of the sun on a cold December morn-
ing in 1845. In 1853 his father succumbed to the
wanderlust and started for the western frontier of Mis-
souri. The family embarked on the little Ohio Biver
steamer, Beveille, for Cincinnati, and there took passage
on the Golden State for St. Louis. James A. Emmons
recalls some of the incidents on landing in St. Louis,
remembers the ‘ ‘ runners ’ ’ calling the name of Hotel
Monroe and the Virginia House. He recalls the passage

2022

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

of the boat through the locks at Louisville. From St.
Louis the family steamed away up the Mississippi and
the Missouri on the boat St. Ange, under Captain Smith,
for Hill’s Landing in Carroll County, Missouri. There
they lived four years, the father taking up the busi-
ness of hemp, tobacco and grain shipping. While there
James A. Emmons attended a subscription school. In
the fall of 1856 the family were once more on the move,
this time for Omaha, Nebraska. They arrived at night-
fall at the site now occupied by that thriving city.
There James A. Emmons first saw an Indian camp, with
hundreds of fires gleaming from the woods that climbed
up the hillsides above the river. As he lay awake with
staring eyes in his stateroom he could hear the drums
and tom-toms and the weird music of their chanted
songs, and could see their strange dances around the
camp fires. He finally fell asleep to dream of Poca-
hontas, Captain Smith and all the Indian characters he
had read of. On the same evening he witnessed a ball
held in the new City of Omaha, attended by all the
pioneer settlers. He recalls the wonder and beauty of
that scene to the present time, with the splendid figures
of the happy young men and women, full of health and
hope, the curtsies of the ladies, the grand march, the
figures of the Virginia reel or the minuet. When he
awoke the following morning the steamer was running
rapidly down the muddy Missouri, his father having
concluded to make Sonora Island his landing place.
Sonora Island is an island in the Missouri River, included
in what is now the State of Nebraska.

Arriving there the father bought a lumber and shingle
machine, and set it up in the midst of a great forest
of tall cottonwood trees. Mr. Emmons has many in-
teresting recollections of that island, where he spent
several of the formative years of his youth. He and
the other boys of the country side enjoyed the very acme
of happiness in hunting squirrels, turkey, deer and other
small game, in fishing and in tracing the winged honey
bee to his tree. When he and his companions would
locate the home of the swarm, they would take their
little axes and work for half a day in chopping the giant
cottonwood. They would frequently secure as their
booty a big tub and sometimes two tubfulls of white
honey. In the woods could be found all kinds of fruit,
plums, June berries and blackberries. In the fall they
would gather the popcorn and the great sweet yellow
pumpkins, and their capacity for enjoyment was vastly
greater than that of the present pampered race of youth.
During the winter he and his companions attended a
school kept in a log building. Spelling was chiefly
emphasized in such schools, and all the scholars learned
spelling as one of their chief accomplishments. His
father finally sold out his lumber mill and went on a
farm, where the children again spent ideal days and
years.

Upon this happy pioneer life there finally came a
cloud. People began to talk of war, and in 1861 the
great national tragedy opened in the conflict between the
states. Mr. Emmons was then sixteen years of age. One
day he called upon his father for a half dollar, the first
requisition of that kind in his life. The older man looked
upon his son with surprise, and inquired as to the use
intended for such money. The boy promptly answered
that it was to buy a copy of Hardee’s Military Tactics
in order to get ready to fight for Virginia, his native
state. The half dollar was given, and the book was
bought, and young Emmons soon had all the neighboring
boys marking time, marching and standing guard, parad-
ing, and had organized a complete camp of aspiring
young soldiers. But a mother’s fears intervened to pre-
vent the enthusiasm of the boy from enlisting and going
away to the front. Like the wise woman she was, she

did not actually forbid him carrying out his designs, but
gave him an attractive substitute. She showed him how
much better it would be to become a sailor an occupation
which wovdd require clean clothes, with low quartered
shoes and a jacket of attractive blue. That idea took
hold, and at the age of seventeen, with the blessing of
Ms father and mother, and the precepts of the latter
impressed on his heart that he should not drink whiskey
nor gamble, should be for life, he broke home ties and
started down the river on the packet Emily, which plied
the river between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Omaha,
Nebraska. His commander was Capt. S. P. Ray, and he
was fortunately placed under the steward, Fred Harvey.
His first duties were those of knife shiner, and he took
care of all the silverware, counting and locking it up
three times a day. Cabin work was not agreeable and
seemed to offer little opportunity for learning naviga-
tion. In the following spring he went to the lower deck
in order to climb up, and the climbing was rapid and
apparently easy. He became the boy mate, then the boy
captain, and pilot, and for twelve years was in the steam-
boat business on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.

After giving up steamboating Captain Emmons went
to Sioux City, Iowa, and bought a stock of merchandise
and lumber, the latter to be used in the construction of
a store building. He had made up his mind to locate at
the crossing of the Northern Pacific over the Missouri
River, far up and away from civilization. He embarked
with his goods on a steamer, and after a voyage of a
thousand miles landed in August, 1872, and there set up
the first building on the location of what is now one of
the important cities of the Northwest. While building
his store Col. George W. Sweet came around and platted
the town, naming it Edwinton, in honor of the deceased
first chief engineer of the Northern Pacific Railway. On
first locating there his goods had been seized on the
ground that he was in Indian territory and had no gov-
ernment permission to trade. Later his property was
restored to him by Major General Hancock.

He had hardly reached his new location before making
up his mind that he could not get along without the pres-
ence of his sweetheart, who was then at Yankton, a thou-
sand miles away. Soon afterward he steamed down the
mighty river, and on the 18th of September on a beauti-
ful moonlight night at the home of her brother-in-law,
Dr. Franklin Wixon, the Reverend Doctor Ward in the
presence of a company of friends read the ceremony that
united the hearts and hands of Nina B. Burnham and
James A. Emmons for a life partnership. At 10 o ’clock on
the same night the steamboat Miner, with the bride and
groom and a large passenger list, started off up the river,
with the first bride and groom to arrive at old Edwinton,
now Bismarck, the capital of North Dakota. In passing
it may be noted that the pioneer citizens to this day do
not know who placed the hated name of Bismarck upon
their town.

Mr. Emmons and wife remained in Bismarck up to
1885, and prospered until the great capitol boom col-
lapsed through the greed of a dishonest governor, causing
them a loss of the fortune which had required years of
toil to accumulate. In 1873 Gen. Edwin S. McCook had
come to select three commissioners to organize the County
of Burleigh. Captain Emmons was selected as chairman
of the board, he being a democrat, and all the other
members republicans. He served as chairman of the
county board for ten years, and in that time put up all
the county buildings. He was then appointed by Judge
Shannon as United States Court Commissioner, and in
that office served three years. By a special act of the
Territorial Legislature he was designated to organize the
County of Emmons, which was named for him, and in
that work as in every other public capacity he performed

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2023

his duties with a strict fidelity to the public welfare.
A few years after locating at Bismarck, when General
Custer came to Fort Lincoln, he would allow no one else
to act as his captain and pilot in transferring the troops,
and Captain Emmons spoke the words of farewell to that
noted general when he started out on the fatal expedi-
tion which ended with the Custer massacre. After that
calamity it devolved upon Captain Emmons and Col. Wil-
liam Thompson, who had seen service under General
Custer, to break the news to the family at Fort Lincoln.
Mrs. Custer being the ranking lady at the fort they had
to. communicate their tragic intelligence to her first of
all. and it was a most trying ordeal for all concerned.

In 1883 the citizens of the village of Edwinton, now
Bismarck, raised a hundred thousand dollars in order to
build the capitol. Governor Ordway caused these funds
to be withdrawn from two reliable banks and deposited
in a bank which he had established himself. As a
result of this transfer and misuse of the funds, the citi-
zens who had so generously donated their cash and
credit were almost financially ruined. At that time
Mr. Emmons was associated with the First National
Bank and with William A. Hollenback in building a
three-story brick block, the finest steam heated building
at that time between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.
He had also been appointed by the Territorial Legisla-
ture as the commissioner to build a twenty-five thousand
dollar public school house. Through the treachery of the
governor this accumulation of responsibilities bore heav-
ily upon Captain Emmons, and when he left Bismarck
in May, 1885, having paid all his debts, he possessed
only $400. At that time he had a trunk full of worth-
less deeds to town lots of land, which he never recorded
until August, 1915.

Captain Emmons then brought his wife back to
Nebraska, and leaving her on the old homestead went
West to Leadville, Colorado, where he leased a mine
twelve miles up the Arkansas River. A short time pre-
viously three men had been blown to pieces in a blasting
explosion, and the cabin and all the equipment wrecked.
He engaged in mining there until his capital had been
depleted to $25, and then started back to Lincoln,
Nebraska, arriving there with only $10 in his pocket.

Captain Emmons has had almost a veteran’s share in
the newspaper profession. In 1877 he bought the Bis-
marck Tribune, a weekly paper to support the campaign
of Hon. Bartlett Tripp for Congress on the democratic
ticket. He conducted the paper altogether for about six
months, and at the close of the campaign sold it to Stan-
ley Huntley and Marshall Jewell, on credit. After his
mining ventures in Colorado, Captain Emmons again took
up the newspaper business, establishing the Nebraska
State Democrat, a weekly paper. J'his was in 1888. He
set up the plant in a new bank building in Lincoln.
Prior to the first issue he engaged a young lady to attend
a meeting out in the country at a school house, where
William Jennings Bryan, then unknown to fame, was to
make his maiden speech. The young lady returned with
an account of the meeting and a report of the speech,
and it was published in the first issue of Mr. Emmons’
paper. He continued in the newspaper business at Lin-
coln until 1892 and sold out and moved to Guthrie in
Oklahoma Territory. Here he became connected with
the West South, a populist newspaper, and was one of its
seditors until September, 1893.

On September 12, 1893, Captain Emmons set out for
Stillwater to register for a homestead in the Cherokee
Strip. Four days later, on the 16th of September,’ he was
one of the great horde of homeseekers who entered the
strip. He made the run on a very aged gray horse, and
ion the 20th located his homestead claim, now the nucleus
of the beautiful Wildfiower Farm, near Pawnee.

Captain Emmons has from the first taken a great
interest in developing this country. He has developed the
Egyptian wheat and Fetrita, a grain which Mr. Bryan
has prophesied will become the future breadstuff of the
world. In the organization of Pawnee County in the
early part of 1894 Governor Renfrew appointed Captain
Emmons one of the first board of commissioners, and he
was made chairman of the board and took a very impor-
tant part in organizing the county government. He
served three months, supervised the planning of the
court house and jail. His friend Charles E. Yandervoort
then took up his plans, organized a building company,
and constructed the court house and jail. This court
house was the first in Oklahoma and did not cost the tax
payers a single cent. Captain Emmons and his noble
wife have been farming in Pawnee County for twenty-
one years, and have never yet failed to raise a crop.
They plant from early spring until July, and then with
the help of the rains and the wonderful Oklahoma
climate, bring in their bounteous harvest. Captain
Emmons has for a number x>£ years been a correspondent
to some of the leading newspapers in the United States.

Mrs. James A. Emmons is likewise a pioneer of the
West, and her associations and experiences are such as to
deserve an individual sketch.

Nina Barbara Cole was born at Philadelphia April 15,
1853, a daughter of Howard M. and Louise (Torbert)
Cole. Her father, Howard M. Cole, served in the Mexi-
can war, according to the official information given by
the War Department, as a corporal in Company G of the
First Pennsylvania Infantry. He was mustered into
service December 17, 1846, was transferred to Company
F in the same regiment June 23, 1847, and was honor-
ably discharged July 28, 1848.

Howard M. Cole was a victim of the ill-fated steamer
San Francisco, and the following information concerning
that vessel is a close quotation from the Navy Depart-
ment Record. The steamer San Francisco was chartered
by the United States Quartermaster’s Department Octo-
ber 15, 1853, to transport the officers and men of the
Third United States Artillery from New York to Benicia,
California, and also carried the families of some of the
officers and other passengers. The vessel sailed from
New York December 22, 1853. Two days later, when
about three hundred miles from port, the engines gave
out, a heavy sea washed over the steamer, carrying away
the entire upper cabin and with it four officers, a number
of enlisted men, the wife of Major Taylor, the son of
Colonel Gates, commanding the regiment, and a number
of the citizen passengers. For four days there was a
constant succession of gales. On the 27th the bark
Kilby hove in sight, and her commander Captain Lowe
lay by the wrecked steamer until the 28th, when the sea
having abated in a measure a hawser was used to attach
the two vessels, and boats sent back and forth removed
the women and children, citizen passengers, about fifty
soldiers and some officers to the Kilby. Before the work
was completed a sudden squall of wind separated the two
vessels, the hawser parted and the vessels drifted apart.
The Kilby being unable to render further aid tried to
make an American port. She was picked up by the
packet ship Lucy Thompson and taken into New York.

On the 30th of December the ship Three Bells, Captain
Creighton, hove in sight of the San Francisco, laid by
her until January 3, 1854, by which time the waves had
sufficiently subsided for those left on the wreck to be
taken off. The next day the ship Antarctic, Captain
Stouffer, came to their relief and assisted in The rescue
of those for whom there was not room on the Three Bells.
Captain Watkins, the commander of the San Francisco,
was the last man to leave the steamer, and with his

2024

IISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

officers and crew was taken on board the Antarctic to
Liverpool, whither she was bound. Before leaving,
Captain Watson had the San Francisco scuttled, so she
sank as he was leaving. The Three Bells sailed for New
York, and largely owing to the hard work and self-
sacrificing efforts of its commander, Captain Creighton,
and his crew, the ship, though leaking badly, and with
her pumps constantly manned, finally came into safety.
The sufferings of the passengers on the Kilby were very
great, they were reduced to a few handfuls of parched
corn daily to each person, the water supply was limited
to a wineglassful a day, adverse winds drove them back
several times as they neared shore. The providential
arrival of the Lucy Thompson January 13th prevented
threatened mutiny on board the Kilby. To her the pas-
sengers from the San Francisco were transferred and
reached New York January 14th. The Kilby eventually
reached her port, Boston. The Three Bells arrived in
New York January 13th, and though it brought grief to
many was a great relief to those watching for news of
the disaster, since news of the perilous condition of the
San Francisco had come to New York some days before.

Miss Cole, at that time an infant, having lost her
parents, was taken into the home of a relative, Mrs. Burn-
ham, then living in Philadelphia. After the landing of
the Three Bells in New York, in 1855, Jefferson Davis,
at that time Secretary of War in the Pierce administra-
tion, appointed Mrs. Burnham a matron in the United
States army. General Harney’s expedition was organ-
ized to go to the far West, to the Upper Missouri River,
to establish a military post for the protection of the
frontier against the powerful tribes of the Sioux Indians.
They took five steamers loaded with troops and supplies,
and early in 1855 steamed up the Missouri River, making
their first permanent landing at the village of Omaha.
The commander of the troops called on Governor Izard
of Nebraska, reporting an outbreak of cholera among
the soldiers on the steamers. The governor promptly
called Doctor Miller, a young physician, to take the post
as surgeon of the expedition. His young and beautiful
wife bravely faced the danger of cholera and accom-
panied her husband. After a long and tedious voyage
the destination was reached, and Fort Pierre was estab-
lished at the mouth of Bad River on the west side of the
Missouri, opposite the present site of the City of Pierre,
the capital of South Dakota. This location was aban-
doned the following spring and the great military post
was established 300 miles down the river, as Fort Ran-
dall. Here about 1856 Mrs. Emmons ’ memory and con-
sciousness began among the soldiers, the barracks, the
camp fires and the Indians on the frontier. In 1857 her
foster mother resigned her position in the army, and
found a home in the embryo Sioux City. There Mrs. Em-
mons grew to womanhood, and it was there that she first
met her future husband in May, 1870. Since then she
has been his companion and the inspiration of his life.
As a pioneer woman she lias the honor of having her
name in the Township of Burnham, in Pawnee County.
Mrs. Emmons is a lovable character, and having grown
up on the frontier has been accustomed from early girl-
hood to exert herself in those beneficent acts of kindness
which are so characteristic of the old-fashioned people,
and still continues her active interest in the welfare of
all her neighbors in Oklahoma. After this sketch was
compiled and after a long illness Nina B. Emmons on
July 7, 1916, closed her eyes to all earthly scenes, and
loving friends laid her to rest at Meramac, Oklahoma.

W illia^i Reed Leverton, M. D. The entire absence
of competition at Cloud Chief cannot account for the
success which has been obtained in his profession by Dr.
William Reed Leverton, who, since his arrival in 1910,

has gained a liberal patronage, the confidence of his fel-
low citizens who have elected him county superintendent
of health, and the respect and esteem of his fellow-prac-
titioners who have chosen him secretary of the Washita
County Medical Society. Doctor Leverton was born at
Bowie, Texas, August 20, 1882, and is a son of W. B. and
Mary Agnes (Sandefer) Leverton. On his father’s side
he is descended from a family which originated in Ger
many and became pioneers of Georgia, while on his
mother ’s side he is of Scotch-Irish descent.

W. B. Leverton was born in Georgia, March 19, 1844,
removed to. Arkansas when about eight years old, and
from Arkansas state enlisted, at the age of sixteen years,
in the Confederate army during the war between the
South and the North, in which he served four years
as a member of Parsons’ Brigade. Following the war
he went to Arkansas, and in 1874 removed to Bowie,
Montague County, Texas, that community continuing to
be his home until 1893. In that year he came to Okla-
homa and located in Washita County, eleven miles west
of Cordell, on a homestead of 160 acres, on which he
resided and carried on operations until his death
October, 1902. He was a man of sterling integrity of
character, well meriting the esteem and regard in which
he was held. In political matters he was a democrat
while fraternally he was affiliated with the Masons,
having been the first worshipful master of Cordell Lodge
No. 127, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons. Mr. Lever-
ton married Miss Mary Agnes Sandefer, a native of Indi-
ana, who now resides at Cordell. Nine children have
been born to this union: John B., a cattleman, residing
at Patterson, California; Fannie, who is the wife of
J. W. Ferguson, a ranch and stockman of Alpine, Texas;
Indiana, who is the wife of T. H. Armstrong, a farmer
of Dill, Oklahoma; Matthew O. and A. C., who conduct
a farm in the vicinity of Dill; Mattie, who is the wife
of W. A. Albin, a farmer of Cross Plains, Texas; Dr,
William Reed; Almedia, who is the wife of James Par-
man, a merchant at Cordell; and George Elmer, who is
assistant cashier in the Farmers National Bank at
Cordell.

William Reed Leverton was reared on the homestead
farm in Washita County, Oklahoma, where he remained
until he was twenty-one years of age, but it was no
part of his plans to follow the life of a farmer. He
had received a common and high school education at
Cordell, and when -he left the ranch took preparatory
work in the University of Oklahoma, at Norman. He
next pursued a two-year course in the medical department
of the same university, and his junior and senior years
in the study of his chosen vocation were passed in
the medical 'department of Saint Louis University. He
was graduated therefrom in the class of 1909, with
the degree of Doctor of Medicine, and while a member
of college was affiliated with the Alpha Kappa Greek
letter medical fraternity. Doctor Leverton began the
practice of medicine at Cordell, but in 1910 came to
Cloud Chief, where he has offices on Main Street, and
is the only physician here. He is known as a careful
student, keeping fully abreast of the advancements made
in the profession, and as a. skilled and steady-handed
surgeon. A democrat in polities, he is serving as county
superintendent of health, and for three years was also
a member of the school board of Cloud Chief. He is
an elder in the Christian Church and has been active
in the work of that denomination. Doctor Leverton is
fraternally affiliated with Cordell Lodge No. 127, Ancient
Free and Accepted Masons, of which he is a charter
member. His abilities and respect for the ethics of the
profession have been recognized by his election to the
office of secretary of the Washita County Medical Society ',
and he belongs also to the Oklahoma State Medical

Huiv(

engao

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2025

lie

at.

ft-

'li-

as;

net

:ite

Dr.

’ar-

ali

with

mber'

Ireet

. tie
ie to
and
refnl
male
mded
aunty
i also
He is
active
:on i>

acient

oarter

af the
:o tie
aciety

elical

Society and the American Medical Association. As a
citizen he has -withheld his support from no movement
which has promised the advancement of the general
welfare.

Doctor Leverton was married August 2, 1909, at
Plaiuview, Texas, to Miss Lillian May Colwell, daugh-
ter of S. N. Colwell, a ranchman of Hamilton, Texas.
Two children have been born to this union : Edith Forest,
born November 17, 1913 ; and Wilfred Bailey, born' May
2, 1915.

Moses E. Wood, Ph. D. Among the highly educated
men who in recent years have been raising the standard
of instruction in the higher institutions of learning of
Oklahoma, Dr. Moses E. Wood is easily one of the most
noteworthy. He came to the state during the reorganiza-
tion of the faculty of the Central Normal School, and
in 1913 was elected head of the department of psy-
chology and pedagogy. He brought that position a
broad and thorough scholarship and a long and varied
experience as a practical school man.

Professor Wood was born in Clermont County, Ohio,
March 25, 1869, and is a son of Thomas H. and Clara E.
(Dungan) Wood. The paternal ancestry was English,
the first of the family settling in Virginia. The paternal
great-grandfather settled at Jarrett Station, the present
site of Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1779. The maternal grand-
father was born in Baltimore and was descended from
Col. William Dungan, a soldier in the days of James II,
and descended from Irish earls of Kildare. Professor
Wood’s father was a native of Ohio and was a con-
tractor and builder. Professor Wood has one brother,
W. A. Wood, at the head of the machinery department
of a manufacturing concern in Cincinnati.

Doctor Wood as a boy attended the public schools of
Ohio and finished his high school course in Muneie,
Indiana. He then entered the National Normal Uni-
versity at Lebanon, Ohio, from which he was graduated
Bachelor of Arts in 1894. Several years later he was
granted a special life diploma from the educational
department of the University of Kentucky and special
certificates from the Summer School of the South at
Knoxville, Tennessee. His advanced university training
was obtained in Clark University at Worcester, Massa-
chusetts, from which he received his Master of Arts
degree in 1911, and during 1911-12 was a senior fellow
in psychology, pedagogy and history in Clark University.
His Doctor of Philosophy degree comes from Clark
University.

For five years he was superintendent of schools in
Ohio and for two years president of Summerville Col-
lege in Tennessee. His school work in Kentucky covered
a period of fourteen years, as superintendent at Horse
Cave, Hodgensville, Litchfield, Wickliffe and other places.
For one year he was superintendent of schools at Skyko-
mish, Washington, and came from that state to Okla-
homa in 1913,

Doctor Wood was married in 1884 at Lebanon, Ohio,
to Miss Ida Kirtley, who was a school principal. Since
marriage she has remained in educational work, taking
her A. M. and Ph. D. degrees with her husband at Clark
University. She is a modern, progressive woman and
takes an active interest in the leading subjects that are
engaging the attention of federated club women. They
have a son, Edwin K. Wood, who is a graduate of the
high school at Worcester, Massachusetts, a post-graduate
of the high school at Skykomish, Washington, and holds
a life diploma from the Central State Normal School of
Oklahoma. He expects to complete his education with
a Ph. D. degree in Clark University.

Professor Wood is a member of the Christian Church

and is affiliated with the Modern Woodmen of America.
His name is well known in educational circles, not only
as a teacher but also as an author. He is a member of
the Oklahoma Educational Association, the Central Okla-
homa Educational Association, and the National Educa-
tional Association, also the Washington Educational
Association and the Massachusetts Psychological and
Pedagogical Association. His name appears as author
of a work entitled “History of Superintendency in the
United States,” and of “The Development of the South
since 1860.” He has a special talent for historical
research, and in the course of a few years it is safe to
predict that his labors will result in the publication of
several historical volumes. Professor Wood is a live,
active, practical educator, completely in love with his
work, and possessed of a thorough sympathy and under-
standing of the needs of young men and young women
with whom he is constantly associated.

Hans A. Kroeger. A somewhat eventful and varied
career has been that of this representative member of
the bar of Oklahoma City, and his advancement has been
achieved entirely through Lis own ability and well ordered
endeavors. Mr. Kroeger is recognized as a man of high
professional attainments and controls a large and im-
portant general law business, in connection with which
he is . a representative of the legal department of the
Oklahoma Bail way.

Hans Adolph Kroeger was born on a farm near the
Village of Watkins, Benton County, Iowa, on the 4th of
February, 1872, and his parents, Martin and Amelia
(Emke) Kroeger, were both born in Germany. Martin
Kroeger gave signal manifestation of his loyalty to the
land of his adoption by serving as a valiant soldier of
the Union in the Civil war. In the City of St. Louis,
Missouri, in 1861, he enlisted in a regiment of volunteer
infantry, and he continued in active service during the
entire period of the war. He was in the command of
General Sherman in the memorable Atlanta campaign,
but after the capitulation of Atlanta he was assigned
to detached duty and sent to the North. He and his
wife later became pioneer settlers of Iowa, where he
became a prosperous farmer.

Hans A. Kroeger availed himself fully of the advan-
tages of the public schools of his native state, where
he continued his studies until he had completed the
curriculum of the high school at Traer, Tama County.
At the age of sixteen years he assumed a position as
clerk in a dry goods establishment in the City of Des
Moines, Iowa, where he continued to be thus employed
until he had attained to his legal majority. He then
took a course in a business college in that city, after
which he returned to Traer, where he continued to be
identified with the mercantile business for a year.

With the opening to settlement of the Cherokee Strip
in Oklahoma Mr. Kroeger “made the run” from Cald-
well, Kansas, and located a claim at Pond Creek, but this
land later proved to be on a section reserved for the
support of the territorial schools, and his claim being
thus nullified he went to Enid, where he remained about
two weeks, after which he visited also the towns of King-
fisher and El Beno, and finally remained for some time
in Oklahoma City. In the meanwhile Mr. Kroeger had
admirably fortified himself for the profession of which
he is now a prominent representative in Oklahoma, as he
had completed a thorough course in the law department
of the great University of Michigan, in which he was
graduated as a member of the class of 1896 and from
which he received the degree of Bachelor of Laws. In
1899, after his sojourn in Oklahoma Territory, he re-
turned to Des Moines, Iowa, where he was engaged in the
practice of his profession about four years and where

2026

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

he was associated with George Wemback, one of the
distinguished members of the bar of the Hawkeye State.

In 1903 Mr. Kroeger returned to Oklahoma Territory
and established his residence at Francis, Pontotoc County,
where he effected the organization of the First State
Bank, of which institution he served as cashier about
four years. The bank building was destroyed by fire
thirty days after the institution opened for business,
but luckily none of the funds of the bank was destroyed,
as no safe had been installed and the cashier safeguarded
the money by carrying the same to his home at the close
of business each night, the means of transfer having been
an ordinary pail or bucket. Soon after the new building
had been completed and a safe and time-lock installed,
the bank was burglarized by two outlaws, Ed Cody and
Dave Vaughn, and in this connection Mr. Kroeger and his
wife met with a strenuous and exciting experience, as
denoted by the following brief record:

The two highwaymen proceeded to the little home of
Mr. Kroeger about bedtime, disarmed him and made
him and his wife prisoners. Mrs. Kroeger succeeded
in escaping from the house, hoping to alarm the neigh-
bors, but when one of the bandits started in pursuit her
husband called to her to return, which she did. After
forcing Mr. and Mrs. Kroeger to sit quietly in their home
about two hours, the two outlaws started to march them
to the bank, but upon discovering that other persons
were still on the streets they returned to the house, where
they guarded their captives until midnight. Mr. and
Mrs. Kroeger were then compelled to accompany their
captors to the bank and a demand was made that he
open the safe. He opened the outer doors of the vault
and then informed the captors that the time lock pre-
vented him from proceeding further, as neither he nor any
other person could open the inner vault until about 8
o’clock in the morning, the time for which the clock had
been set. After cursing for an hour or two and fre-
quently threatening the life of Mr. Kroeger, the bandits
finally abandoned hope of attaining their ends, and
under these conditions they took their captives onto the
street once more and ordered them to proceed quietly
to their home. As Mr. and Mrs. Kroeger started to
walk away, one of the men, enraged over the failure of
the venture, said to his companion, “I’ve a h — 1 of a
notion to shoot the top of his d — d head off anyway ! ’ ’
At this juncture was the only time during the entire
experience that Mr. Kroeger really had any fear for his
life.

During the period of Mr. Kroeger ’s identification with
banking interests at Francis the merchants of that
town were preyed upon by an organized band of thieves
who were operating extensively in that section of the
territory and who frequently set fire to store buildings
after having sacked the same of a large amount of its
contents. Several reputable business men were financially
ruined in this manner, but Mr. Kroeger obtained the co-
operation of other citizens and they finally ran down the
gang and were able to avoid further havoc in the com-
munity, as they succeeded in sending twelve or more of
the malefactors to the penitentiary for long terms, the
headquarters and “fence” of these outlaws having been
at Randolph, Johnston County.

In 1907, the year which marked the admission of
Oklahoma to statehood, Mr. Kroeger returned to Okla-
homa City, where he resumed the active practice of his
profession. For four years he served as general attorney,
secretary and auditor of the Patterson street ear system,
and when Mr. Patterson’s interests were purchased by
the Oklahoma Railway Company and the two systems
were consolidated, Mr. Kroeger continued his service as a
valued member of the legal department of the corporation,
with which he has continued to be identified in tins capac-

ity, besides controlling a large and important general
practice, extending into the various courts of the capital
city and involving his appearance in a number of spe-
cially important litigations.

At Rockford, Iowa, on the 18th of August, 1901, was
solemnized the marriage of Mr. Kroeger to Miss Marian
Teape, who was born and reared in that state and who
is a daughter of Theodeus S. and Emily (Montrose)
Teape. The one child of this union is Earl, who was
born on the 5th of September, 1905.

Hon. Richard A. Mitchell. In noting the qualities
which have advanced Hon. Richard A. Mitchell to a
position of prominence among the citizens of Roger
Mills County one is forced to renewed appreciation of
courage, moral strength, honesty in public and private
life, and fidelity to business, political and social obliga-
tions. When he came here, in 1907, he entered the
journalistic field as the editor and owner of the Roger
Mills Sentinel, a newspaper which started in a modest
manner but which under Mr. Mitchell’s able manage-
ment has grown to important proportions, being known
as one of the strong democratic organs of Western Okla-
homa. While he was succeeding as a journalist, Mr.
Mitchell was also taking an active part in civic affairs,
and finally, in 1914, was chosen by his fellow-citizens for
the mayoralty of Cheyenne.

Mr. Mitchell was born in Clay County, Missouri, June
30, 1881, and is a son of G. W. and Josephine (Harris)
Mitchell. The family originally came from Ireland,
probably before the Revolution, settling first in Virginia
and then removing to Kentucky, where the grandfather
of Editor Mitchell was born. He was a farmer and
merchant and as a young man moved to Ray County,
Missouri, where he passed the remaining years of his
life and died at the age of seventy years. G. W. Mitchell
was born at Lexington, Missouri, in 1843, and has passed
his entire life in his native state, at present being a
resident of Excelsior Springs. He was educated for the
law and in his younger years passed some time as an
attorney, but later became a minister of the Christian
Union Church, in which he became president of the
general cQuncil and served as such for twenty years.
He was a man of broad education, being a graduate of
Lexington College with the degrees of Bachelor of Laws
and Doctor of Divinity, and was president of Grand
River College of Edinburg, Missouri, for twelve years.
He is now living a retired life. Reverend Mitchell fought
as a soldier in the Confederate army under the noted
leader, General Price, during the war between the
states. He is a democrat in his political affiliation and
a member of the Masonic and Odd Fellows orders.
Mrs. Mitchell, who was born in Kentucky, in 1845, also
survives-, and has been the mother of ten children, as
follows: B. S., a newspaper editor of Shattuek, Okla-
homa; G. W., Jr., who is engaged in the mercantile
business at Excelsior Springs, Missouri; O. F., also a
resident of that place, engaged in the real estate and
farm loans business; H. S., a minister of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, residing at Centerville, Iowa; E. B.,
superintendent of the Colorado Southwestern Railway,
at Denver, Colorado; Iona, who is the wife of R. S.
Yates, a druggist of Edinburg, Missouri; E. L., an
attorney of Cheyenne, Oklahoma, and a member of the
state senate; E. Daisy, who is the wife of Charles
Helmandollar, of Edinburg, Missouri, a farmer; Richard
A., of this notice; and Grace O., who is the wife of
Charles Sanderson, a telegraph operator of Hardin,
Missouri.

Richard A. Mitchell was graduated from the high
school in the vicinity of his home in Clay County,
Missouri, and at the age of nineteen years entered

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2027

■Grand Eiver College, Edinburg, Missouri. At that time
he began his connection with newspaper work at Edin-
burg, and after one year came to Oklahoma and settled
at Grand, where from 1903 until 1907 he was connected
with the Canadian Valley Echo. In September, 1907,
Mr. Mitchell came to Cheyenne, where he established the
Eoger Mills Sentinel, which has steadily grown to be
one of the leading democratic organs of Western Okla-
homa, with a large subscription list in this part of the
state. Mr. Mitchell is the owner of the building, plant
equipment and office, situated at the corner of Main
Street and Broadway, and of his residence in the
eastern part of the town, in addition to which he. has
invested in several other pieces of realty including a
business building on Main Street. He has been active
and energetic in support of every movement which
has promised to benefit Cheyenne and Eoger Mills eoun-
i ty, contributing personally and through the columns of
f his paper to the general welfare. A stalwart democrat
t in politics, in 1914 he was chosen by the citizens as
chief executive of Cheyenne, and is giving the community
d excellent service in this capacity, his administration

i- having been made notable by several progressive enter-

r. prises for civic improvement. Editor Mitchell is a

s, member of the Christian Union Church, and is fra-
ir ternally affiliated with the Fraternal Order of Eagles,

the Modern Woodmen of America and the Woodmen of
le the World.

s) In 1910, at Cheyenne, Editor Mitchell was united in
id, marriage with Miss Myrtle Eepass, daughter of E. S.
da Eepass, a farmer of Grimes, Oklahoma. They are the
ler parents of three children: Eoger Mills, born March 29,
nd 1911; Iona, born July 5, 1913; and Eobert Agles, born
ty, September 28, 1915.

his Mr. Mitchell has been a leader in the democratic party,
itU has been a member of the democratic central committee
sed of his county for ten years, and is at present state
i a committeeman from his county.

the: On Friday morning, June 2, 1916, between the hours

ai of 2 and 3 o’clock A. M. the Eoger Mills Sentinel
tian newspaper plant, building and library was destroyed by
the fire. The fire was of incendiary origin, Mr. Mitchell
■ars. being a noted newspaper scrapper was strong in his
e of fight against socialism. But not an issue of the paper
,aws was missed, for Mr., Mitchell ordered new equipment at
raid once. The Eoger Mills Sentinel is considered by all the
ears, leading citizens of the county as the county paper.

toted

the

iaid ■
rdets.

, also
i, as
Oft-
untile
also a
e and
hotel

E. B,'
litay,;
E.S,
L., an
of the
Saties
iichard
rife of
Bardin,

le high
County,
entered

Eobert F. Meadows. Pawnee County has enlisted in
the development of its natural resources a due quota of
energetic, reliable and progressive citizens, and worthy
of designation as one of the representative farmers and
stock-growers of the county is he whose name introduces
this paragraph and whose well improved landed estate is
situated in the vicinity of the Village of Jennings.

Mr. Meadows was born at Albany, Clinton County,
Kentucky, on October 14, 1860, and on a farm in that
county hie was reared to the age of thirteen years, when
he accompanied the family on their removal from the
old Bluegrass State to Chautauqua County, Kansas,
where his stepfather became a pioneer settler and where
he reclaimed a productive farm. Mr. Meadows is a son
of Eobert and Mary Ann (Brown) Meadows, the former
of whom was born in Germany and the latter of whom
was born in Virginia, she, as an orphan girl, having
accompanied her grandparents on their immigration from
the historic Old Dominion to Kentucky, where she was
reared to maturity and where her marriage was
solemnized.

Eobert Meadows was a boy at the time when his par-
ents came to America and established their home in the
State of Kentucky. There he grew to manhood and his

loyalty to the land of his adoption was significantly
shown when the Civil war was precipitated on a divided
nation, for, in 1861, he tendered his services in defense
of the Union. He enlisted in a Kentucky volunteer regi-
ment, with which he proceeded to the front and with
which he participated in numerous engagements. He
was finally granted a furlough and after visiting his
home was killed by Confederate soldiers, while on the
way to rejoin his command. His widow later became the
wife of Hezekiah Brown, and with him removed to Kan-
sas, where they passed the residue of their lives, her
death having occurred in Chautauqua County, that state,
in 1886. Of the first marriage were born six children,
concerning whom the following brief record is given:
James is deceased; Eliza is the widow of William Neal
and resides on her homestead farm, fourteen miles dis-
tant from Oklahoma City; Daniel is deceased, and Eobert
F., of this review, was the next in order of birth; Sarah
is the widow of Edward Van Sant and maintains her
home in the State of California; Emma is the wife of
Marshal Martin, of Sedan, Kansas; and Emmett is a
prosperous farmer at a point twelve miles distant from
Sedan.

Eobert F. Meadows was a child at the time of the
family removal to Chautauqua County, Kansas, where he
was reared to adult age on the pioneer farm and where
Ins scholastic advantages were those afforded in the com-
mon schools of the period. In that county he continued
his identification with agricultural pursuits until 1891,
when, soon after the organization of Oklahoma Terri-
tory, he came to this new country and established his
residence at Chandler, the present judicial center of
Lincoln County, where he remained until the opening of
the Cherokee Strip, when he here obtained his present
homestead farm, his entire active career having been one
of close association with the agricultural and stock-
growing industries, so that his prolonged experience and
broad practical knowledge naturally gives him prestige
and has won him definite success as a representative
farmer of Pawnee County, the while his civic loyalty and
liberality have been shown in his ready support of meas-
ures and enterprises that have tended to advance the best
interests of the community. In earlier years he was
concerned with the handling of cattle on the great open
range and had to do with extensive operations in this
line. In politics Mr. Meadows is found aligned as a
stanch supporter of the cause of the democratic party,
though he has never manifested any desire for public
office.

In the year 1879 was solemnized the marriage of
Mr. Meadows to Miss May Eogers, who was born on
May 1, 1862, a daughter of Hon. Eichard W. and Selina
(Billman) Eogers, concerning whom further mention is
made on other pages of this work, in the sketch of the
career of their son Joseph L. Eogers, a prominent citizen
of Pawnee County.

Eelative to the children of Mr. and Mrs. Meadows the
following brief record is entered: Eobert is identified

with agricultural activities in Pawnee County; Austie
became the wife of Charles Shipley and her death
occurred in the year 1900; Earl is a resident of Cen-
tralia, Washington; Pearl is the wife of Ira Thompson
and they reside in the State of South Dakota; Carl is
living at Centralia, Washington; Sherman, Christopher
mid Zephyr remain at the parental home; Frank died at
the age of four years; and Leo is the youngest member
of the home circle.

Eoy E. Huffman. Among the men of the younger
generation in Northwest Oklahoma who are winning suc-
cess in the field of finance is found Eoy E. Huffman,
cashier of the Quinlan State Bank, of Woodward County.

2028

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Air Huffman has been the architect of his own fortunes
as he came to Oklahoma as a stranger, without means
or other favoring influences, content to accept such oppor-
tunities as were offered by a growing community. When
his chance came he was not slow in grasping it, and the
steady advance which he has made is indicative of higher
honors to come. . ,

Mr. Huffman is a native of Illinois, born at Mount
Pulaski, Logan County, January 5, 1890, a son of Samuel
M. and Addie L. (Fletcher) Huffman. His father was
born June 5, 1856, in Kentucky, from which state he
went as a lad of fifteen years to Illinois, and after
many years passed in Logan County removed to Labette
County, Kansas, in 1903. There he resided until 1907,
when he came to Oklahoma, being now a retired resident
of Alva. Throughout his active life Mr. Huffman was
engaged in farming and stock raising, and through
industry and good business management accumulated a
very desirable property. He has been content to live the
life of the farmer, never having been a seeker for political
honors and engaging in few business enterprises aside
from those immediately connected with the products of
the soil In 1883, at Mount Pulaski, Illinois, he was
married to Miss Addie L. Fletcher, who was born at that
place, December 25, 1860, a daughter of Thomas and
Mary (Bowles) Fletcher, the former a native of Ohio, and
the latter of New York. Mr. Fletcher was a pioneer
of Logan County, Illinois, to which part of Central
Illinois he drove an ox-team overland from his early
home in the Buckeye state. He passed his active years
as a farmer and breeder of stock and died in 1902, at
Mount Pulaski, whence he had gone at the time of his
retirement. He was the father of fourteen children.
Mr and Mrs. Huffman had two sons: Eoy E., of this
notice; and Shelton William, born March 25, 1894, at
Mount Pulaski, Illinois, educated at the Oklahoma North-
western Normal School of Alva, and now a resident of
that place, with his parents. ...

Roy E. Huffman received his early education m the
public schools of his native place and was thirteen years
of age when he accompanied his parents to Labette
County, Kansas. He was graduated from the Labette
County High School, of Altamont, Kansas, m the class
of 1907, and in that same year came to Oklahoma to
enter upon his career as a teacher in the public schools.
After one year thus spent in Woodward County, he
went to a business college at Kansas City, Missouri,
taking a one-year course, and in November, 1911, entered
the Security State Bank of Moreland, Oklahoma, as
bookkeeper. He displayed such ability in that capacity
that after one year he was advanced to the position of
cashier, and held that office until January 1, 1915, when
he was elected cashier of the Quinlan. State Bank of
Quinlan, a position which he still retains. This insti-
tution was established in 1907 by J. G. Bailey, who is
now president, and who has another bank at Harper,
Kansas, where he spends the greater part of his time.
The State Bank of Quinlan is a sound, conservative
banking house which has won the confidence of the
people of the community out of whose needs it grew.
Its cashier has done much to make himself popular
with the depositors, who come from all over this part
of the county and whose business he transacts in a
courteous, expeditious and entirely capable manner. Mr.
Huffman is a Mason, fraternally, and his religious con-
nection is with the Methodist Episcopal Church.

On September 15, 1913, at Alva, Oklahoma, Mr. Huff-
man was married to Miss Ollie J. Hampton, who was
born at Rich Hill, Missouri, February 20, 1896, daughter
of Thomas and Sadie Hampton, natives of Missouri.
One daughter has been born to Mr. and Mrs. Huffman:
Virginia Halycon.

Benjamin Franklin Hennessy. Few men have had
a more active and beneficial relation with Oklahoma’s
general progress in educational and agricultural develop-
ment during the past fifteen years than Benjamin F.
Hennessy, who recently retired from his office as secre-
tary of agriculture for the state and is now giving prac-
tically all his time to the management of a fine ranch
at Ferguson, in Blaine County. However, Mr. Hennessy
is as much at home on the lecture platform as in his
fields and among his stock, and for a number of years
his work has called for public appearance and the enter-
tainment and instruction of people in groups. While
he is a very popular entertainer, and is a master of the
humorous anecdote, much of his accomplishment has been
of a serious nature and for the training of Oklahoma
people in particular to a better utilization of their
resources and advantages. He has done a great deal
of lecture work for the benefit of churches, lodges,
library associations and other organizations.

During his four years of service from 1911 to 1915
as secretary of the State Board of Agriculture Mr. Hen-
nessy was one of the leading figures in public life in
Oklahoma. He injected an element of dignity into the
’ activities of the board, and, being essentially a school
man, furthered in every possible way the cause of
industrial education among young men and women and
practical farmers as well. He represented the board in
important state and national conferences and was an
active member of the Southern Commercial Congress,
and is still a director from Oklahoma in that body.
To the various affairs of the board he applied modern
methods, taking an active and leading part in demon-
stration work and discriminating agricultural education
through newspaper and bulletin articles and in speaking
tours of college and railroad officials. As one of the
important representatives of the state government he
proved a favorite speaker before various clubs and
societies, and as an after-dinner speaker he is regarded
as one of the most pleasing in the entire state.

Benjamin Franklin Hennessy was born at Woodstock,
Illinois, September 21, 1873, a son of Daniel and
Katherine (Lynch) Hennessy. His father was born at
Kilkenny and his mother at Tipperary, Ireland, and
they were the parents of ten children, six boys and four
girls.

Mr. Hennessy completed his education in the Central
'-Normal College in Kansas, where he was awarded the
degree of Bachelor of Science in June, 1898. At an
earlier date he was teaching in the districts of McPherson
County, Kansas, and in 1895 was elected to the chair of
English and Expression of the Central Normal College
and held that position while continuing the studies lead-
ing up to his collegiate degree. In 1897 he had been
appointed vice president of the Central Normal College.
In 1900 he was chosen superintendent of county schools
of Barton County, Kansas, an office he held until 1902.

While living in Kansas he was one of the seven dele-
gates sent by Governor Leedy in 1898 to St. Louis to
discuss the advisability of holding a World’s Fair to
commemorate the Louisiana Purchase, and was elected
secretary of the Kansas delegation and held that office
two years. In 1905 he was presented with silver and
gold medals by the president of the World’s Fair at
St. Louis and in 1906 the World’s Fair board gave him
a beautifully engraved diploma.

In 1903 Mr. Hennessy came to Oklahoma as teacher
of English and Expression in the Logan County High
School at Guthrie. In 1907 he was selected as official
representative of Oklahoma at the Jamestown Exposi-
tion, and gave stereoptieon lectures relating to the
resources of Oklahoma at that fair. In the meantime
he had spent parts of several years working as state

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2029

organizer of farmers institutes for Oklahoma. Alto-
gether he was connected with the State Department of
Agriculture for a period of seven years, and resigned
his office as secretary of jthe board January 15, 1915.

Since leaving office Mr. Hennessy has taken up his
residence on his ranch ,in Blaine County, where he owns
several hundred acres hud |s happily and busily engaged
in the raising .of horses, mules, hogs and cattle. He is
considered an expert polo^player, and one department
of his ranch industry is the raising and training of polo
ponies for, 'the eastern markets. He is a democrat and
in Masonry a member of the thirty-second degree Con-
sistory of the Scottish Rite?

James E. Breslin has practiced law at Guymon for
the jpst ten years. He is a very capable attorney, came
to Oklahoma with a thorough training in his profession,
and has built up a large and prosperous practice. His
practice is noft confined . entirely to Texas County, but
extends to courts in ^the adjacent states of Texas, Colo-
rado, Kansas r nd New Meiico. Mr. Breslin has the best
selected and largest law library in Texas County, and
owns the modern office building in which he has his
professional headquarters.

Though lie has practiced in Oklahoma ever since he
left law college Mr. Bresjin is a northern man by birth
and ancestry. He was born on a farm in St. Croix
County, Wisconsin, January 16, 1882, a son of William
and Julia Jeannette (Riley) Breslin. His father was
born Eebruary 22, 1846, at Montreal, Canada, a son of
James and Elizabeth Breslin, both natives of Ireland.
At the age of eleven years William Breslin came to the
United States, the family locating at Manistee, Michigan.
For fourteen years he was engaged in the lumber busi-
ness in the northern woods of Michigan and then re-
moved to Wilson, Wisconsin, where he was a farmer
until his death on January 22, 1907. He was married
March 17, 1878, to Miss Biley, who was born March 16,
>1860, at Alemont, Ontario", Canada, a daughter of Michael
and Eliza (FamianV Riley, both of whom were born in
Ireland. Mrs. Breslin died October 23, 1905, at Wilson,
Wisconsin. In the family were ten children, seven sons
and three daughters, namely: Harry AT of' St. Paul,

Minnesota; James E.; William F., a resident at Wilson,
Wisconsin; Thomas J. of Cloquette, Minnesota; ]?. J., a
lawyer at Guymon, Oklahoma; Ellen, wife of M. J. Hirsh
of Holabird, South Dakota; Clara Belle, who is married
and living in Duluth; Anna Belle, deceased; Sylvester
S. of Winnipeg, Canada; and Arthur S., who lives at
Wilson, Wisconsin.

James E. Breslin grew up in Wisconsin, attended the
local schools, but for his professional education went to
St. Paul, Minnesota, where he was graduated from the
St. Paul College of Law on June 5, 1905. It was only
a few weeks after his graduation that he came to Okla-
homa, was admitted to the bar, and began practice at
Guymon. He is a member of the Benevolent and Pro-
tective Order of Elks at Delhart, Texas, Lodge No. 1159.

Thomas Ridgway Reid. A member of the El Reno
bar for a period of twenty-one years, Thomas Ridgway
Reid is one of the best known lawyers of that place,
and since May, 1912, has served in the capacity of city
attorney. Both as a private practitioner and as a city
official he has displayed the possession of fine talents,
30 that he is justly accounted a reliable and progressive
member of the bar,, who stands high in professional
ability and as a man of broad business and financial
judgment.

Mr. Reid was born at Saline Mines, Gallatin County,
Illinois, July 16, 1864, and is a son of Robert and
Elizabeth (Campbell) Reid, natives of the shire of

Renfrew, Scotland. They were reared in their native
land, where they lived until about fifteen years of age,
at which time they accompanied their respective parents
to the United States. Here they met and were mar-
ried. Robert Reid early became a minister of the Presby-
terian faith, and some time during the ’50s was given
the parish of Saline Mines, where for a number of years
previously he had been an operator of coal mines. As a
minister he was earnest and zealous, laboring faithfully
in the service of the church and winning the love and
confidence of his parishioners, who found in him not
only a spiritual adviser but a true and faithful friend.
He spent a long, full and useful life, and was eighty-
five years old when death claimed him.

The public schools of Saline Mines furnished Thomas
R. Reid with his preliminary educational training, this
being supplemented by a course in the Southern Illinois
Normal University, at Carbondale, Illinois. He next
accepted a position as a teacher in the country schools,
being thus engaged for a period of three years, and in
the meantime applied himself to the study of law, with
the result that he successfully passed the examination
and was admitted to the bar at Shawneetown, Illinois, in
1888. At that place Mr. Reid entered upon the practice
of his profession, continuing there until 1894, and build-
ing up a large and representative practice. While there
Mr. Reid also took an active part in political affairs, and
became known as one of the party leaders of republican-
ism in that locality. In 1891 he became the republican
candidate for "representative to the Illinois State Legis-
lature, to which he was elected and in which he served
one term.

Mr. Reid changed his field of operations from Illinois
to Oklahoma in 1894, in which year he .opened an office
at El Reno. He ho’< had* good reason to congratulate
himself upon hik change, for in this state he has ad-
vanced steadily to a high position in his vocation and
has b.een' successful in attracting to himself a lucrative
professional business. Also, he has continued his activ-
ities'in .political matters, and has been frequently called
upon t6 serve in offices of public trust. In 1894 he was
elected county attorney for Canadian County, Oklahoma,
in which position he served one term, and in 1899 and
again in 1901 was elected a member of the Territorial
Legislature of Oklahoma, and in his first term was
speaker of the house. In 1901 Mr. Reid was appointed
receiver of the United States Land Office, at El Reno, a
capacity in which he acted efficiently for ten years.
In May, 1912, Mr. Reid was elected city attorney of
El Reno, and has continued to hold this office to the
present time. In his various public capacities he has
at all times demonstrated an earnest desire to be of use
to his community, and few men are held in higher
general confidence and esteem by the public. Mr. Reid is
a prominent Mason, being a Knight Templar and
Shriner, and belongs also to the Knights of Pythias,
the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and the
Fraternal Order of Eagles. He is a consistent mem-
ber of the Presbyterian Church, and at present is serving
on the board of trustees thereof.

Mr. Reid was married in Illinois, in 1908, to Miss
Jessie Robinson.

Solomon Revard. A considerable proportion of the
families in Oklahoma bear traces of the influence and
relationship of the early French traders who, going out
from St. Louis as their general headquarters, and begin-
ning back in the eighteenth century, carried the goods
of civilized manufacture among these Indians, estab-
lished trading posts and lived among them, and very
frequently married Indian wives. There is now living
retired in Fairfax in Osage County a descendant of these

2030

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

old traders, and one of the most interesting men in the
Osage country. Solomon Eevard has been a resident of
the present Osage country more than forty years and
until recently was a very successful farmer.

He was born in Jackson County, Missouri, at the pres-
ent site of Kansas City, April 17, 1855, a son of Peter
and Leonora (Roy) lievard. Both parents represent
names of distinction among the Osage people. They
were born in Missouri, his father in 1826 and his mother
in 1828. The grandfather was Joseph Revard, who was
of mixed Osage and French stock. Joseph Revard mar-
ried a girl, whose first name was Prances, and who was
of German and French stock. The Roy' family came
from France originally, and settled in Missouri, and a
number of its representatives served as early traders and
employees of the great American Fur Company. The
Roy family has a number of important relations with
different tribes of Indians, and the name and family
stock are found among the Osages, the Kaws and the
Sioux. The Revard family also furnished early employ-
ees to the American Fur Company. The parents of
Solomon Revard continued to live in Missouri until 1872
when they joined the rest of the Osage people in their
migration to their new homes in Indian Territory where
they spent the rest of their lives. The mother died in
Osage County in July, 1884, and the father in Novem-
ber, 1888. Before coming to Indian Territory he had
served as a member of the police force at Kansas City
for four or five years, and after coming to the reserva-
tion spent his time as a farmer. Peter Revard and wife
had five sons and two daughters: Solomon, Charles, who
now lives on the reservation near Elgin, Kansas; Alex-
ander, of Osage County; Emily Allen, of Tulsa; William,
of Pawhuska; Franklin, of Bartlesville; and Mary E.
McGuire, of Tulsa.

When Solomon Revard came to Indian Territory with
his parents in 1872 he was about seventeen years of age.
The previous year he had spent in work in the Kansas
City Stock Exchange. For eleven years he was employed
by the United States Government at Pawhuska Agency
in the shoe and harness department. His education was
acquired in the public schools of Kansas City, followed
by two years in the Osage Indian School at Pawhuska.
After leaving the agency store Mr. Revard took up farm-
ing, and followed that industry prosperously and enter-
prisingly until about four years ago, when he retired
from the active responsibilities of a well spent career
and has since lived quietly in his substantial home at
Fairfax. Mr. Revard still owns a nice estate of 445
acres.

Outside of his interests as a business man and farmer
he has been frequently honored with positions of trust
and responsibility in tribal affairs. His study and
observation of political problems has inclined him to give
his support to the socialist party. He was reared a Cath-
olic, but has taken no part in church affairs for the past
twenty years.

On February 4, 1880, Mr. Revard married Miss Anna
Traylor. She was born in Illinois September 23, 1854,
and grew up in the states of Missouri and Arkansas.
Her parents were William and Elizabeth (Armstrong)
Traylor, her mother having been twice married. Both
her parents died in Indian Territory, her mother on the
Caney River and her father at Grayhorse. He spent most
of his life as a farmer. Mr. Revard has one daughter
Leonora McCarty, who lives in Missouri, and her six
children, grandchildren of Mr. Revard, are named:
William Todd, Solomon, Charles Wesley, Edna, Eliza-
beth and Madeline. Among the public honors which
Mr. Revard recalls with particular satisfaction was his
service as a delegate to the county convention which

chose district delegates for the constitutional convention
which framed the present organic law of Oklahoma.

John Coyle. Rush Springs, in Grady County, is the
home of one of the most interesting of Oklahoma’s
pioneers. John Coyle first became acquainted with the
country now known as Oklahoma as a soldier in the
regular army of the United States during the decade of
the ’50s. From that time to the present most of his
life has been spent in this section of the Southwest,
and for more than forty years he has been a resident of
what is now Grady County. The events in which he
has participated and which he has witnessed would,
if narrated in detail, form an important portion of the
history of Oklahoma’s development and progress.

John Coyle is a native of Scotland, and was born in
the City of Glasgow, in 1836, a son of Edward and Mar-
garet (Moose) Coyle. At Glasgow he spent his youth,
attended schools and learned the trade of stone cutter
and stone mason, but at the age of seventeen, in 1853,
took passage on a vessel bound for America, and landed
in the City of Quebec, Canada, where he spent three
months and then went to New York City to work at
his trade. Owing to labor troubles he left there in the
fall of 1855 and sought employment at Boston. Being
unsuccessful, he accepted an employment which has
appealed to a great many men out of work at different
times. He enlisted November 10, 1855, in the United
States Army, and was assigned to Company F of the
First Regiment of United States Infantry. After being
for a time on Governor’s Island, in New York Harbor,
his regiment was sent to Corpus Christi, Texas. At that
time the present cities of Dallas, Waco and Austin were
on the extreme frontier of settlement in Texas, and all
the country to the north and west was still the domain
of the Indians and buffalo. The Federal Government
was endeavoring to maintain as a guard to the settle-
ments a cordon of military posts extending from the
Red River south and west across Texas. It was to
one of the oldest and most noted of these posts that
Mr. Coyle and his comrades marched from Corpus Christi
and took station at Fort Chadbourne. While there fifty
of the First Regiment, men from Company F and Com-
pany C, were detailed to accompany Captain Van Dorn
to the Washita Mountains in Indian Territory. John
Coyle was among those who participated in that note-
worthy expedition, record of which is an important part
of early Oklahoma history. The Second United States
Cavalry was also a part of the expedition. They went
to the post on Otter Creek, and remained there until
the end of 1858. Mr. Coyle was then ordered to join
his regiment at Fort Cobb, Indian Territory. His enlist-
ment expired in November, 1860, and he chose to remain
in the district where most of his. service as a soldier
had been. He was employed for a time by Colonel Leeper,
the Indian agent at Washita, Indian Territory, and
also by John Shirley, the Indian trader there.

With the outbreak of the Civil war most of the United
States troops were withdrawn from the frontier post.
Mr. Coyle and three companions then started north with
the intention of enlisting in the Union army. Owing to
the unsettled conditions, the presence of numerous Con-
federate troops and wild Indians, they had to make the
journey at night, while during the day they remained
securely hidden. They finally reached Fort Gibson.
Orders had recently been given to fortify the place, and
Mr. Coyle was induced to take charge of the masonry
work on the fortifications., and stayed there one year.
The rest of the war period was spent in Kansas, where
he found plenty of work at his trade as stone mason. At 1
Humboldt in Allen County he built the county jail and

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2031

other buildings, and at times had as many as 125 men
working under him.

When the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad was built
through Indian Territory to Texas, Mr. Coyle had the
contract for all the stone work between the Red River
and Denison, Texas. In 1871, when this railroad con-
tract was finished, he returned to Indian Territory and
located about six miles below Wynnewood, farmed there
a year, and then went to the settlement known as Elm
Springs, now Erin Springs, in Garvin County. In that
locality he continued farming and stock raising, and
in 1874 moved to Bailey on Rush ' Creek, lived there
about ten years, and in 1884 located in the vicinity of
Rush Springs, his present home. His occupation was
farming and stock raising on land leased from the
Indians, and with the opening of the country for settle-
ment in 1893, he sold his stock and farming interests
and moved into the town of Rush Springs to engage in
the grocery trade. Several years later his store was
burned out, and he lost everything, having no insurance.
After that misfortune he once more resumed farming,
but in recent years has lived quietly retired at Rush
Springs.

The above is a mere outline of the career of Mr.
Coyle. For many years he has been one of the most
influential men in his section of the state. In 1896 he
was a delegate to the National Republican Convention
at St. Louis, and in that convention delivered the six
votes from Indian Territory for the nomination of Wil-
liam McKinley as president. In 1906 President Roosevelt
appointed him postmaster at Rush Springs, and by reap-
pointment from President Taft he held that office and
gave it most capable administration until 1913.

Mr. Coyle relates many interesting incidents connected
with his life as a soldier and as an early settler in old
Indian Territory. While with the United States Army
he participated in a number of engagements with the
Indians. While at old Fort Chadburn the Indians had
killed the mail carrier, and about a month later, when
a band of Indians appeared before the fort, he was
one of a party of twenty-four detailed to capture them
or shoot them down. They killed four and wounded
many others. Because of this heavy reprisal the garri-
son daily expected an attack from the Comanches, and
while such an attack was never made, the soldiers were
forced on do considerable extra work in building a pali-
sade around the . fort. While under the command of
Captain Van Dorn and ’stationed at Otter Creek in
the Washita Mountains, Mr. Coyle was part of a com-
pany that participated in the battle against the Com-
anches fought three miles east of Rush Springs. In that
engagement fifty-six Indians were killed. Another
interesting fact in that connection is the prominence of
some of the officers engaged. The second in command
and captain of Company B was Kirby Smith, who rose
to the rank of general in the Confederate army. The
first lieutenant of Company D was Lieutenant, after-
wards, in the Civil war, General Hood. The second
lieutenant of the same company was Fitzhugh Lee, after-
wards Governor of Virginia. While Robert E. Lee was
not present at the fight, he was at that time lieutenant-
colonel of the Second United States Cavalry, and Com-
panies A and B from that regiment were engaged
with the Indians.

During the Civil war, and while employed at the
Washita agency, Mr. Coyle had a narrow escape. He left
the agency one - day to go to Arbuckle, ninety miles
distant. During the same night the post was attacked
by Shawnee and Delaware Indians from the north, armed
with guns and pistols. As a result of their attack about
one hundred and fifty Tonkawa Indians, who were
friendly to the whites, and seventeen white men were

Vol. V— 18

killed, and the only whites that escaped the massacre
were Colonel Leeper, Doctor Sturm and Mr. Jones.

Mr. Coyle is one of the pioneer Masons of Oklahoma,
and one of the most prominent and veteran members of
that Order in Oklahoma. He has always been a firm
believer that “Masonry is the handmaiden of religion,”
and his activities in the order have brought him many
distinctions, so thgt he is probably one of the best known
members of the craft in the state. He' took his first
degrees in 1866 in Iola Lodge at Iola, Kansas. He is
a charter member of Rush Springs Lodge No. 7, Ancient
Free and Accepted Masons, which was organized in
1875 and chartered in 1876. In 1875 Mr. Coyle built a
schoolhouse at Elm Springs (now Erin Springs) and
arranged the upper floor for a lodge room, though it was
a very small one. That was the first home of the Rush
Springs Lodge, and it was organized there. The meet-
ing of organization was held on a .Saturday, and Mr.
Coyle invited the Rev. Mr. Davis of Pauls Valley, then
presiding elder of the Methodist Episcopal Church, to
come to Rush Springs and hold services on the following
Sunday, Mr. Coyle guaranteeing a congregation. Elder
Davis accordingly came and found the audience so large
that he preached to them in the open, standing in the
doorway of the school. In consequence of that meeting
he at once organized a church and Sunday school, and
it has been in continuous existence ever since.

Mr. Coyle ’s affiliations with Masonry deserve particular
mention. He was the first master of Rush Springs
Lodge No. 7, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, held
the office of master thirteen years, and is still an active
member. He belongs to Chickasha Chapter No. 17, Royal
Arch Masons; Chickasha Council No. 4, Royal and Select
Masters ; DeMolai Commandery No. 7, Knights Templar ;
and India Temple of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.
The honors paid him by the state body of Masons are
also noteworthy. He is a past grand master of the
State Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons; past
grand high priest of the Royal Arch Chapter; past
master of the Royal and Select Masters; and past grand
commander of the Knights Templar. He also became a
charter member of Rush Springs Lodge No. 226 of the
Knights of Pythias, and is a past chancellor and repre-
sentative to the Grand Lodge, and a member of the
Knights of Kadosh.

In 1874 Mr. Coyle married Miss Margaret Bowen,
and they have had a happy married companionship of
more than forty years. Prior to her marriage Mrs.
Coyle was a school teacher in Illinois. They ate the
parents of four children: Edward Coyle, who is married
and has six children; John L. Coyle, who has two
children; Charles R. Coyle, who is also married; and
Mary Coyle, who like the other children, is living at
Rush Springs.

Seymour Foose. For twenty-four years Seymour
Foose has attended strictly to his profession as a lawyer
in Blaine County. He was one of the pioneer settlers,
acquired a homestead on the opening, and though he
was one of a number of representatives of the legal
profession when he came he is now the only one who
has continuously practiced law in Blaine County since
it was established. His success has been in proportion
to the years of his residence, and there is probably no
name in Blaine County that is mentioned with more
familiar association with the professional, civic and
business affairs of that community than Seymour Foose.

In the paternal line he is of Prussian ancestry, his
grandfather, William Foose, having come from Germany
• and settled in Ohio as one of the early farmers of that
state. Through his mother Seymour Foose is of English
and Irish stock. With such a heritage of ancestry, he

2032

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

was born in Meigs County, Ohio, November 11, 1862.
His father, John W. Foose, is also well remembered in.
Oklahoma, where he was a pioneer. He was born in
Trumbull County, Ohio, in 1838. When a young man
he moved to Meigs County, but was married in Gallia
County in the extreme southern part of the state. From
Meigs County he went out to serve as a Union soldier
during the Civil war. He was a member of the Seventh
Ohio Cavalry, and was in the army three years and ten
months. At Rogersville, Tennessee, he was wounded in
the leg and taken prisoner, and thereafter spent four-
teen months in some of the notorious prison pens of the
South, at Libby, Belle Isle, Andersonville, Florence and
Charleston. After being exchanged he rejoined his regi-
ment in 1864 in Georgia, when the war was nearly over.
Returning to Meigs County, Ohio, in 1871 he went to
Illinois, living in Wayne County for a number of years,
and in 1884 going to Shelby County in the same state.
In the spring of 1887 he brought his family to Sedge-
wick County, Kansas. While for many years a farmer,
he was also an ordained minister of the Cumberland
Presbyterian Church, but later became affiliated with
the Methodist Episcopal Church, and represented that
denomination as a minister in several of the southern
counties of Kansas, in Sumner, Harper and Barber
counties. In 1893 John W. Foose homesteaded a claim
in Grant County, Oklahoma, being identified with the
opening of the Cherokee Strip. In 1902 he removed to
Medford, and for several years he filled the position of
territorial librarian, in the duties of which office he
died at Guthrie May 7, 1907. He had first been
appointed territorial librarian by Governor Ferguson,
and was reappointed by Governor Frantz. Politically
he was a stanch republican, and was a member of the
Masonic fraternity. John W. Foose married Nancy E.
Dickson, who was born in Virginia in January, 1844,
and is now living, past seventy-two years old, with her
son, Seymour, in Watonga. Seymour was the oldest of a
family of six children. Addie F., the next in age,
married Reber Homrighous, and is a very capable busi-
ness woman, living in Chicago, and looking after extens-
ive real estate interests in Gary, Indiana; Thomas D.,
also a resident of Chicago, has for the past fifteen years
been superintendent of the Fay livery business in that
City; Jennie married Leander Martin, who was at that
time probate judge of Blaine County, Oklahoma, but
they now reside in Portland, Oregon, where Mr. Martin
is in the real estate and lumber business; Elias K. is
the wanderer of the family, and his whereabouts have
been unknown to his relatives since 1906; Carrie is the
wife of C. L. Anderson, and they own and occupy a
ranch on Shaw Island in the State of Washington.

As a boy in Wayne County, Illinois, Seymour Foose
gained the equivalent of a high school education. For
! three years he attended the Southern Illinois College at
Enfield, and for four years, during 1882-85, was a teacher
in the country schools in Shelby County, Illinois. The
next two years were spent in teaching in Nemaha County,
Nebraska. In the spring of 1887 he made the journey
with his parents to Sedgwick County, Kansas. They
accomplished that migration in true pioneer style, driving
overland with a four horse wagon. He lived at home,
managing the farm during the summer season for five
years and teaching school in the winter. In the mean-
time he took up the study of law, attended the law
department of the Garfield University, now known as
the Friends University, at Wichita, Kansas, and in 1891
was graduated LL. B. and admitted to the bar at that
city in the same year. He had also spent one year in
the law offices of Holmes, Haymaker & Holt at Wichita,

and after graduation was for one year in the law offices
of O. H. Bentley, who is now mayor of Wichita.

Leaving Kansas in 1892, Mr. Foose drove across
country to what is now Watonga, and was present at
the opening of the lauds in Blaine County, and while
making the run on foot he was fortunte in securing a
lot situated south of where the present courthouse!
stands. After proving up his claim he sold it, and*
later acquired a homestead Of 160 acres one mile south-
west of Watonga, but has since disposed of that prop-
erty also.

It was on April 19, 1892, thaf Mr. Foose began his
practice as a lawyer at Watonga. Since then for
twenty-three years his reputation hay been steadily grow-
ing and he has handled an increasing amount of the
important civil and criminal practice i^i Blaine County.
In the fall of 1892 he was appointed,' deputy county
attorney, and at the same time became a candidate for
the office and was regularly elected for a' term of two
years. He thus has the distinction of hating been the
first elected county attorney of Blaine County. His suc-
cess as a lawyer is reflected in his extensive property
holdings. He is the owner of three quarter sections and
a farm of eighty acres, all in Blaine Coupty, has con-
siderable real estate at Watonga, has a : three-fourth
interest in Block 10 of that city, on which ijh is residence
is situated, at the corner of Noble and Prouty avenues.

In various ways Mr. Foose has been identified with
the public life of Oklahoma. He is a republican, and
was a delegate to the National Republican 'Convention
that nominated Roosevelt in 1904. During thdvS.panish-
American war he enlisted and in July, 1898, was mustered
in as first sergeant of Company M, First Territorial
Regiment of Volunteer Infantry. The captain of that
company was F. L. Boynton, a well known attorney of
Kingfisher. He was promoted and commissioned second
lieutenant by Governor Barnes in January, 1899, and,
received an honorable discharge from the Volunteer
army at Albany, Georgia, February 13, 1899. After,
returning to Oklahoma he was appointed by Governor
Ferguson as a member of his staff, and held that posi-
tion four years, and subsequently was on the staff of
Governor Frantz, by whom he was promoted to the rank
of major. He resigned this commission* at the end of
Governor Frantz’s term. Fraternally Mr. Foose is
affiliated with Watonga Lodge No. 176, Ancient Free
and Accepted Masons; with Peaceful Valley Chapter,
Royal Arch Masons, at Geary, Oklahoma; and with
Consistory No. 1, thirty-second degree of Scottish Rite,
Valley of Guthrie.

In August, 1893, at Wellington, Kansas, Mr. Foose
married Miss Nora Gilbert. She died a few weeks later,
in October, 1893. March 17, 1899, at Oklahoma City, he
married Miss Minnie B. Beals. Her father, Dwight A.
Beals, who died in July, 1914, was an Oklahoma pioneer
and had been a veteran of the Union army during the
Civil war. Mr. and Mrs. Foose have two children:
John S., born in June, 1902, is now in the freshman
class of the Watonga High School; and H. Theodore,
born in September, 1904, is a student in the local public
schools.

Lucian Bullock Sneed. One of the first citizens of
Guymon, Oklahoma, both in point of time and promi-
nence, is Lucian B. Sneed, the present postmaster. Ten
years ago, when the town was incorporated, he was
honored with one of the first city offices. Mr. Sneed
represents one of the old families of Oklahoma, being a
son of Col. Richard A. and Annie R. (Bullock) Sneed.
Colonel Sneed is still one of the active men in Oklahoma ’s
affairs and is widely known over the state at large.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA 2033

It was in the home of his parents at Jackson, Ten-
nessee, that Lucian Bullock Sneed was born January 4,
1878. He was educated in the public schools of Gaines-
[i ville, Texas, where his father lived for some years, and
also attended a private school at Paul’s Valley in Indian
I Territory. Prom school he at once entered business life
I as salesman in a general merchandise house and remained
I in that business until 1904. In that year he came to
I Guymon and became identified with the real estate
I business. When the town was incorporated in 1905 he
I was elected the first city clerk. In 1907 he was chosen
I the first county clerk of Texas County on the democratic
I ticket. His present office as postmaster of Guymon was
I given him in 1914, and he is now very capably managing
I this branch of the federal service.

Mr. Sneed is also secretary of the Guymon Business
I Men’s Association and fraternally is a member of the
I Masonic order. On December 23, 1909, at Guymon, Okla-
I homa, he married Miss Edna B. Crum, daughter of W. A.
I and Nannie (McHenry) Crum, who were natives of
I Kentucky and Illinois, respectively. Mrs. Sneed was
I born April 4, 1886, at Mattoon, Illinois, and is a gradu-
I ate of the Eastern Illinois State Normal School at
I Charleston, Illinois. Prior to her marriage she spent
I five years as a teacher. Mr. and Mrs. Sneed are the

I parents of one child, Richard Bullock Sneed, born at
Guymon, Oklahoma, November 14, 1910.

Jambs W. Kekley, M. D. In such a new country as
Oklahoma pioneers are often young men in spite of
their experiences and services. A future generation will
find much to admire in the arduous and faithful service
of those who accepted the hardships and limitations of
a life on the frontier partly from a desire to establish
their own economic well being and partly to perform their
proper tasks in the world. Though a physician and
surgeon of only fifteen years active experience,
Dr. James W. Kerley may properly claim the distinc-
tion of having been a pioneer doctor in at least two
communities in Southwestern Oklahoma. He now has
a most successful practice and enjoys business pros-
perity and the comforts of a good home and the honors
of citizenship at Cordell.

Born at Mountain View, Arkansas, June 4, 1871, he
is one of the seven children of James and Nancy
(Meadows) Kerley. His father was born in Hardin Coun-
ty, Tennessee, in 1848 and his mother in Wayne County,
Tennessee, in 1846. James Kerley when a young man
went to Arkansas, was married there, and that state was
his home until the death of his wife in 1907. He has
since lived at Cordell, Oklahoma, where he is a farmer
and stock man. The seven children were : Dr. William W.,
of Anadarko, the twin, brother of Dr. James W. ;
Melissa A., wife of Joseph Smith, a druggist at Bessie,
Oklahoma; P. A., a farmer and stock man at Oil City,
Oklahoma; Albert M., a railroad man living at San
Diego, California; Ollie, who lives in Arizona, the widow
of Joseph Dodson, who was killed while in service as a
United States marshal in Arkansas; and Joseph E., a
railroad man at San Diego, California.

Dr. James W. Kerley grew up in his native state of
Arkansas, attended the public schools there, and in
1888 removed from Mountain View to Baxter County,
Arkansas, where he was graduated from the high school
in 1894. Doctor Kerley early adopted the principle of
self-help as a means of advancing himself in the world,
and for several years performed some useful service and
at the same time earned money necessary for his higher
education by teaching school. This was his regular
occupation from 1894 to 1896, though in the meantime
he had started to read medical works. In 1896 he
entered the university at Nashville, Tennessee, took an

active part in student affairs while there, and graduated
M. D. in 1900.

His first work as a physician was done at Burns,
in Washita County, Oklahoma, where in 1900 he was one
of the first physicians to attend the wants of a large
surrounding country, only sparsely inhabited at the time.
In 1904 he took up his permanent residence at Cordell,
where he was likewise one of the first of his pro-
fession to open an office. He has since gained a splen-
did reputation, and has all the practice he can well
attend to. Doctor Kerley is a man of progressive ideas,
and has never been content to practice long without
active contact with the great centers of medical learn-
ing. He took a general postgraduate course in the
New York Policlinic in 1904 and in 1906 spent several
months specializing in surgery in 1908 at the Post-
graduate Medical School and Hospital in Chicago, and in
March, 1914, took some courses in diseases of children
at the New Orleans Polyclinic.

Doctor Kerley has deservedly prospered in material
fortune. His offices are in the Kerley Building, a busi-
ness structure at the corner of Main and College streets
which he owns. He also owns his home on College Street,'
and has two farms of 320 acres in Elk Township of
Washita County, the management of which is entrusted
to tenants. Doctor Kerley served as county superintend-
ent of public health in Washita County from statehood
until quite recently. He is a democrat in politics, is
a member of the county and state medical societies and
the American Medical Association, and fraternally is
identified with Cordell Lodge No. 137, A. P. & A. M.,
and Cordell Lodge No. 167, I. O. O. E.

On March 7, 1897, in Arkansas, while still a struggling
student preparing for his profession, Doctor Kerley mar-
ried Miss Zona Morrison, daughter of D. A. Morrison,
who later became a farmer in Washita County, Oklahoma,
but is now living retired in California. Mrs. Kerley died
May 23, 1901, survived by two daughters: Myrtle, who
died at the age of eleven years; and May, now a student
in the public schools at Cordell. In October, 1904, in
Washita County, Oklahoma, Doctor Kerley married
Mrs. Alma (Mowery) Arnold. Her first husband was the
late Samuel Houston Arnold, a rancher of Washita Coun-
ty. Her father is W. H. Mowrey, a Texas farmer.
There are three children by this union : Edith and

Arthur, twins, both now in the public schools at Cordell;
and James W., Jr.

John P. Lynn. About twenty-eight years ago a
young man rode horseback into the country of the
Osages, stopping in the vicinity of the present City of
Pawhuska where he found employment as a farm hand
in looking after the farm controlled by the sisters who
have charge of the St. Louis Indian School. Three years
later he married and ever since that time John P. Lynn
has been identified with that part of Osage County, and
in many interesting ways is related to the development
and upbuilding of Pawhuska. He came into the country
without money and with no immediate prospects, but is
now one of the largest land holders and one of the most
influential men in the locality.

A native of Illinois, John P. Lynn was born in LaSalle
County August 3, 1861, a son of Patrick and Margaret
(McNamara) Lynn, his father a native of north Ireland
and his mother of southern Ireland. The father came
to the United States when five years of age and was
married in Philadelphia. The family moved to Illinois
about 1860 and in 1869 the father located in the new
country around the present City of Independence, Kan-
sas, establishing his home and taking a claim among the
Osage Indians, who about that time removed from Kan-
sas into Indian Territory. That was a time of primitive

2034

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

conditions, when all travel was either by horseback or on
foot, and the father developed a farm from the virgin
prairie in the vicinity of Indepenee and his wife died
there when John P. Lynn was twenty-two years old. The
father afterward married again, and took up a claim in
old Oklahoma Territory. He died in Oklahoma City and
was laid to rest by his wife in Independence, Kansas.
By his first marriage there were three daughters and
three sons and two of the sons and two daughters are
still living. By the second marriage there were four
boys and three girls.

John P. Lynn had to get his education by very limited
attendance at local schools at Independence, Kansas.
After coming into the Osage country as already related
he spent three years as foreman on the farm near the
St. Louis School. On March 19, 1895, he married Mary
A. Rogers, who was born in Pawhuska or where that city
now stands November 5, 1876, a daughter of Patrick
and Constance (Canville) Rogers. Her father was born
in Ireland and her mother in the United States, being
French on her paternal side and Osage Indian through
her mother. Mrs. Lynn's grandfather Canville belonged
to the old French stock originally located in the vicinity
of St. Louis, and from there moved West to where Kansas
City now stands, and at one time owned forty acres of
land covering the site of the old Union depot in that
city. He was a French trader. Mrs. Lynn’s father was
a trader through the Osage country in the early days,
and came to the Southwest from Decatur, Illinois, and
both he and his wife died at Pawhuska and were laid
to rest on the Cary River, twenty-five miles north of
Pawhuska. Mr. and Mrs. Lynn have five children, named
John, Joseph, Theresa, Patrick and William.

For many years Mr. Lynn has found full employment
for his energies in ranching and stock raising. His wife
and each of their five children have allotments of Indian
lands, to the amount of a section for each person, and
Mr. Lynn has charge of the operation of this large
estate, and is also the individual owner of 1,400 acres
which he has bought at different times. His home is in
Pawhuska, and is a large and commodious residence at
the east end of Main Street. He built the old part of
this home soon after his marriage, but remodeled and
added extensively two years ago. He has witnessed the
entire development of the city, and some of the business
and residence structures stand on land- which he platted
as the Lynn addition. Lynn Avenue was named for him,
and lie has a section of land along that thoroughfare at
the east end of Main Street. Mr. Lynn has done con-
siderable in improving the city, has built and sold several
homes, but for the most part sells unimproved lots. In
his home farm he has fifty acres of alfalfa, and keeps
about 250 head of hogs in the fields. He is also a feeder
of the black muley or Angus cattle. Other interests are
as a stockholder in the Pawhuska Oil & Gas Company,
the largest corporation in Osage County. Mr. Lynn is a
democrat and a member of the Catholic Church.

When Mr. Lynn first came to the vicinity of Pawhuska
and found employment with the sisters of the St. Louis
School, there were no railroads through this section of
country, and he frequently drove to Elgin and Cedarvale
in Kansas, the nearest railroad stations, twenty-five and
forty miles away. He made these trips on a number of
occasions to meet the bishop or other missionaries, and
the journeys were often made in bad weather, with no
bridges over the swollen streams and the fords were not
passed without some danger and inconvenience. At dif-
ferent times also in the early days Mr. Lynn drove hogs
across the country to Elgin, the nearest place for ship-
ment. These drives were also made in the cool winter
seasons, and required three or four days. At night he
would wrap his blanket around him and lie down among

the hogs, and several times would get up in the morning
with his blanket covered with snow. Another interesting
fact in connection with the family record is that
Mrs. Lynn’s father in the early days had his corral on
the site now occupied by the postofiice in the heart of
the city at Pawhuska.

Vernon B. Browne is one of the youngest bankers in
Oklahoma, and a few years ago organized and has since
been cashier and chief executive of the May State Bank
of May. This bank was established February 20, 1912,
with a capital stock of $10,000. Its deposits on March
7, 1916, aggregated $87,684.92. While Mr. Browne is
cashier and active manager the president is Charles H.
Martin. The stockholders in the bank are largely local
people, and it is a local institution and has thoroughly
deserved the prosperity it has enjoyed.

Vernon B. Browne was born June 25, 1885, at Seneca,
South Carolina, a son of A. C. and Anna M. (Hubbard)
Browne, who were also natives of South Carolina. His
father was born December 5, 1857, and his mother
December 1, 1860, and they were married November 7,
1878. In 1888 the family removed to Texas, and in 1896
to Fargo, Oklahoma, where A. C. Browne is now engaged
in the grain business. Of their five sons and four daugh-
ters only three are now living, Vernon, the son, and
two daughters; T. Browne, was born June 27, 1889,
and was married October 20, 1909, to J. W. MeGinley,
a farmer at Wheatland, Oklahoma, and their three
children are: Onetia, Hugh and Vernon; and Anna M.,
born October 12, 1895, and still at home with her parents
at Fargo.

Vernon Browne received his education in the public
schools of Panhandle, Texas. At the age of twenty-one
lie took a business course at Oklahoma City, and in
1907 became bookkeeper in the Stock Exchange Bank
of Fargo. On January 1, 1909, he was elected cashier
of this institution, but resigned on January 1, 1912,
in order to organize the May State Bank. He has been
actively identified with that town in all its public spirited
movements, and besides his interests as a banker he has
extensive farm holdings.

Mr. Browne is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite
Mason, being a member of Consistory No. 1 at Guthrie,
is also an Odd Fellow, and politically is a democrat, but
without official aspirations. On August 5, 1914, at Cherry-
vale, Kansas, he married Miss Myrtle Williams, who
was born November 24, 1887, in Kansas, a daughter
of J. M. and Mollie (Laird) Williams. Mrs. Browne
was a teacher for four years prior to her marriage in
the city schools of Woodward, Oklahoma. They have
one child, Eugene Vernon, born at May, October 24, 1915.

Hon. Ed Baker. While it is in the office of county
judge of Blaine County that Mr. Baker is best known
to the general public, having administered that position
with impartial ability and efficiency since 1912, he has
for more than twenty years been identified with this
section of Oklahoma, having come in as a pioneer, and
has lived a life of usefulness and honor as a teacher,
farmer, homesteader, and has been in the active practice'
of law at Watonga since 1901.

Of an old American family, the Bakers originally
came from Germany and settled in Maryland prior toi
the Revolutionary war. Judge Baker was born in
Creston, Iowa, September 23, 1866. His father, Britton
Robert Baker, who was also a pioneer in Blaine County,
was born in Maryland in 1827, and died on his home-
stead in Blaine County, Oklahoma, December 25,, 1910
From Maryland he removed to Eastern Iowa, and was
married near Burlington to Louisa Jane Anderson. She
was born in 1832 in that portion of old Virginia nov

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2035

West Virginia, and died at Watonga in October, 1911.
After his marriage Britton R. Baker moved to Creston,
Iowa, and in 1872 to Mount Ayr, Iowa, where he changed
his vocation as a farmer to that of a merchant. He
also lived in Nebraska and Kansas, and in 1887 went
to Benton County, the center of the great fruit growing
district of Northwestern Arkansas, and was a farmer
there until 1893. In that year he joined the early
colonists of Blaine County, Oklahoma, and bought a
farm on which he lived until his death. As a young
man he gave four years of active service in the Federal
army during the Civil war, enlisting in the Twenty -
'ninth Regiment of Iowa Infantry. As a young man
he had been an active worker in the Methodist Episcopal
Church. The children were: Ulysses R., who was last

heard of in 1880, and is thought to have been killed by
the Indians in Arizona; Ida F., wife of William H.
Boyce, a retired farmer living at Watonga; Ira L., a
blacksmith at Colgate, Oklahoma; and Judge Ed Baker.

Judge Baker has been identified with the new West
during most of his active life. He gained his education
in the public schools of Mount Ayr, Iowa, up to the
time he was fourteen. He helped his father in farming
a Nebraska homestead in Knox County until 1885, and
then went with the family to Ness County, Kansas,
engaged in farming there two years, and after removing
to Benton County, Arkansas, in 1887 taught school for
three years. He continued his vocation as a school
teacher for one term after going to Barber County,
Kansas, in 1891, and from there came to Blaine County,
Oklahoma, in August, 1892. Here he first identified
himself with the primary work of developing homesteads,
and secured for himself a claim of 160 acres in the
north end of Blaine County. That was his home and
the scene of his labors as an agriculturist for ten years.
In the meantime he had taught a number of terms in
the local schools, and while teaching diligently pursued
his studies in the law, until admitted to the bar at
Watonga in 1901. In 1902 Mr. Baker sold his farm
and has since lived in Watonga. In that year he was
elected county attorney, and the two years spent in
that office were engaged in a creditable fulfillment of
his public duties and also proved a valuable experience
in his career as a lawyer. Judge Baker conducted a large
general practice in civil and criminal law until 1912, in
which year he was elected county judge of Blaine
County, and in 1914 was re-elected for another term of
two years. His offices are now in the courthouse at
Watonga.

Judge Baker is a democrat, and fraternally is affiliated
with Watonga Lodge No. 176, Ancient Free and Accepted
Masons; Geary Chapter No. 59, Royal Arch Masons;
Weatherford Commandery No. 17, Knights Templar;
India Temple of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine at
Oklahoma City; with Watonga Camp of the Modern
Woodmen of America; and with the Knights and Ladies
of Security at Watonga. In Benton County, Arkansas,
in 1891, Judge Baker married Miss Lula B. Locke, whose
father, S. B. Locke, was a farmer in that part, of
Arkansas. Two children have been born to their mar-
riage. Britton R., who graduated from the Watonga
High School in 1913, spent the next year as a teacher in
his home county, and is now a member of the freshman
class of the University of Oklahoma in Norman.
F. Locke, the second son, graduated from high school in
1915 and is now a teacher in the public schools at
Hitchcock, Oklahoma.

John Frank Stotts. During his early boyhood the
horizon of J. F. Stotts was bounded by a Texas farm.
He lived in a country where hard work was the rule and

an education a difficult matter to obtain. He has earned
his opportunities, and for the past thirteen years has
been in the broader realm of business affairs, and is now
a well known banker in Southern Oklahoma and cashier
of the First State Bank of Ringling.

John Frank Stotts was born in Montague County,
Texas, September 15, 1882, and his family originally
came from Germany and settled in the State of Indiana.
His father, J. M. Stotts, was born in Missouri in 1845
and died at Woolsey, Oklahoma, in December, 1903. He
moved from Missouri to Texas and in 1891 to Woolsey,
Indian Territory. He was a farmer and had a cotton
gin at his place. As a boy he saw four years of service
in . the Confederate army, enlisting from Missouri in
Price ’s army. He was three times taken prisoner, but
effected his escape each time. He was a member of the
Christian Church and for many years a deacon, and also
affiliated with the Masonic fraternity. J. M. Stotts
married Miss Anna Scott, who was born in 1855 and
died at Loco, Oklahoma, in 1907. Their children were :
Hattie, wife of W. J. Gossage, a farmer at Mangum,
Oklahoma; Sim, a cattle, man and deputy sheriff at
Cornish, Oklahoma; John F.; Ida, wife of Clayton
Durlmg, a painter and decorator at Comanche, Okla-
homa; and Charles, who is assistant cashier of the First
State Bank of Ringling.

John F. Stotts as a boy attended subscription schools
maintained in log houses in the vicinity of Woolsey.
His early life was spent on the farm and in assisting
around the cotton gin, but in 1902 he graduated in a
business course at Draughon’s Practical Business College
m Fort Worth, and from that time forward began
making his ability and influence felt. In 1903 he entered
the employ of the Chickasha Cotton Oil Company, and
in 1904 became connected with J. M. Robberson ’s general
mercantile house at Loco, Oklahoma, with which busi-
ness he remained six years. He next became cashier of
the State Bank of Loco, and continued in that office
until May, 1914. He left Loco to organize the First
State Bank of Ringling, of which he has been cashier,
and has also served as vice president of the State Bank
of ^ Loco. The First State Bank of Ringling occupies
a building constructed April, 1914, on Main Street, but
a modern brick structure is now in course of eonstruc-
tion, one block further west, and this will provide a
splendid home for the institution, which has been growino-
rapidly. The officers of the bank are: J. M Robber-

son of Loco, president; W. W. Woodworth, vice presi-
dent; J. F Stotts, cashier ; and Charles Stotts, assistant
cashier. The capital stock is $25,000, and a recent
report already shows surplus and profits of $2,500.

Mr. Stotts is a democrat, and is affiliated with Loco
L°?i Se No. 361, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, in
which he is a past grand and a representative to the
Grand Lodge two terms. He is past consul commander
of Loco Camp No. 682 of the Woodmen of the World
and was its representative to the head camp

][n 1906 at Loco, Mr. Stotts married Miss Lucy
Wyatt of Montague County, Texas. Their children are:
Orlando, born in 1908, and Maysel, born in 1910.

E E. Brewer and Neatha Homer Seger. The pro-
prietor and editor of a newspaper occupies a certain
ground of vantage from which he may make or mar
the reputation of individual or community, build up or
tear down a cause worthy of public approval or sup-
port. Not only the City of Geary, but Blaine County at
large has reason for congratulation that the Geary
Booster is m such safe, sagacious and clean hands.
Founded m 1912, it is considered one of the best gen-
eral newspapers published in this part of the state as
well as an outspoken, fair play exponent of the best

2036

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

elements of the republican party — in fact, it is in all
respects worthy of the care and sound judgment dis-
played in its columns, and reflects credit upon its editors
and publishers, Messrs. E. E. Brewer and Neatha Homer

E. E. Brewer was born September 20, 1874, in Ver-
milion County, Illinois, and is a member of a family
which originated in Holland, emigrated thence to New
York in colonial times, and finally became pioneers of
Ohio. His father, Rev. J. W. Brewer, was born in
Sullivan County, Indiana, in 1831, and was there mar-
ried and for some years followed preaching as a minister
of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He then removed
to Vermilion County, Illinois, where he followed con-
tracting and building, and in 1875 removed to Sherman,
Texas. Five years later he went to the Texas Pan
Handle, in 1889 became a pioneer white settler of
Oklahoma when he located at El Reno, and in 1901 came
to Geary, Oklahoma, where he continued to be engaged in
business as a contractor and builder until his death,
June 24, 1913. He was a man of industrious and ener-
getic habits, won friends through his many sterling
qualities, and was considered a good and public-spirited
citizen in whatever community he found himself located.
He married Miss Emily Hawkins, who was also born in
Sullivan County, Indiana, in 1835, and who died at
Geary in 1904. They became the parents of four chil-
dren,' as follows : William A., who resides at Springfield,
Missouri, and is a minister of the Methodist Episcopal
Church; Estella, who married E. E. Garhart, a bank
cashier and automobile dealer of Pan Handle, Texas;
Jessie M., who is the wife of D. M. Young, a real estate
dealer of Chicago, Illinois; and E. E.

E. E. Brewer attended the public schools of Pan
Handle, Texas, and El Reno, Oklahoma, until reaching
the age of fourteen years, at which time he engaged in
newspaper work at Mobeetie, Wheeler County, Texas, on
the Mobeetie News. There he remained nine months,
receiving his initiation into the mysteries of journalism
as represented in the office of a country newspaper, and
in 1889 became a pioneer of Oklahoma when he came to
El Reno and entered the employ of the El Reno News.
From that time forward he was identified with various
newspapers, always adding to his knowledge and capacity
as a newspaper man, until 1901, when he came to Geary,
Oklahoma, and after being with the Geary Bulletin for
a time helped to establish the Geary Journal, in com-
pany with Mr. Stackhouse. After two years of operation
the partners disposed of their interests and in 1912
Mr. Brewer became the founder of the Geary Booster,
choosing as the name for his paper that word which
must always hold a prominent position in the vocabulary
of the industrial history of Oklahoma, as typical of what
has caused its business, agricultural and general growth.
Mr. Brewer continued as sole proprietor of this paper,
-until April 1, 1915, when he sold a half interest to Neatha
Homer Seger, thus forming the firm of Brewer & Seger,
which has since continued. The paper has republican
policies and is considered as strong and influential among
the people of Blaine and the surrounding counties where
it has a large subscription list and secures its full
share of advertising contracts. The plant and offices
are on Main Street and are well equipped with news-
paper and general printing machinery.

Mr. Brewer was married at Yukon, Oklahoma, in
1897, to Miss Ida Garrison, daughter of the late Oliver
Garrison, who was a farmer, the ceremony being per-
formed by Mr. Brewer ’s brother, the Rev. W. A. Brewer.
Two children have been born to this union: LeRoy
William and Lamara L., who are both members o£ the
sophomore class at the Geary High School. Mr. and
Mrs. Brewer are members of the Methodist Episcopal

Church. He is independent in politics, and while not an
office seeker has served four years as city clerk of
Geary. His fraternal connection is with Geary Lodge
No. 139, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons; Lodge No.
6976, Modern Woodmen of America; and Lodge No. 138,
Independent Order of Odd Fellows. He is interested in
several local industries and is a stockholder in the Okla-
homa Oil Company.

Neatha Homer Seger, junior partner of the firm of
Brewer & Seger, was born at Darlington, Canadian
County, Oklahoma, December 2, 1876, and is a son of
John H. Seger, of Colony, Oklahoma, in the sketch of
whose career, elsewhere in this work, will be found a
complete account of the family. Neatha H. Seger was
educated in the district schools of Reno City, Canadian
County, Oklahoma, following which he attended the
Bryant Normal University, at Stromsburg, Nebraska,
and was graduated from the business department of that
institution in 1895. Following this Mr. Seger was en-
gaged in teaching school for one term, when he turned
his attention to the mercantile business at Colony and
continued to be engaged therein in 1905. Removing at
that time to Tuttle, Oklahoma, he continued in the
same business for nearly four years and in 1909 re-
turned to Colony, where he worked on a farm. In 1910
he received his introduction to newspaper life when
he bought the Colony Courier, a publication which he
edited at Colony until April 1, 1915, then coming to
Geary and buying a half interest in the Geary Booster.
While a resident of this place for only a comparatively
short period, Mr. Seger has already established himself
firmly in the confidence of the people, and has many
friends in a wide acquaintance. Through the columns of
the paper he is assisting Mr. Brewer in his efforts to
advance the best interests of Geary and to encourage
every movement for the making of better education,
greater morality and a finer citizenship.

Mr. Seger was married December 30, 1903, at Colony,
Oklahoma, to Miss Jessie Mattoon, daughter of the late
William H. Mattoon, who was in the engineering de-
partment of the United States Government service. Two
children have been born to this union: Genevieve Geral-
dine and Lloyd Francis, both of whom are attending the
public school. Mr. Seger is a republican, and has
served as a member of the school board of Colony and
as justice of the peace for five years. He belongs to
the Dutch Reformed Church, at Colony, and his fra-
ternal connections are with Weatherford Lodge, Ancient
Free and Accepted Masons, and the Modern Woodmen
of America at Colony.

Gilbert W. Dukes. The name of Dukes is associated
with the settlement of the Choctaw Nation from its
earliest occupancy by the tribe, and one of its repre-
sentatives has achieved the distinction of the governorship
of the nation to which he belongs. The multifarious
affairs of the nation developed and brought out the men
of strength, and among them was Joseph Dukes, the
founder of the pioneer family and the father of Gilbert
W.' Dukes.

Joseph Dukes and his family were of the first of the
Choctaws to leave their Mississippi home in the early ’40s
and establish new homes in the wild country recently
treated for in the Red River country of the Far West.
He settled near Fort Towson and there became a man of
prominence as a farmer and a minister of the Presby-
terian Church. Among his children were Gilbert W.,
Charles, and Josephine, who married Banjamin Woods
and died in the Choctaw Nation. The father and mother
both passed away near Fort Towson, where they are
buried.

Gilbert W. Dukes attained his majority in the vicinity

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2037

of Fort Towson and received a liberal education, joining
the Confederate troops raised in the Choctaw Nation and
in after years served his people in many civic positions.
As sheriff and district judge his services marked him as a
proper man for the safe and conservative conduct of the
nation’s affairs in the executive chair. He was a mem-
ber of the Progressives, and in the deliberations looking
toward final dissolution of tribal relations and the coming
of statehood he showed his friendship for the movement
and gave it his support. He was chosen governor and
served two years. Since the advent of statehood he has
espoused the principles of the republican party. Governor
Dukes was married to Miss Angelina Wade, a daughter of
Governor Wade, who also filled the gubernatorial
chair. She died in 1893, the mother of Joseph A. and
Henry Dukes, of Garvin, Oklahoma. For his second wife
Governor Dukes married Mrs. Isabel Sexton, and their
children were Minnie, L*etta and Dee Dukes.

Matthew J. Kane. Justice Kane, of the state
Supreme Court, is a native of the Empire State, born in
Niagara County on the 28th of November, 1863. In 1887
he graduated in law from the Georgetown University,
District of Columbia, with the regular degree of LL. B.
He# commenced the practice at Wichita, Kansas, in 1888,
but' upon the opening of Oklahoma to settlement, April
22, 1889, located at Kingfisher. In 1907 he served as a
member of the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention, his
first term as justice of the state Supreme Court com-
mencing in September of that year. He was chief justice
of that body in 1909-12. His present term expires in
1917. It is needless to say that he stands high in his
profession. A further mark of his leadership was his
selection, in 1904, as a delegate to the Universal Congress
of Lawyers and Jurists, held at St. Louis in that year.

Henry Franklin Benson. While the great metro-
politan dailies, with their tremendously long lists of
subscribers, exert a great influence in the country in
molding public opinion, it is probable that their more
modest and unassuming brethren of the fourth estate,
the newspapers of the smaller cities and the country
districts actually come into closer contact and are more
in sympathy with their readers. Many of these latter
are edited by men of journalistic capacity and broad
knowledge, whose opinions are frequently quoted by the
larger papers as indicative of the trend of public
thought in their communities. An excellent representa-
tive of this type of alert and progressive newspaper,
which has its recognized place and an important one in
the scheme of things, is the Geary Journal, published at
Geary, Blaine County. The proprietor and editor of this
newspaper, Henry Franklin Benson, is still a young man,
but his entire business career, -covering half of his life,
has been passed as a journalist, and he has already
accomplished as much in his chosen vocation as many
men attain after a lifetime of effort.

Mr. Benson was born on a farm six miles east of
Marlow, Oklahoma, March 6, 1888, and is a son of
James H. and Amanda (Squires) Benson, and belongs to
a family which, originating in England, was founded
in Colonial days in Massachusetts, from whence its mem-
bers moved to Mississippi and later to Texas. James
H. Benson was born in Burnett County, Texas, in 1855,
and was but eight years of age when, with his father,
James Benson, a pioneer ranchman of West Texas, he
was attacked by a band of Comanche Indians, his father
being killed. Young James H. was captured and held
prisoner for two years, when the red men were rounded
up and the lad’s release was purchased by the United
States Government. He grew to manhood in West

Texas, where he became a cowboy during the days of
the open range. Later he was married and with the
coming of the agriculturists he settled down to farming,
continuing to be engaged therein in Texas until 1887!
In that year he came to Oklahoma and settled east of
Marlow, and five years later became a pioneer in
Roger Mills County, where he homesteaded 160 acres.
He resided there until 1897 and then moved back to
Marlow and engaged in the mercantile business until
1902, when he moved to Anadarko at the time of the
opening. . He remained there only two years, however,
after which he came to Geary, where he has since been
engaged in business as a carpenter and contractor. He
has erected a number of the buildings of this city and
is known as a skilled and reliable workman, a business
man of the soundest integrity and a man faithful in the
keeping of engagements. He is a stanch democrat, a
supporter of progressive and beneficial movements, a
consistent member of the Baptist Church, and a valued
member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. Mr.
Benson was married in West Texas to Miss Amanda
Squires, who was born in -the Lone Star State in 1864
and died at Marlow, Oklahoma, in 1899. Of their
children, two are living: Henry Franklin, of this

review; and Roy, born in Roger Mills County, Oklahoma,
March 16, 1895, received a public school education in
this state, began to work at the age of fourteen years
in connection with newspapers, has followed that voca-
tion at various places in Oklahoma, and is now associate
editor of the Geary Journal.

Henry Franklin Benson attended the public schools of
Roger Mills County for two years and completed the
graded schools at Anadarko, Oklahoma. This training
was subsequently supplemented by two years of attend-
ance at the Geary High School, and when he was sixteen
years of age he became an apprentice in the printing
plan! of the Geary Journal. One year later he went
to Hinton, Oklahoma, where he entered the plant of the
Hinton Record and soon won promotion to foreman,
and later was made editorial manager, a position which
he held until 1910. In that year he leased the Tuttle
Standard, which he edited for six months and then spent
one year at Oklahoma City, also in the newspaper busi-
ness. Mr. Benson then became manager for W. B.
Anthony’s paper, the Marlow Review, and held that
position for nearly a year while Mr. Anthony was acting
as secretary to Governor Haskell. From that time for-
ward, Mr. Benson worked on various papers in Oklahoma
urLfil 1912 when he came to Geary and became associated
with E. E. Brewer in the founding of the Geary Booster,
of which he was editor for 1% years. With this thorough
training and practical experience, Mr. Benson felt quali-
fied to enter the newspaper field on his own account, and
in April, 1914, purchased the Geary Journal, of which
he has since continued as the editor and proprietor The
Geary Journal was founded in 1900 and is a supporter
of the principles and candidates of the democratic party.
It has an excellent subscription list in Blaine and the
surrounding counties, and also has a number of sub-
scribers outside of the state, while its prestige as an
advertising medium has brought business of that charac-
ter in constantly increasing volumes. The well equipped
plant and offices are located on South Broadway. Mr.
Benson is a supporter of good government, of progressive
municipal measures and of the advancement of morality,
religion and education, while his good citizenship has
been displayed on numerous occasions. He is a demo-
crat in his political views and is at present deputy court
clerk of the Geary Division of the County Court.

In 1910 Mr. Benson was married in Oklahoma City to

2038

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Miss Grace Miller, daughter of F. W. Miller, a merchant
of Hinton, Oklahoma. Mr. and Mrs. Benson have two
children : Thelma, born November 20, 1910 ; and Frank,

Jr., born August 31, 1912.

Wilhelm Walter Moore. As an educator and min-
ister of the Christian gospel Wilhelm Walter Moore has
become well known in several communities of Oklahoma.
He is now giving his entire time and attention to educa-
tional work and is principal of the Barnard School at
Tecumseh.

Not yet thirty years of age, Professor Moore has laid
the foundation of a career of great usefulness and is
properly regarded as one of the able educators of the new
State of Oklahoma. He was born at Casey, Illinois, July
27, 1888. His parents were Walter T. and Mary M.
(Letner) Moore, both of whom were born in Illinois.
The paternal great-grandfather Moore emigrated from
Dublin, Ireland, in the early part of the nineteenth
century and for a number of years was a slave-holding
planter in the South. Grandfather Thomas Moore took
up the profession of law and died at Charleston, Illinois,
in 1858. Walter T. Moore, who was born in 1853, now
resides at Marshall, Illinois. He began his career as a
Baptist minister and preached in various towns in Illi-
nois, and for three years lived at Geary, Oklahoma, where
he also had charge of the Baptist Church. Just before
leaving Geary he joined the Methodist Episcopal Con-
ference, and has since been a regular minister of that
denomination. With the exception of the three years
spent in Geary, Oklahoma, he has lived practically all
his life in Illinois. He is a democrat and a member
of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. His wife,
Mary Letner, is the daughter of Louis Letner. The
latter was born in 1818, has followed a career of farm-
ing, and is still living in Illinois only a few years short
of a century. Louis Letner ’s father came from Germany
and settled in Tennessee. Professor Moore was the
youngest of three children. His sister Ella married Ed
Marshall, a farmer living at Pawnee, Illinois. His only
brother is L. Clarence, who finished his education in
Shurtleff College at Albany, Illinois, leaving that insti-
tution in 1906, and is now pastor of the Central Christian
Church at Waterloo, Iowa.

Wilhelm W. Moore in the winter of the year in which
he was born went with his parents from Casey, Illinois,
to Oakland in that state. He gained his early education
in the public schools there, attended the preparatory
department of old Shurtleff College at Albany, finishing
in 1902, and then entered the regular collegiate depart-
ment, where he remained lacking one term for the full
four years’ course, leaving school in 1906.

On leaving college his first employment was as pas-
senger conductor on the I. T. S. Railroad, with home
at Springfield. In that practical work he spent about
two years. He then entered the ministry, as a member
of the Illinois Conference of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, and after having charge of the church at
DeWitt, Illinois, for a time he was called to Stillwater,
Oklahoma. In addition to preaching he also taught high
school work. After six months at Stillwater he was
transferred to Jet, Oklahoma, for a year and then
joined the Christian Church. In 1913 Mr. Moore taught
in the McLoud, Oklahoma, High School and at the same
time filled the pulpit of the Christian Church at McLoud
and Tecumseh, keeping his home in McLoud.

In June, 1914, Mr. Moore came to Tecumseh and has
since been the capable man in charge as principal of the
Barnard School. He has under his supervision ten teach-
ers and a regular enrollment of 520 pupils. In June,
1916, he was granted the degree A. B. from the Teachers

Professional College of Austin, Texas. In politics Pro-
fessor Moore is a democrat.

On May 11, 1914, at Tecumseh, he married Miss Edith
Fisbaugh. Her father, A. B. Fisbaugh, is a merchant
at Jet, Oklahoma. Mrs. Moore was educated in the
public schools, finishing the sophomore year in the
Christian University at Enid, Oklahoma.

Frank R. Buchanan, M. D. Among the younger
members of the medical profession in Oklahoma,
Dr. Frank R. Buchanan of Canton has the ability and
skill which are guarantees of a permanent success, and
has already gained a good practice in and about his
home town in Blaine County.

The Buchanan family to which he belongs originated
in Scotland and in colonial times was planted in the
Province of Pennsylvania. Doctor Buchanan’s grand-
parents, T. J. and Harriet Buchanan, were both born in
the East. His grandfather, T. J. Buchanan, was born
in Pennsylvania in 1829, was an early settler and farmer
at Windsor, Missouri, where his wife died, and he
afterwards moved to Kansas and in 1894 was one of the
pioneers to settle in the vicinity of Thomas, where he
homesteaded a claim of one hundred sixty acres. He is
now living retired at the age of eighty-six in Thomas.
During the Civil war he served on the Union side.

T. J. Buchanan, Jr., father of Doctor Buchanan, was
born at Windsor, Missouri, in 1865, and when quite a
young man entered the railroad service in the South-
west. He was married at Albuquerque, New Mexico, to
Miss Martha Jane Hughes, who was born in Georgia in
1867. After that he followed railroading for a num-
ber of years, with home at Gallup, New Mexico, but in
1896 came to Thomas, Oklahoma, and buying a farm of
160 acres a quarter of a mile northwest of the town,
developed his land and has since been one of the pros-
perous men engaged in diversified agriculture in this
section. He is a member and trustee of the United
Brethren Church, and is affiliated with the Brotherhood
of American Yeomen. He and his wife are the parents
of eight children: Harriet Nuel, wife of William C.
Dodd, who is in the insurance business at Thomas,
Oklahoma; James H., a railroad foreman at Bloomington,
Illinois ; Dr. Frank R. ; Hazel Winona, a senior in the
Thomas High School; Hobart Lawrence, in the freshman
class of the Thomas High School; Lewis Edward and
Wilhelmina, both students in the public schools; and
Amy Oneta.

It was during the residence of his parents at Gallup,
New Mexico, that Dr. Frank R. Buchanan was born,
June 30, 1892. However, most of his life has been
spent in Oklahoma, and he has been a witness to many
transformations in the central part of the state. He
attended public school at Thomas, but left high school
before graduating, and in 1910 entered the University
of Arkansas to take up the study of medicine. In 1911
he was granted a high school diploma before the Indiana
State Board of Registration. After two years in the
University of Arkansas he finished his education by two
years in the College of Medicine and Surgery of Val-
paraiso University, from which he was graduated with
the degree M. D. in the class of 1914.

Doctor Buchanan took up active practice at Thomas
on June 1, 1914, in association with Dr. T. B. Hinson.
While there he helped to establish the Thomas Hospital,
and owned a half interest in that institution. A year
later, on June 1, 1915, he removed to Canton, and has
since conducted a general practice, though specializing
largely in surgery. His offices are over the Bank of
Canton.

He is a member of the state and county medical so-
cieties and the West Central Medical Society, is a

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2039

republican in polities, and is affiliated with Thomas
Lodge No. 265, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and
Thomas Chapter No. 53, Royal Arch Masons.

On September 10, 1914, at Osakis, Minnesota, Doctor
Buchanan married Miss Carrie Hesse, daughter of the
late George Hesse, who was a miller. They have one
child, Hubert Ruel.

Oren V. Dillon. Since 1903 the cashier of the First
National Bank of Geary, Oren V. Dillon has become well
known in banking circles of Blaine County as a thor-
oughly capable and energetic business man and financier.
Mr. Dillon, whose entire career has been passed in the
banking business, was born at Scotttown, Ohio, Novem-
ber 19, 1883, and is a son of John H. and Josie (Mount)
Dillon, natives of Lawrence County, Ohio.

Vincent Dillon, the great-grandfather of Oren V. Dillon,
was born in Ireland and was brought to the United States
when five years old by his parents, the family settling in
Pennsylvania. He grew up in that state and became a
pioneer homesteader in Ohio, from whence he drove large
herds of cattle and hogs to New York and Boston, via
Pittsburgh. His entire career was passed as a farmer
and stockman and, his death occurred in Lawrence
County. Henry Dillon, the grandfather of Oren V.
Dillon, was born in Pennsylvania in 1832 and as a lad was
taken to Noble County/ Ohio, and later to Lawrence
County, where he grew up amid pioneer surroundings.
Following in the footsteps of his father, he engaged in
farming and the raising of live stock, and through in-
dustry, energy and good management became one of the
substantial men of Lawrence County, where he died in
1896. He was married there to Miss Jane Reed, who was
born in 1837, in Noble County, Ohio, and she survives
him and resides on the old family homestead. Mr. Dillon
was a republican in politics and a consistent member of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, to which the grandmother
still belongs. They were the parents of four children,
namely : Mary, who married L. O. Enochs, and resides on
the old homestead with her mother; John H. ; Rose, who
is the wife of John Ellsworth, the owner of a telephone
exchange at Kenefic, Oklahoma; and Grant, who died
at the age of nine years.

John H. Dillon was born in Lawrence County, June 12,
1859, and attended the public schools there as well as
the normal school located at Lebanon, Ohio. Leaving
school at the age of eighteen years, he continued to work
on his father’s farm until attaining his majority at which
time he entered the general merchandise business at Scott-
town, Ohio, and continued therein until 1886. In that
year Mr. Dillon went to Colorado as manager for the
Southern Colorado Townsite Company, a project in which
he was interested for three years, and in 1889 came to
Oklahoma and took up his residence at Kingfisher, where
he was located during the opening of the Cheyenne- Arap-
aho Reservation. In 1892 he received the appointment
as postmaster of Watonga, Oklahoma, and served in that
capacity until March, 1893, when he was elected county
treasurer of Blaine County, and served two terms, or four
years, during which time he established an excellent
record for faithful and efficient public performance of
duty. In 1898 Mr. Dillon resigned his office and ac-
cepted the position of cashier of the First State Bank of
Geary, of which he was one of the organizers, and in
1902 became president of the institution, a position
which he has retained to the present time, the bank

I having received its national charter in 1904 and now
being known as the First National Bank of Geary. Mr.
Dillon has invested heavily in realty, owning farms in
Blaine and Canadian counties, on which he carries on,
through tenants, diversified farming and stock raising.

He owns also business houses at Geary and residential
properties, as well as his own handsome modern residence,
situated in the southwest part of the town. Mr. Dillon
belongs to the Oklahoma State Bankers Association. He
is a stalwart republican and is fraternally affiliated with
Geary Lodge No. 138, Independent Order of Odd Fellows,
and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks at El
Reno.

In 1882, in Lawrence County, Ohio, Mr. Dillon was
united in marriage with Miss Josie Mount, daughter of
the late Sam Mount, who was a mechanic, and to this
union there have been born six children : Oren V. ; Mary,
who is the wife of W. M. Gamble, of Oklahoma City, a
traveling salesman for the Loose- Wiles Company, con-
fectioners ; Merrill, Mary ’s twin brother, who is a banker
of Earlsboro, Oklahoma; Jack, who is an employe of the
First National Bank of Geary; Miss Agnes, who resides
with her parents; and Hobart, who is a freshman in the
agricultural and mechanical college, at Stillwater, Okla-
homa.

Oren V. Dillon received his education in the public
schools of Kingfisher, Oklahoma, but at the age of seven-
teen years put aside his studies to begin to secure
practical experience in banking, a career in which he
had decided to engage. For two years he was con-
nected with the Bank of Sayre, Oklahoma, in the capac-
ity of cashier, and with this preparation came to Geary
in 1903 as cashier of the Bank of Geary, which in the
following year was nationalized. The bank occupies a
structure on Main Street, corner of Broadway, which
was built in 1898 for bank and office purposes, and the
present officials of the institution are: John H. Dillon,
president; Willard Johnston, vice president; Oren V.
Dillon, cashier, and L. E. Troxel, assistant cashier. The
capital of the First National Bank is $25,000, with a sur-
plus of $5,000, and its depositors come from Blaine and
the surrounding counties. It bears an excellent reputa-
tion in banking circles as a sound and conservative con-
cern, ably and prudently managed.

Mr. Dillon is a republican, but has not been attracted
by public life. He is well known in Masonic circles,
belonging to Geary Lodge No. 139, Ancient Free and
Accepted Masons; Peaceful Valley Chapter No. 59, Royal
Arch Masons; Valley of Guthrie Consistory (thirty-sec-
ond degree), No. 1, Royal and Select Masters, and India
Temple, Ancient Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic
Shrine, of Oklahoma City. Mr. Dillon is unmarried.

Charles Evans, B. S., M. A., LL. D. There can be
no conjecture or other uncertainty in determining the
value of the services of Doctor Evans in the domain of
practical pedagogy, and to few of his age has it been
given to wield larger or more benignant influence as
an educator of high scholastic attainments and as a
broad-minded and progressive executive. He has served
since 1911 as president of the Oklahoma Central State
Normal School, at Edmond, and prior to coming to
Oklahoma he had attained to high reputation in educa-
tional circles in Kentucky, his earnest and effective
services having given him in his chosen profession a
reputation that, in fact, transcends all limitations of
merely local order. Oklahoma is signally favored in
having enlisted his co-operation and vital enthusiasm
in carrying forward the work of popular education
within her borders, and he is specially entitled to
definite recognition in this publication, that at least a
brief record of his service may be perpetuated in the
history of this favored and vigorous young common-
wealth.

Apropos of the work of Doctor Evans since assuming
his present official position, there is consistency in

2040

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

offering in a preliminary way a few statements concern-
ing the admirable state institution of which he is the
executive head, and thus the following quotations are
germane :

“Certain facts pertinent to the growth of the Central
State Normal School during the four years that Presi-
dent Evans has been at its head are illustrative of the
ability of the man as an educator and executive. By a
unanimous vote of the State Board of Education he was
called from the superintendency of the city schools of
Ardmore, Carter county, to the presidency of the normal
school at a time when the work of this important state
institution was lagging and inadequate and when its
spirit was at low ebb. The problem of conducting suc-
cessfully a state normal school was to be solved in the
new commonwealth, and Dr. Evans fortunately was
the one called upon to make the solution, — a task that
demanded vigorous policies, marked initiative and
administrative ability, great circumspection, and no
little constructive talent. He proved equal to all
demands thus placed upon him and the results that he
has achieved justify the application of the scriptural
aphorism that ‘ By their fruits ye shall know them. ’ On
the 1st of July, 1911, when Dr. Evans assumed charge
of the Central Normal School its best enrollment record
had been 1,154; the latest attendance figures are 2,981.
The graduating class of the preceding year comprised
only eighteen members; the graduating class of 1916
comprised 211 members. In 1911 the normal college
department had an enrollment of sixty students; that
department in 1916 had an enrollment of 1,210 students.
Appropriation for the maintenance of the institution in
1911 was $52,500; the state appropriation for 1915,
showing legislative appreciation of the work accomplished
under the regime of President Evans, was $222,000.
Within the four years an additional building for the
schools has been erected and placed in commission. All
of these statements are significant and bear their own
lessons of incentive and inspiration.”

In February, 1916, the trustees of Henry Kendall
College, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, unanimously elected Doctor
Evans to the presidency, carrying with it a tenure of
five years and a salary of $5,000 a year. He accepted,
and though urged by the State Board of Education and
a great student body to remain with Central State
Normal, he chose to serve, as he said, not only the
schools, but school and church.

At Salem, Livingston County, Kentucky, Charles
Evans was born on the 16th of August, 1870, and he is
a son of Enoch E. and Frances E. (Dawson) Evans.
His father was a village blacksmith at Salem, a man
of strong individuality and sterling integrity, and a
representative of an honored pioneer family of Ten-
nessee. Enoch E. Evans was born in Montgomery
County, Tennessee, where his father had served with
efficiency as an early-day schoolmaster. The lineage of
the Evans family, as the name indicates, traces back
to Welsh origin, and that the American branch was
founded in the Colonial era of our national history is
evidenced by the fact that representatives of the name
were found as valiant soldiers of the Continental Line
in the war of the Revolution.

The preliminary educational discipline of Dr. Charles
Evans was obtained in the village schools of ' his native
county, and thereafter he attended the literary or
academic department of the University of Kentucky
until the close of his junior year. In 1891 he was
graduated in the National Normal University, at
Lebanon, Ohio, with the degree of Bachelor of Science,
and from that time forward to the present has con-
tinued his services as an able and honored exponent of
the pedagogic profession.

Doctor Evans’ initial experience as a teacher was
gained in his native Village of Salem, and for twelve
years thereafter he was superintendent of the city
schools of Marion, the judicial center of Crittenden
County, Kentucky. Within this perior of service he
gained clear comprehension of the scope and details
and the practical possibilities of the educational system
that later became popular throughout the different
states of the Union in the centralizing of school work in
rural and semi-rural communities. He devised plans
and methods through which he developed with marked
success this community-center policy of educational work
at Marion, to which place students were drawn from a
wide radius of country, owing to the superior advantages
thus possible of being afforded. Doctor Evans became
known as one of the most successful pioneers of this
admirable movement in the United States, and as his
work became known he was frequently called upon for
advice on the part of educators in Kentucky and other
states. Year after year the Marion Board of Education
re-elected him to the office of superintendent of schools,
and when he finally announced his intention of removing
to the West the board not only earnestly besought him
to remain but also tendered to him a life tenure of the
superintendeney and a definite pension at the time
when he became too old for further active service.
Gratifying as were these overtures and deeply as he
appreciated the same, Doctor Evans felt it expedient
to adhere to his decision, and his field of labor in
Oklahoma has given him such wide scope for achieve-
ment that he has found no cause to regret his decision.
He became known as one of the most progressive and
popular educators in his native State of Kentucky and
was the first to serve throughout all sections of that
commonwealth as an instructor in teachers’ institutes,
the while he was a most active and valued member of
the Kentucky Teachers’ Association, in the affairs and
activities of which he was specially influential.

In 1905 Doctor Evans was elected superintendent of
the public schools of the City of Ardmore, Oklahoma,
at a salary of $1,200 a year, and the estimate placed
upon his services is shown when it is stated that his
salary at the time of his resignation, after a regime
of six years, was $2,500, the greater part of this marked
advancement in recompense having been made within a
period of three years after he had assumed the superin-
tendency. His splendid record in this incumbency
marked him as a leader in educational circles of Okla-
homa after the state was admitted to the Union and
finally resulted in his election to the presidency of the
Central State Normal School, in 1911, as previously
noted in this context. In 1908 Doctor Evans was presi-
dent of the Chickasaw Teachers’ Association, an organ-
ization that had previously been formed in the Chickasaw
Nation of the Indian Territory, and he has served also
as president of the Oklahoma State Teachers’ Associa-
tion, as well as vice president of the National Educa-
tional Association. Not only in a direct and executive
way has Doctor Evans been prominent in educational
affairs, but he has also been the author of three valuable
textbooks. In conjunction with Charles O. Bunn, of
Oklahoma City, he prepared the work entitled “Okla-
homa Civics,” a textbook that has been adopted for
general use in the public schools of the state and that
has been thus employed since 1910. Doctor Evans is
the author also of a work entitled “Oklahoma Civics -
and History ; ’ ’ and another entitled ‘ ‘ Growing a Life, ’ ’
this being a treatise on pedagogy and psychology and
one that has been adopted as a textbook in five dif-
ferent states of the Union, including his native State
of Kentucky. In 1913, in recognition of his eminent
services in his chosen profession and his high intel-

sis

brc

res

set-

and

p»

mar
datt
and
a w
ing

W»l

abili
pain
Port
Boot
child
in l:
born
depa:
of b|

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2041

lectual attainments, the University of Kentucky con-
ferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws.
‘ ‘ He who serves is royal, ’ ’ and such mark of distinction
signally applies to him whose life has been thus conse-
crated to high ideals and that has shown such large and
worthy achievement as that of Doctor Evans, whose
circle of friends and admirers is coincident with that
of his acquaintances. Concerning him the following
pertinent statements have been written and are worthy
of perpetuation:

“As an educator Dr. Evans has emphasized the idea
of usefulness, — in other words, he advocates and teaches
that education should be vital and productive, an edu-
cation that walks and talks and makes itself a factor
in human activities. His practical exploiting of this
idea gave birth to well matured plans for enhancing
the civic and material attractiveness of Edmond, the
seat of the Central Normal School, and the result is that
the place has been reclaimed from a somewhat
straggling and unkempt village into a modern little city
of manifold attractions and great civic pride. As a
member of the pedagogic profession Dr. Evans is one
of its most forceful, well informed and pleasing public
speakers in Oklahoma, and there is almost constant
demand for his acceptance of engagements to address
various representative associations of both public and
private order. He is deeply interested in the work of
the Young Men’s Christian Association, is state com-
mitteeman from Oklahoma in the national organization,
and both he and his wife are zealous and devoted mem-
bers of the Presbyterian church.”

In addition to his identification with Oklahoma State
Teachers’ Association and the National Educational
Association, Doctor Evans holds membership in the
North Central Council of Presidents of Normal Schools
of the United States. He is president of the State
Civie Association of Oklahoma, having aided in its
organization and having from the beginning been one
of its most active and enthusiastic workers. In the
furtherance of civie beauty he is especially interested
in promoting the cultivation of flowers, and his favorite
in the floral kingdom is the chrysanthemum.

At Ardmore, this state, Doctor Evans is affiliated with
the lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and in
this time-honored fraternity he has received, in the con-
sistory at McAlester, Oklahoma, the thirty-second degree
of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Eite, besides which
he is affiliated with Ardmore Lodge, Benevolent and
Protective Order of Elks, and with a lodge of Knights
of Pythias at Marion, Kentucky. Doctor Evans has one
brother and one sister, — Judge Thomas Evans, who is a
resident of the City of Paducah, Kentucky, and who
served twelve years on the bench of the County Court;
and Dora, who is the wife of James A. Sherrill, a pros-
perous jewelery merchant at Stephansville, Texas.

At Marion, Kentucky, in 1897, was solemnized the
marriage of Doctor Evans to Miss Martha Blue,
daughter of Judge John W. Blue, a representative lawyer
and jurist of the old Blue Grass State. Mrs. Evans is

woman of culture and gracious personality, represent-
ing the best of the gentle traditions concerning the
women of her native state, and she has exceptional
ability as an artist, her exhibits of drawing and china
painting having been awarded prizes at the Louisiana
Purchase Exposition, held in the City of St. Louis.
Doctor and Mrs. Evans became the parents of two
children, Charles and Edward, the latter of whom died
in 1912, at the age of eight years. Charles, who was
born in 1902, is now (1915) a student in the high school
department of the Central Normal School of Oklahoma,
of which his father is president.

Edd Pitch Milligan, M. D. No physician of Blaine
County has a better record for straightforward and high
professional conduct, or for success gained through per-
sonal merit and effort, than has Dr. Edd Pitch Milligan,
who since 1908 has been engaged in practice at Geary.
Like a number of other prominent professional men of
West Oklahoma, he is a native of the Buckeye State, born
at Youngstown, October 11, 1875, a son of William John
and Martha (Brownlee) Milligan.

The Milligan family was founded in the United States
by William Milligan, a native of Ireland, who came from
County Tyrone and settled in Ohio, being married at Can-
field, where he subsequently enjoyed a long career as a
successful attorney and died in advanced years before
the birth of Doctor Milligan. On his grandmother ’s side,
Doctor Milligan is related to the Professor McGuffey
who was the author of the old McGuffey speller and
reader so widely used in our schools several generations
back. William John Milligan, father of Doctor Milligan,
was born at Canfield, Ohio, in 1830, and as a' young
man removed to Youngstown, Ohio, where he passed the
rest of his life as a stone contractor and died in 1907.
He was a democrat, although not a politician, and was
a member of the Presbyterian Church, to which Mrs. Mil-
ligan still belongs. She was born at Youngstown, Ohio,
in 1840, and still makes her home there. There were
eight children in the family as follows: N. R., who
is a contractor and his father ’s successor in the business
at Youngstown; W. R., who is a ranchman and resides at
Denver, Colorado; McGuffey, who died at Youngstown,
Ohio, at the age of forty years ; Ada, who is the wife of
O. E. Forsdick, a carpenter and builder at Cleveland,
Ohio; J. T., who is a ranchman of Como, Colorado; Dr.
Edd Pitch; Betsey B., who resides with her mother at the
old home at Youngstown; and J. R., who is a con-
tractor of that city.

Edd Pitch Milligan was educated in the public schools
of Youngstown, and was graduated from the Reyen High
School in the class of 1894. Following this he took a
preparatory course at the Poland Seminary, being grad-
uated in 1897, and matriculated in Northeastern Univer-
sity of Ohio, at Canfield, where he pursued a course and
received his degree of Bachelor of Art in 1899. His
medical studies were prosecuted in the medical depart-
ment of Denver University, where he was graduated in
1905, with the degree of Doctor of Medicine, and while
attending that institution became a member of the Alpha
Kappa Kappa, a Greek letter medical fraternity, to
which he still belongs. After receiving his degree, Doctor
Milligan served one year as interne in St. Luke ’s Hos-
pital, Denver, Colorado, and in 1906 entered upon the
practice of his calling at Quenemo, Kansas, where he re-
mained until coming to Geary, Oklahoma, October 1,
1908. Here he has since been successfully engaged in a
general medical and surgical practice, with offices on
Blaine Avenue. He has acquired a large and lucrative
patronage and enjoys the respect and confidence of all
classes, both at Geary and in the surrounding country,
where he has numerous calls for his services. He keeps
fully abreast of the various advancements being made
in the profession, and holds membership in the organ-
izations of his calling, thus keeping in close touch with
the professional brotherhood. In 1915 Doctor Milligan
completed his handsome new residence, in connection with
which is his garage, where he keeps his two new model
automobiles. Doctor Milligan is a republican, but has
not mixed in public affairs save as an advocate of all
measures promoted for the public welfare. He is a
member of Golden Rule Lodge No. 87, Knights of
Pythias, Quenemo, Kansas ; past noble grand of Quenemo
Lodge and a member of Geary Lodge No. 138, Inde-

2042

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

pendent Order of Odd Fellows, and is a thirty-second
degree, Scottish Rite Mason, belonging to Geary Lodge
No" 139 Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, of ■which
he is past master; Peaceful Valley Chapter No. 59, Royal
Arch Masons; Consistory No. 1, Topeka, Kansas ; and
Indian Temple, Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the
Mystic Shrine, Oklahoma City. With Mrs. Milligan he at-
tends the Presbyterian Church, of which both are mem-
bers, and in which he is now serving as an elder

Doctor Milligan was married September 30, 1J08, at
Fort Scott, Kansas, to Miss Myrtle J. Wright, of Eureka,
Kansas daughter of the late Edward Wright, who was in
the insurance business. Doctor and Mrs. Milligan are
the parents of one son: Donald Edd, who was born
December 5, 1909.

Frank Bence, M. D. One of the early physicians and
surgeons to establish themselves in practice in Potta-
watomie and Cleveland counties is Dr. Frank Bence,
whose home is now at Macomb. Doctor Bence is a prac-
titioner of more than forty years active experience.
He practiced in Ohio and Indiana before coming to
Oklahoma, and at this date he is widely recognized
for his ability and for his many associations with
the profession and with public affairs.

He was born in Ashland County, Ohio, March 19,
1852 His father, William Bence, was drowned at sea
soon after the birth of Doctor Bence and the mother
had passed away a short time before. Doctor Bence
grew up in the home of his maternal grandfather,
Shriner, who was a native of Pennsylvania, m which
state he was reared and married, and was an early set-
tler in Ashland County, Ohio. Peter Shriner was_ also
a physician, and' combined that profession with farm-
ing. He had seen active service as a soldier in the
Mexican war. From Ohio he moved to Indiana. At his
death he was, it is said, one hundred fifteen years of age.
He reared seventeen children to manhood and woman-

noou. _ _ . ,

In the home of his grandfather Doctor Bence acquired
his early training in Ashland County, Ohio. He studied
medicine under his grandfather, and took his first case
when only seventeen years of age. Some years later he
entered the Physicians and Surgeons College in Chi-
cago, from which he was graduated M. D. in June,
1889. His home and work as a physician were in Ash-
land County, Ohio, until 1890, in which year he removed
to Talbott, Indiana. From there in 1897 he came to
Oklahoma City, remained there about a year, and then
went into Cleveland County, and has since been a prom-
inent member of the medical fraternity in that and in
Pottawatomie County with the exception of eighteen
months spent at Rosedale, in McClain County.

Doctor Bence first located at Eteuwah in 1903, but
from there a few months later moved to Tribbey and
Old Burnett. In April, 1915, he re-established his prac-
tice and home at Macomb.

He was one of the charter members of the Oklahoma
State Medical Society, and a member of the Potta-
watomie County Society. In politics he is a republican
and in earlier, years took a very prominent part in politi-
cal affairs. For six years he was a member of the
school board in Old Burnett, and has served on the
County Central Republican Committees of both Cleve-
land and Pottawatomie counties. Besides his large pri-
vate practice he is examiner for the Kansas City Life
Insurance Company, the Bankers’ Life Insurance Com-
pany of Oklahoma, the Indianapolis Reserve and Loan
Company, and the New York Life Insurance Com-
pany, and at one time was local surgeon for the Okla-
homa Central Railroad. Doctor Bence was reared in the

Episcopal faith. He is affiliated with the Independent
Order of Odd Fellows and the Knights of Pythias in the
lodges in Linwood, Kansas.

In Ashland County, Ohio, in 1874, he married Miss
Mary Crull, who was born in Ohio in 1857. Her father
was a Union soldier and was killed during the war. To
their marriage have been born six children: Minnie,

wife of William Slate, a farmer and stockman at Lind-
say, Oklahoma; Walter, who is a motorman for the Street
Railway Company at Shawnee; Leta, wife of Charles
Sheppard, who is manager of the Central Telephone
Exchange at Macomb; Pearl, wife of Willis Buggs, who
resides in Leavenworth, Kansas; Vernon, in the livery
business at Macomb; and Bertha, still at home with her
parents.

Stonewall Jackson. That Mr. Jackson received his
Christian or personal name in honor of one of the great
and revered heroes and officers of the Confederate service
in the Civil war and that his family name makes the
appellation the more consistent finds further reinforce-
ment through the fact that his father was a gallant
soldier of the Confederacy during virtually the entire
period of the war between the states of the North and
the South, his service of four years having been rendered
as a member of a Louisiana regiment and it having been
his portion to participate in many spirited engagements,
including a number of important battles. He was al-
ways found at the post of duty and in one engagement he
received a severe wound.

Stonewall Jackson has been a resident of Cheyenne,
judicial center of Roger Mills County, since 1902, and
through his own executive ability, his circumspection as
a financier and his impregnable integrity of purpose he
has become an influential figure in connection with bank-
ing activities in the western part of the state. In his
home town he is now president of the Cheyenne State
Bank, of which office he has been the incumbent since
1912, and he is president also of the First State Bank
of Strong City; vice president of the Crawford State
Bank, of Crawford, Roger Mills County; and a director
of the Guaranty State Bank of Texola, Beckham County.
His prominence in financial circles is further indicated
by his having served in 1913 as treasurer of the Okla-
homa Bankers ’ Association, of which he continues an
active and valued member.

Stonewall Jackson was born at Alto, Cherokee County,
Texas, on the 2d of December, 1877, and is a son of
William D. and Mary (Kendall) Jackson, both natives
of Louisiana, the former having died at Mars Hill,
Arkansas, in 1879, and the latter being now a resident
of Magnum, Greer County, Oklahoma.

William D. Jackson was born in the year 1834, and
was reared and educated in Louisiana, from which state
he went forth as a valiant soldier of the Confederacy in
the Civil war, as previously noted. In his native state
his marriage was solemnized, and after the close of the
war he removed to Arkansas, whence, about 1877, he
went with his family to Texas, but about three years
later he returned to Arkansas, where he passed the re-
mainder of his life, his active career having found
him successfully engaged as -a contractor and also a
representative of the live-stock industry. He was a
scion of a sterling family that was founded in the state
of Georgia in the colonial period of our national his
tory, and it is to be presumed that the first representa
tives of the name in America settled in Virginia. Of his
three children the eldest is Willie, who is the wife of
William H. Thomason, a farmer in Beaver County, Okla-
homa; Stonewall, of this review, was the next in order
of birth; and Ida, whose death occurred at Magnum,
Greer County, this state, was the wife of Rev. Charles

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2043

fl-

iet

lis
at
ite
ie
te- 1
mt
ire
ad
red

li-

ind

lie

ik-

ate

ace

auk

late

itor

"ti-

lted

Ma-

atj,
i of

E. Eoberts, who is still a resident of that place and who
is a clergyman of the Baptist Church.

To the public schools of Arkansas and Texas Stone-
wall Jackson is indebted for his early educational dis-
cipline, and in 1901 he was graduated in the Sam Hous-
ton Normal School of Texas. He thereafter devoted his
attention to teaching in the schools of the Lone Star
State until June of the following year when he came
to Oklahoma Territory and established his home at
Cheyenne, where he assumed the position of cashier of
the Cheyenne State Bank, with which he has since been
actively identified and of which he has been president
since 1912. The bank was established in 1898, by Thur-
mond Brothers, and it is one of the oldest and strongest
financial institutions in this section of the state. Its
operations are now based on a capital stock of $20,000,
and its surplus fund is $2,500. The vice president of
the institution is J. H. Kendall; G. B. Lovett is cashier,
and J. L. Finch holds the position of assistant cashier.

Insistently progressive and public-spirited as a citi-
zen, Mr. Jackson has taken a specially loyal interest in
all that touches the civic and material welfare and ad-
vancement of his home town and county, and he is found
aligned as a staunch supporter of the cause of the demo-
cratic party. He and his wife are zealous and influential
members of the Baptist Church at Cheyenne, and he is
giving effective service as teacher of the Bible class in
its Sunday school. Mr. Jackson is affiliated with
Cheyenne Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, of
which he is past master; with Cheyenne Chapter, Eoyal
Arch Masons ; with Elk City Commandery, Knights
Templars, at the county seat of Beckham County; and
with Indian Temple, Ancient Arabic Order of the
Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, in Oklahoma City. In addi-
tion to these Masonic affiliations he holds membership in
Cheyenne Lodge No. 237, Independent Order of Odd
Fellows, and Cheyenne Camp, Modern Woodmen of
America.

At Cheyenne the year 1904 recorded the marriage of
Mr. Jackson to Miss Texia H. Hornbeak, daughter of
Eev. James A. Hornbeak, who is a clergyman of the
Presbyterian Church and who now resides in the City of
Dallas, Texas, his brother, Dr. S. L. Hornbeak, being a
member of the faculty of Trinity University, at Waxa-
hachie, Texas, in which institution Mrs. Jackson was
graduated. Mr. and Mrs. Jackson have one child, Mar-
jorie, who was born July 8, 1907.

3 ill,

lent

and

•rite

T a

date
: the
, he
-ears
: re-
mind
so a
as a
state
his-
enta-
ils
'e of
Dlla-
freer

larles

James S. Barnett, M. D. Of the contingent of able
and successful physicians and surgeons who are well
upholding the dignity and prestige of their profession in
Blaine County, a prominent and popular representative
is Doctor Barnett, who maintains his residence and pro-
fessional headquarters in the vigorous and thriving Vil-
lage of Hitchcock and who has built up an excellent
general practice in that section of the county.

Doctor Barnett was born at Columbia, Boone County
Missouri, on the 31st of July, 1871, and is a son of
Jesse E. and Mary A. (Batterton) Barnett, both likewise
natives of Boone County, Missouri, where the former was
born in 1843 and the latter in 1848, the respective fam-
ilies having been pioneers of that section of the state and
prominently identified with its civic and industrial devel-
opment. The lineage of the Barnett family traces back
to staunch Scotch-Irish origin and its first representatives
in America settled in Virginia, in the colonial period of
our national history.

Jesse E. Barnett passed the major part of his lono-
and useful life in his native county and his active career
was given principally to agricultural pursuits and the
livestock business. At the time of the Civil war he
became one of the youthful and loval soldiers of the Con-

federacy, his service covering a period of three years and
he having been in the command of the gallant General
Price. He took part in numerous engagements, in Mis-
souri, Arkansas and Louisiana, and with his command
surrendered at Shreveport, Louisiana, at the close of the
war. He was a man of broad mental ken, earnest and
steadfast in all of the relations of life, never desirous of
notoriety or public office, but loyal to all civic duties.
His allegiance was given to the democratic party, he was
a deacon in the Christian Church, of which his widow has
long been a devoted member, and was affiliated with the
United Confederate Veterans. He continued his opera-
tions as a farmer and stock-grower in Boone County
until 1889, when he removed to Columbia, the county seat,
where he lived virtually retired until his death, which
occurred in 1908, and where his widow still maintains
her home. Of their children the firstborn, Pearl, died at
the age of eighteen years; Dr. James S., of this review,
was the next in order of birth; George H. was a resident
of Columbia, Missouri, at the time of his death, when
twenty-nine years of age, and thus was cut short a moslfc
prominent career, as he had been graduated in the law
department of the University of Missouri and was prose-
cuting attorney of his native county at the time of his
death; Lawrence died at the age of eight years; Edward,
who was editor and publisher of a newspaper at Joplin,
Missouri, at the time of his death, passed to the life
eternal at the age of thirty- three years; Mary J. is a
popular teacher in the high school at Columbia, Missouri ;
Bessie C. is superintendent of the telephone exchange in
the same city; and Carrie is a teacher in the high school
at Hannibal, Missouri.

To the public schools of his native city Dr. James S.
Barnett is indebted for his preliminary educational dis-
cipline, which was supplemented by a four years’ course
in the academic department of the University of Missouri.
In consonance with his ambition and well matured plans
he then entered the medical department of the university,
in which he completed the prescribed curriculum and was
graduated as a member of the class of 1896, his recep-
tion of the degree of Doctor of Medicine having occurred
on the 3rd of June of that year. The doctor wisely for-
tified himself in practical clinical experience by serving
several months thereafter as interne in one of the lead-
ing hospitals in the City of St. Louis, and after leaving
the metropolis of his native state he was engaged in
practice one year in his home City of Columbia. There-
after he continued his successful professional activities
in Audrain County, Missouri, until 1901, when he came
to Oklahoma Territory and engaged in practice at Geary,
Blaine County. Two months later he transferred his
residence and professional base of operations to the
Town of Hitchcock, where he located in October, 1901,
only a few weeks after the founding of the town. He is
thus the pioneer physician and surgeon of this place and
in addition to having given the best of his talents and
powers to the exacting work of his profession during the
entire period of his residence in Blaine County, he has
been also one of the broad-minded and progressive citi-
zens whose influence and co-operation has made possible
the development and upbuilding of the fine little Town
of Hitchcock. He is the only resident physician of the
village and his practice extends throughout the wide
section of. country tributary to the town, his office being
maintained in a building on Main Street. That Doctor
Barnett is emphatically one of the representative physi-
cians and surgeons of this section of the state and that
he holds high place in the confidence and esteem of his
confreres is shown by his having been called upon to serve
as president of the Blaine County Medical Society, of
which he continues an active and influential member, be-

2044

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

sides being identified also with the Oklahoma State Med-
ical Society and the American Medical Association.

The doctor has pronounced himself an ‘ ‘ old-school ’ ’
democrat in politics, and though he has been importuned
to become a candidate for political office he has invaria-
bly refused to consider such overtures, as he deems his
profession worthy of his undivided time and attention.
He and his wife hold membership in the Christian Church,
and he is affiliated with Hitchcock Lodge, No. 191, Inde-
pendent Order of Odd Fellows, of which he has served
three different terms as noble grand, and he holds mem-
bership also in the local organizations of the Modern
Woodmen of America, the Ancient Order of United Work-
men, the Brotherhood of American Yeomen, and the
Mutual Benefit Association.

At Mexico, Audrain County, Missouri, was solemnized
the marriage of Doctor Barnett to Miss Lula B. Thomas,
whose father, now deceased, was a representative farmer
of that county. Doctor and Mrs. Barnett have four
children, Buth, Josephine, Lucille, and James Thomas.

L. A. Wismeyer.. One of the oldest and best known
Indian traders of the Osage County, it is likely that the
name of L. A. Wismeyer will be chiefly remembered
through future generations for his enterprise in founding
the Town of Fairfax in Osage County. He took the lead
in starting the town there when the railroad was con-
structed in 1903. Not long ago the editor of a local paper
who was closely familiar with all Wismeyer ’s public
spirited activities at the time described his part in the
founding and upbuilding of the town in the following
language : “He borned the town, nursed it in its infancy
and paid the doctor’s bill. He built the first school-
house and helped to build all the churches, and whether
he belonged to any of them or all of them his name
appears on the records of at least two as trustee or
incorporator. In his townsite bill he secured for Fair-
fax ten acres of land for a cemetery, a gift from the
department that no other town on the reservation
received. He was the first merchant in Fairfax and
established the first lumber yard. He was at the head
of the Fairfax Grain Company that built the first ele-
vator. He was one of the organizers of the First
National Bank and served as president of that institu-
tion for a number of years and was one of three men
that erected the bank’s splendid quarters. In short, Mr.
Wismeyer has been a public benefactor and in the long
run Fairfax has been the greater beneficiary of his
labors. ’ ’

While Mr. Wismeyer has lived in the western states
of Kansas and Oklahoma more than forty years, his
boyhood recollections center about a home in the State
of Ohio. He was born at Hamilton, Ohio, October 20,
1852, a son of Henry and Mary (Richter) Wismeyer,
both of whom were of German parentage. His parents
spent practically all their lives in Ohio, part of the
time in Cleveland and at other locations in Northern
Ohio, and were for many years at Hamilton. His father
died at Hamilton about 1882 at the age of sixty-eight.
He had conducted a malt house at Sandusky and later
at Hamilton. The mother is still living with a daughter
at Hamilton at the age of eighty-five. The five children
were: L. A.; Henry of Emporia, Kansas; Emma, wife
of Frank Cobaught of Connersville, Indiana; Carrie,
wife of John A. Keller of Hamilton, Ohio; and John,
who died in 1910 in Guadalajara, Mexico.

It was in the home of his parents that L. A. Wismeyer
lived until 1873. In the meantime he had made the
best of his advantages in the public schools, and for
two years had gained a practical business training
as clerk in a dry goods store, his salary beginning at

$1.50 a week. In 1873 he went out to Kansas to join
his uncle, Harry A. Richter, at Council Grove. His
uncle was long prominent in Kansas politics, and served
three terms as lieutenant governor of that state. Mr.
Wismeyer remained with his uncle five years, employed
in his drug store, and while there performed that various
service required of pioneer druggists, not only in mixing
and compounding medicines and pills, but, also in pre-
scribing in the role of a doctor, and he gained such
confidence that he could prescribe anything from calomel
and quinine to snake , medicine for the customers of
the store.

Leaving Kansas, Mr. Wismeyer arrived at the Osage
Agency on the site of the present City of Pawhuska,
June 18, 1878, becoming chief clerk in the agency. He
continued the duties of that office until December, 1884.
The Indian agent had many responsibilities, including
the issue of rations to the Indians. The supplies furnished
through the agency store included a large stock of gen-
eral provisions as well as clothing of all kinds. The
head of each Indian family had a ration cheek, and
this was presented to the commissary clerk whenever
rations were drawn. Every few days from forty to fifty
head of beef cattle were killed for the benefit of the
tribe living around the agency, and sometimes a hundred
head of stock would be driven into the corral each week,
and after the animals were shot down the Indians would
go in and proceed to skin and cut up the carcasses.
These cattle were the substitute for the buffaloes which
had furnished most of the meat to the tribes before
that noble animal of the plains was exterminated. The
cash payments were made semi-annually, in May and
December, and averaged $3.25 to each individual. A
year or so after Mr. Wismeyer became connected with
the agency, on account of the dissatisfaction which had
arisen among the Indians over the ration distribution,
that system was abolished, and thereafter the Indians
were paid their entire share in cash. One of Mr. Wis-
meyer’s experiences while chief clerk at the agency
illustrates the attitude of the older full bloods toward
the system of education which the Government was
striving to introduce. The department had made a
ruling that all Indians must have their children in
school before they could draw their quarterly allowance.
One day an old Indian demanded his money, and Mr.
Wismeyer questioned him as to whether he had children
in school. The Indian made a personal application of
the school question to Mr. Wismeyer, who replied that
he had attended school in order to learn reading and
writing and to make a living, and that he held his
job because of his education. The Indian retorted as
follows: “You’re a fool. I eat and wear clothes and
don’t have to hold down a job. If you hadn’t went to
school and got an education you wouldn’t have to write,
write, write all day and part of the night as you doi
here. White man heap fool. I want my money.”

On December 1, 1884, Mr. Wismeyer secured a trader ’s<
license, and became associated with Dr. R. E. Bird,!
one of the old established Indian traders. They engaged
in general merchandising at Pawhuska, as licensed trad-l
ers, and in 1885 established a branch store at Gray)
Horse in Osage County. In 1889 Mr. Wismeyer moved
to Gray Horse to manage that end of the business, andi
after 1890 became sole proprietor of the store there.
He continued in business at Gray Horse until 1903.1
With the coming of the railroad he and the other
traders at Gray Horse, in order to avoid freighting!
overland, determined to move their post to the rail
road. Mr. Wismeyer finally succeeded in gaining the
consent of the Government officials to locate a depot
where the Village of Fairfax now stands. In arranging

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2045

for the townsite he had to go to Washington and
came home with full instructions how to proceed in
securing the use of lands for town purposes. He
procured forty acres belonging to one of the Indians,
and had it surveyed into lots, streets and alleys, and
he took for his own purposes one of the chief corners
in the new town for his store and lumber yard. The
railroad company first named the depot Coda, but Mr.
Wismeyer finally gained their consent to the name Fair-
fax, which was suggested to him by the old town of
that name in Virginia. Owing to the fact that all the
lots in the town could be used only by the right of
occupancy the title to the land remaining with its Indian
owners, Mr. Wismeyer spent almost the entire winter of
1904 at Washington, and finally secured a townsite
bill which, while far from satisfactory, paved the way
for a permanent town and the upbuilding of such insti-
tutions as churches, schools and business enterprises.
For more than ten years Mr. Wismeyer, though a man
of unobtrusive personality, has been one of the real
leaders in the growth of the community, has invested
freely and with faith in the ultimate outcome in the
number of local business institutions, and has always
given liberally to movements associated with the general
welfare of the community. He has been identified with
the mercantile interests of the town since it was founded,
was president of the First National Bank until 1912,
was in the lumber business for ten years, being the
first lumber merchant there, and for about nine years
was one of the interested principals iq, the operation
of the first elevator.

Mr. Wismeyer speaks the Osage Indian language as
fluently as the red men themselves, and also has a speak-
ing knowledge of the language of the Haws and Poncas.
He has had continuous relations as an Indian trader for
thirty-seven years. Politically he is a stanch republi-
can, has been active in party affairs, but has never
sought nor held an office. He is affiliated with the
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks at Pawhuska.
While living at Council Grove, Kansas, Mr. Wismeyer
bcame acquainted with one of the belles of local society,
and in 1884 married Miss Aggie C. Huffaker. Mrs.
Wismeyer was born in Council Grove, Kansas, Novem-
ber 1, 1857, a daughter of T. S. Huffaker, one of the
pioneers in that section of Kansas. They have one
daughter, Frances, still at home.

James E. Cronkhite. The Village of Hitchcock, one
of the attractive and flourishing trade centers of Blaine
County, claims among its progressive and substantial
business men James Emmett Cronkhite, who here con-
ducts a well established and prosperous hardware and
implement business, as one of the representative expo-
nents of this line of enterprise in the county. His sterling
characteristics and personal popularity contribute a dis-
tinct commercial asset in his business, and he is known
also for his loyalty and public spirit as a citizen.

Mr. Cronkhite was born at Melvern, Osage County,
Kansas, on the 24th of February, 1873, and is a son of
Benjamin and Marietta (High) Cronkhite, both natives
of Iowa and representatives of sterling pioneer families
of that state. Benjamin Cronkhite was born in the year
1842, and was reared and educated under the conditions
and influences of the early pioneer era in the history of
the Hawkeye State. After his marriage he removed to
Osage County, Kansas, where he continued successful
operations as a farmer and stock-grower. In the year
1898 he came to Oklahoma Territory and established his
residence at Kiel, Kingfisher County, where he became a
pioneer merchant, besides building up a successful busi-
ness as a dealer in horses. In 1901 he became one of the

first settlers of the newly founded town Hitchcock, Blaine
County, and here he was associated with his son James E.,
of this review, in the general merchandise business until
1904. He continued his residence in this village until
1906, when he established his home on his farm, near
Hitchcock, to the supervision of which property he gave
his close attention until his removal to El Beno, when
he practically retired from active business. He and his
wife now maintain their home at Watonga, the judicial
center of Blaine County, where they are enjoying the
peace and prosperity that properly reward former years
of earnest endeavor. At the time of the Civil war Mr.
Cronkhite gave loyal and valiant service as a soldier of
the Union. He was at the time residing in Iowa, but he
enlisted in an Illinois regiment of volunteer cavalry,
with which he continued in active service during vir-
tually the entire period of the war. He is a democrat
in politics and is affiliated with the Grand Army of the
Republic. Of the family of six children James Emmett,
of this sketch, was the fourth in order of birth; Frank,
the eldest of the number,' resides at Watonga and has
valuable farm property in Blaine County ; William resides
on his homestead farm, eight miles west of Hitchcock;
Lulu F. is the wife of Fred P. Higby, of El Reno, who
is employed as a practical railroad man ; Adell is the wife
of Martin Truby, a jeweler at Coffeyville, Kansas ;
and John T. is engaged in the real-estate business at
Watonga, Blaine County. The Cronkhite family removed
to Florence, Kansas, in 1875, and in 1886 the home was
established in the City of Emporia, that state, where the
father remained until his removal to Oklahoma, as pre-
viously noted in this context.

James E. Cronkhite received his early education prin-
cipally in the public schools of Florence and Emporia,
Kansas, and he continued to be associated with his father
in the latter’s farming operations until 1896, after which
he was engaged in the same line of enterprise in Kansas
for two years in an independent way. In 1899 he came
to Kiel, Oklahoma Territory, and two months later he
returned to Kansas and disposed of his live stock, after
which he came again to Kiel, where he was engaged in
mercantile pursuits for one year. In 1901, as previously
intimated, he became associated with his father in the
general merchandise business in the new Town of Hitch-
cock, and in 1904 the business was divided and he assumed
control of the hardware and implement stock and trade,
which business he has since developed into the largest and
most important of its kind in this section of Blaine
County. The building which he uses for his business
headquarters was erected by his father in 1906, shortly
after the major part of the town had been destroyed
by fire. The store is eligibly located on Main Street, has
a floor space of 5,000 square feet, the establishment is
kept up to high standard in both equipment and service
and its trade is drawn from both Blaine and Kingfisher
counties.

Mr. Cronkhite gives his allegiance to the democratic
party and his civic loyalty has been shown by his effective
service as counsel of Hitchcock, an office of which he was
the incumbent one term, and also by his effective work
as a member of the school board and his able adminis-
tration in the office of treasurer of Lawton Township, a
position which he is holding at the time of this writing,
in 1915. In addition to his prosperous business at Hitch-
cock he is the owner of an improved farm of 160 acres,
situated eight miles northwest of the village. He is
affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows,
the Modern Woodmen of America and the Mutual Benefit
Association. It may well be noted that Mr. Cronkhite
is a scion of American colonial stock, the original repre-
sentatives of the name in this country having come from

2046

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Holland and settled in Dutchess County, New York, long
prior to the War of the Revolution.

In 1894, in Kansas, was solemnized the marriage of
Mr. Cronkhite to Miss Josie Gardner, a daughter of
Thomas Gardner, who is a retired farmer now residing
with his wife in a pleasant home in Hitchcock, Oklahoma.
Mr. and Mrs. Cronkhite have four children: Hazel is the
wife of Isaac Heibert and they maintain their home at
Hitchcock, Mr. Heibert being a successful farmer near
this village; Paul assists his father in the hardware and
implement business; Clarence is in the eighth grade of
the public schools in 1915; and Marion is the youngest
of the children.

Jesse Lee Jackson. Among the recent additions to
the legal fraternity of Washita County, one who bids
fair to gain a position of leadership by reason of in-
herent talent and thorough preparation is Jesse Lee
Jackson. A member of an old and honored Southern
family, Mr. Jackson came to Oklahoma in 1911 as an
educator, but while practicing that vocation was pre-
paring himself for the law, and after several years spent
in practice at Cordell came to Sentinel in June, 1915,
and has already attracted to himself a very desirable
legal business.

Mr. Jackson was born January 6, 1884, at Middleton,
Hardeman County, Tennessee, where the family had been
pioneers, and is a son of J. S. and Edna (Bishop)
Jackson. His father was born at Middleton in 1857
and there has passed his entire life as a planter and
stockman and is known as one of the substantial agri-
culturists and public-spirited men of his locality. He is
a member of the Christian Church, as was also Mrs.
Jackson, who was born at Middleton in 1864 and died
there in 1900. There were nine children in the family,
as follows: Samuel, who is engaged in farming in the

vicinity of Avoca, Texas; Sydney, who resides at Hobart,
Oklahoma, and is employed as a machinist; Jesse Lee,
of this notice; Prince, a graduate of Hall and Moody
Institute, and of the Lebanon Law School, Lebanon,
Tennessee, and now a practicing attorney of Woodford,
Oklahoma; James, who is an employe of the Memphis
(Tennessee) Street Railway Company; Gertrude, who is
the wife of Estill Wynee, a farmer residing at White-
ville, Tennessee; Walter, who is engaged in farming in
the vicinity of Middleton, Tennessee; Milton, who is
engaged in teaching there; and Gracie, who is married
and lives on a farm at Middleton.

The public schools of Middleton furnished Jesse Lee
Jackson with his early educational preparation, follow-
ing which he attended Hall and Moody Institute, at
Martin, Tennessee, for one year. In 1910 and 1911 he
was a student at the Southwestern State Normal School
at Weatherford, Oklahoma, thus preparing himself for
a career as an educator, and the school year of 1911-12
was passed as principal of schools at Texola, Oklahoma.
In 1912-13 he was principal of schools at Gotebo, Okla-
homa, and in the fall of 1914 entered the Oklahoma
State University at Norman, where he remained until
June, 1915. In the meantime Mr. Jackson had been
admitted to the bar of Oklahoma, in 1913, and in that
year opened an office and began practice at Cordell,
where he remained until 1915, dividing his time between
the practice of his profession and attending the uni-
versity. In June, 1915, he changed his field of operation
to the City of Sentinel, and here he has since devoted
himself to a general and criminal practice. He has offices
on Third Street, just off of Main Street.

Since coming to Sentinel, Mr. Jackson has lent dignity
and stability to professional affairs and is accounted a
young legist of decided promise. He is a broad-minded

and progressive practitioner, a careful observer of the
courtesies and amenities of his profession and - at all '
times a seeker after its most intelligent and commend- j
able compensations. He is a democrat in political mat-
ters, but has not found time to engage in public affairs, I
save as a supporter of movements for the general wel- J
fare. His religious connection is with the Christian j
Church, of which he is a consistent member, and his |
fraternal affiliations are with Cordell Camp of the Wood- ,
men of the World and Cordell Lodge of the Praetorians. 1
Mr. Jackson is not married.

Wiley Boothe Merrill. Among the men whose i
opportunities along professional lines have been excep-
tional and who have made use of them in such a way as
to make them important factors in the life of their com-
munities, one who is deserving of mention is Wiley
Boothe Merrill, who, since September, 1903, has been
engaged in the practice of law at Elk City. A man of
broad and comprehensive learning and legal talent of a
high order, he has made a place for himself among the
leaders of the Beckham County bar, where many of the
leading cases of recent years have had the benefit of his
capable services.

Mr. Merrill was born at Ladonia, Texas, November
17, 1881, a son of W. B. and Helen (Boothe) Merrill.

He belongs to an old family of Virginia, founded there
by John A. Merrill, who emigrated from England, en-
gaged in planting in the Virginia Colony, became an
adherent of the cause of the Patriots, and was finally
murdered by thfe Tories of North Carolina. W. B. Mer-
rill, the grandfather of Wiley B. Merrill, was born in
Kentucky, in 1809, and in January, 1834, went to
Texas. He returned to Kentucky for the rest of the
family in 1835 and took them to Ladonia, Texas, where
he became a pioneer ranchman. His name is connected
with the military history of the Lone Star State as a
lieutenant-colonel in the army of the Texas Republic,
and his death occurred at Ladonia, in 1854. His son,
also named W. B. Merrill, the father of Wiley B., was
born at Ladonia, Texas, March 11, 1846, and has resided
there all his life, being still engaged as a farmer and
cattleman. He is a democrat in political matters and has
been active in civic affairs, having held a number of
offices within the gift of his fellow-citizens of the town
and county. He is a steward in the Methodist Episcopal
Church, South, having held that position for the past
thirty years. At the age of sixteen years, he enlisted
as a private in the Confederate army, as a member of '
Maxey ’s Texas regiment, and served during the last
two years of the war between the states. He has never I
lost interest in the welfare of his old army comrades, ,
and for many years has been commander of the United I
Confederate Veterans Camp at Ladonia. Mr. Merrill I
was married to Miss Helen Boothe, who was born at!
Rome, Georgia, December 4, 1847, and they became the
parents of two children: O. L., who is a cotton broken
residing at Ladonia, Texas; and Wiley Boothe.

Wiley Boothe Merrill attended the public schools of!
Ladonia, Texas, and was duly graduated from the highi
school there with the class of 1897. Following this,-
he took a course of three years in the academic depart-
ment of the University of Texas, and then entered the)
legal department of the same institution, where he prose-
cuted his professional studies and was graduated im
1903, with the degree of Bachelor of Laws. While at
the university he proved himself an assiduous and recep-
tive scholar, applying himself closely to his studies, but
found time to mingle freely with his fellows, with
whom he was popular, being a member of the Sigma
Alpha Epsilon Greek letter college fraternity. Mr. Mer-
rill entered upon the practice of his chosen profession at

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2047

Elk City, at that time in Roger Mills County, but now in
Beckham County, and here his entire professional career
has been passed in a general civil and criminal practice,
liis offices at this time being located in the First National
Bank Bulding. Mr. Merrill has built up a decidedly
satisfying practice, both from the viewpoint of its im-
portance, as well as from its volume. Care and pre-
cision mark the preparation of all his cases of whatever
nature, his thoroughness of preparation insuring a con-
vincing and clear presentation of whatever subject comes
before him for adjustment.

Mr. Merrill holds membership in the Beckham County
Bar Association and the Oklahoma Bar Association. He
is a democrat, although his activities in polities consist
principally of the support of good men and progressive
and beneficial measures. His fraternal connection is with
Lodge No. 1144, Benevolent and Protective Order of
Elks, of Elk City. Mr. Merrill has not married.

George H. Laing. One of the oldest public officials
in Western Oklahoma is George H. Laing, for many years
clerk of the District Court at Kingfisher. Two of the
present judges now serving on this bench aare Judge Cul-
lison and Judge Roberts, both of Enid. Mr. Laing is
an Oklahoma eighty-niner is a lawyer by profession, but
his qualities and abilities have marked him out almost
from the time of reaching the territory for official work,
and he has been almost constantly in some office or an-
other for twenty-five years.

George H. Laing was born in Edinburgh, Scotland,
December 1, 1864, and has many prominent connections
with old Scotch families. His grandfather, Alexander
Andrew Laing, was born on the Isle of Skye, and was
the owner of the Comely Bank Stock Farm three miles
from Edinburgh noted as a breeding place of Galloway
and Polled Angus cattle. Mr. Laing ’s father was Colonel
George Alexander Laing, who was born in Edinburgh,
and served in the Forty-second Highlanders during the
Crimean war as captain of a company. He was awarded
a Victoria cross for bravery at Inkermann and Alma. His
death occurred at the stock farm near Edinburgh in 1873,
about two years after the death of his wife. Her maiden
name was Georgiana Isabel Brash, whose father was an
Edinburgh architect and superintendent of construction.
One son, John A. Laing, has long been in the British
Army service, and was first lieutenant in the Seventeenth
Pun jar Light Infantry, in India.

George H. Laing was graduated from an Edinburgh
academy at the age of seventeen. During 1878 he at-
tended the Paris Exposition, and spent several months
in travel over the continent. The following year he
came to the United States, equipped with a good educa-
tion, with special skill and proficiency as a penman and
in accounting, and the following two years were spent as
shipping clerk in a wholesale dry goods house at New
York. Most of his active career, however, has been spent
in the west. From 1882 he was for seven years engaged
in operating a ranch on Platte River near Sidney, Ne-
braska. While there he introduced Polled Angus cattle
into Western Nebraska and Wyoming.

Mr. Laing came to Oklahoma April 22, 1889. At that
date, when a portion of the present Oklahoma was first
opened to settlement, he secured a homestead claim one
mile north of Kingfisher, and at once built a cabin to live
in while proving up his land. In a few weeks he was
called to other duties. In June, 1889, he was made con-
test clerk in the United States Land Office, and after
fifteen months there became deputy district clerk at Okla-
homa City under Judge Clark, then district judge. Re-
signing this office in the fall of 1892 Mr. Laing returned
to Kingfisher, and resumed his work with the land office.

Vol. V— 19

In January, 1893, he was admitted to the bar, and soon
opened a law office at Kingfisher under the firm name
Whiting & Laing. In the following September he opened
an office at Enid, and in that town his practice was prin-
cipally concentrated for four years. In 1897 he returned
to Kingfisher and was soon called upon by Judge McAtee
to become deputy district clerk. He was retained in
the same capacity by Judge Irwin. Along with excellent
penmanship Mr. Laing combined the valuable qualities
of accuracy, painstaking care, and courteous and obliging
attention to every duty, and these qualities have neces-
sarily made him a very useful man in Oklahoma.

Mr. Laing still retains membership in the bar of
Kingfisher County. He is an advocate of good schools,
and as a member of the board of education has worked
for their improvement, and always taken a prominent part
for the upbuilding of Kingfisher and community. He was
the first secretary of the Republican County Central Com-
mittee at Kingfisher, and was also its chairman at a
later date, and has been active both during territorial and
state periods in his section. He is affiliated with the
Masonic Order and the Knights Templar, with the Cale-
donian Club, and with the St. Andrew Society of New
York City. His church faith is that of the Episco-
palian, and he takes an active part in church affairs.

On August 22, 1894, Mr. Laing married Miss Mina 0.
Menzies. She was born at Peterboro, Ontario, a daughter
of Thomas and Isabelle (McIntyre) Menzies. Both pa-
rents were born in Perthshire, Scotland. Her father was
a grandson of John Menzies, who was captain of the
Seventy-ninth Highlanders under Sir Ralph Abercrombie
at the Battle of the Nile in Egypt, when the British so
thoroughly whipped the forces of the great Napoleon dur-
ing his Egyptian campaign. Mrs. Laing ’s maternal
grandfather, Donald McIntyre, was major in the Scotch
Greys Cavalry at the Battle of Waterloo. Mr. and Mrs.
Laing have three children: Ronald B., Christine I. and
Louise M.

John F. Palmer. A man of justice in all his rela-
tions with his fellows, is a tribute which no member of
the Osage Nation deserves in a higher degree than
John F. Palmer of Pawhuska. During the years since
he was admitted to the full rights of citizenship in
the Osage tribe he has stood steadfastly for the right
as he sees it, and in a manner surpassing the abilities
and opportunities of most men has succeeded in trans-
lating high ideals into terms of practical service and
usefulness. In the ordinary aspect of his career Mr.
Palmer was for many years an attorney, practicing both
in the tribal courts and afterwards in the state and
federal jurisdictions, and has likewise made his example
stimulating to a large community as a rancher and
farmer. But the interests and value of his career are
chiefly due to his varied relations as a public leader,
though seldom in official positions, among the Indian
people in Northeastern Oklahoma whose heritage has
made them the wealthiest people in the world, and no
one man has fought more indefatigably, earnestly and
unselfishly to safeguard that very heritage.

Though he is the son of a white man, his birth occurred
on the wide open prairie in the far Northwest, hundreds
of miles from the outposts of civilization, in what was
then known vaguely as Dakota Territory, in 1862. The
Palmers were prominent frontiersmen in Missouri and
the western territories, and his grandfather was a phy-
sician of excellent ability and high standing. His
father was an early owner of freighting outfits from
Dakota to Oregon. He married a Sioux Indian woman,
but the mother died at the birth of John F. Palmer. He
was reared for the first few years of his life among

2048

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Indian relatives in Dakota Territory, but in 1869, when
seven years of age, he was taken by his father to the
latter’s sister at Port Scott, Kansas, and soon after-
ward his father placed him in the old Catholic school,
known as the Osage Mission, at what is now St. Paul,
Kansas. That school was conducted by the Jesuit
Fathers, chief among whom was the noted priest of
the Southwest, Kev. John Schoenmacher. Two or three
years after he had been put in this school the news
came that his father had been killed in Oregon, where
he owned a cattle train. John F. Palmer remained at
the school at Osage Mission until 1876, and was then
adopted into the family of Samuel Bevinue, a member
of the Osage Tribe. He accompanied his foster father
to the Osage Reservation in what is now the State of
Oklahoma, and they all settled on Salt Creek twenty-five
miles west of the present City of Pawhuska, where they
opened one of the first farms in that region.

His independent career outside of school and home
influences may be said to have begun in 1881 when
he went out as a cowboy in the employ of different
outfits through the Chiekasha Nation and Northern
Texas. That was his regular occupation until 1887. His
foster father, Samuel Bevinue, died in 1883, and in
1887 Mr. Palmer returned home to aid the family in
managing the farm.

In the meantime Mr. Palmer had been formally
adopted as a member of the Osage Tribe of Indians.
This adoption required a procedure of an interesting
and somewhat impressive character, including his appear-
ance before the council of Osage chiefs and head men,
prominent among whom were such men as Pawnee
Numpahshe or Governor Joe and Black Dog, Wahtinkah,
Strike Axe, Gus Strike Axe, Alvin Wood, Samuel
Bevinue, Ogeese Captain, Cyprian Tayrien, and Ne-kah-
wah-she-tan-kah, and others. All of these chiefs and
headmen are now deceased excepting Cyprian Tayrien
and Ne-kah-wah-she-tan-kah, prominent old residents
near Gray Horse, Oklahoma.

On June 11, 1888, Mr. Palmer married Martha A.
Plomondon, a member of the Osage Tribe. To their
marriage were born six children: Mabel (Dot), John
E., Mary E., Clementina, Martha M. and Marguerite.
All of these children are living in Osage County except
John E., who was drowned in Clear Creek when eleven
years of age.

After his marriage Mr. Palmer engaged in the regular
practice of law under the old Osage Tribal Govern-
ment. In the meantime he had studied American law,
and after the tribal form of government was abolished
by department order, continued his studies in different
offices, but chiefly in the office of W. S. Fitzpatrick of
Sedan,. Kansas, who formerly was a United States com-
missioner, located at Pawhuska, and is now serving as
general counsel for the Prairie Oil & Gas Company
of Kansas and Oklahoma. While in Mr. Fitzpatrick’s
office Mr. Palmer was admitted to the bar by Judge
Aikman, then judge of District Court in Chautauqua and
Elk counties, Kansas. For several years Mr. Palmer
continued to practice law in the state and federal courts,
but about 1912 discontinued this as a profession and
has since given his entire time to his farming and stock
raising interests. In fact, farming and stock raising
has been his chief business for fully a quarter of a cen-
tury.

Another distinction in the career of Mr. Palmer
remains to be noted. In 1898 he enlisted as a volunteer
private in Company K of the First Territorial Volunteer
Infantry for service in the Spanish- American War. This
famous regiment it will be recalled was recruited largely
from the four territories of the United States at that

time, Oklahoma, Indian Territory, Arizona and New
Mexico. Mr. Palmer was the only volunteer from Osage
County in this splendid regiment of frontiersmen and
rough riders. Several others enlisted from the Osage
Tribe and went into other regiments, but he was the
only one in the First Territorial. He remained with the
regiment in its arduous service during the actual period
of hostilities, and received his honorable discharge Febru-
ary 9, 1899.

Mr. Palmer is a deep student of politics in the better
sense of that word, and has always been particularly
active and influential in public questions as they related
to his own people. Though a democrat, he has never held
office, but has served on various delegations. He was
chairman of the first important statehood convention
held at Oklahoma City. In practically every national,
state and local campaign since 1896 he has been on
the stump, both in Oklahoma and Kansas, and in this
connection there may be stated another well earned dis-
tinction, that Mr. Palmer is known as the most eloquent
Indian in Oklahoma. In- the course of a speech at
Pawhuska a few years ago, Senator Gore referred to
Mr. Palmer as ‘ ‘ the most eloquent Indian alive. ’ ’

He served as the first master of Wah-Shah-She Lodge,
No. 110, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, at Paw-
huska, and is also affiliated with the Royal Arch Chap-
ter, has taken the various degrees in the Scottish Rite,
and is a member of the Knights of Pythias. He was
reared in the faith of the Catholic Church, and his wife
and children are all members of that denomination.

Twenty-five years of his life have been spent in the
active service of his chosen people. He probably would
find it difficult to recall the number of times he has
gone to Washington either individually or as a member
of delegations during the past twenty-five years for
the purpose of representing the Osage people in import-
ant matters under the jurisdiction of the department of
Indian affairs or calling for a consultation with com-
mittees of Congress, or the President. In this time he
has stood shoulder to shoulder with the public spirited
men of the Osages in their fight on Indian traders,
Indian agents, big cattle interests and the still bigger
oil interests of recent times. He is even now engaged
in what appears to be the final effort to wrest the
richest oil and gas country in the world from the monop-
olistic control and domination of the Standard Oil
Company and its various subsidiary corporations. Mr.
Palmer has courageously fought a fight in the interests
of all his fellow citizens to secure the full benefits of
this marvelous aggregate of wealth, against which the
plots of the most cunning and brilliant legal talent have
been devised. Particular reference is made to the
blanket lease which would include a territory of
approximately 680,000 acres.

At the same time Mr. Palmer has for years favored
the allotment in severalty of the Osage lands, believing
that by such allotment individual initiative would be
encouraged and a great impulse given to the actual
development and improvement of the rich agricultural
lands included in the Osage holdings. He has worked
not only for raising the standards of agriculture, but
also for the building of schools and churches, and has
advocated the policy of inducing farmers from other
states to come in and add their experience and enter-
prise to the Osage people in developing their lands
Several times he has appeared before the State Board
of Agriculture in favor of the small farmer and stock#®
man as against the big cattle interests, and has never
failed to secure the object for which he was working.
All of this service, it is perhaps needless to state, Mr.
Palmer has given absolutely free to his people. He has

f the

Mr, ;
bade
ley ;
Ifayet

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2049

never accepted a fee in return for any of his work as
an attorney or advocate in behalf of the Osage country
and its people as a whole, and lienee it would be diffi-
cult to find, going through Oklahoma in all directions,
a man of more fixed ideals of loyalty, of sturdy honesty,
with more directness and simplicity of character and
with finer natural abilities in mind and eloquence and
in rare powers of judgment than John F. Palmer.

Edward S. McCabe, the superintendent of the city
schools of Kingfisher, is an educator of proved ability
and long experience. Several things make his record
one of interesting and distinctive character. The four-
teen years he has been superintendent of the Kingfisher
city schools constitute the longest term in the same
superintendency in the State of Oklahoma. Another
distinction is that he has been continuously in school
work in Oklahoma since 1893, in just one county, King-
fisher County. He is a pioneer settler in the Cherokee
Strip and in point of continuous service one of the
.oldest school men in the territory and state.

Edward S. McCabe was born at Newton County,
Indiana, on September 11, 1870, and acquired his com-
mon school education in Gentry and Harrison counties
»- jin Northwest Missouri. His formal entrance into school
p- work was preceded by a thorough course at the Chilli-
le’ iothe Normal School in Missouri, from which he gradu-
;as a, ted, and he had an experience of three terms in charge
ife 3f country schools before coming to Oklahoma. In the
spring of 1893 he accompanied his father, S. L. McCabe,
tie ;o Kingfisher County, and in September of that year
;hey participated in the opening of the Cherokee Strip,
has ocating in Garfield County.

ta Mr. McCabe's first school work in Oklahoma was
™ legun at Wandel, where he taught three terms. He
0It; hen went to Kingfisher and had charge of the high .
t of ehool as principal but resigned as the close of the first
»■ ear in order to enter the State University at Norman,
else phere he continued higher studies for two years. He
text took charge of the Hennessey public schools as
to. uperintendent, and during the four years there was
irgely instrumental in placing the school system of that
!a?e(* ity on a high plane of efficiency.

: tlie In the fall of 1902 Mr. McCabe was elected superin-
0110Pi indent of the Kingfisher city schools, succeeding
1 ® Jharles H. Roberts, who had been elected to the chair
f history at the Central State Normal at Edmond. His
erests rork at Kingfisher will probably constitute his best
its mnument as an educator. A fine proof of his efficiency
1 tie, i directing the city school system is found in the
t have nanimous support given him as to his work. At each
o the jeurring annual election since he was first made superin-
iy indent at Kingfisher he has received the entire vote of
le Board of Education for superintendent, and though
iavoied. ie board ’s personnel has frequently changed there has
■lieving 3Ver been a member who has opposed his election,
raid K Mr. McCabe has been a constant student and is as
actual luch in the van of educational progress in Oklahoma

aw as he was twenty years ago. He graduated from
Ingfisher College in 1910, and during the past five years
is done post-graduate work at the University of Chicago,
e is well known in school circles all over the State of
klahoma and has been vice president of the State
aehers’ Association, and was twice elected secretary-
easurer and was twice on the executive committee of
e association. He has also served as vice president
the Missouri Teachers’ Club.

Mr. McCabe married at Hennessey in May, 1901, Miss
aude Binding, daughter of Charles and Kate Binding.
He bas iey have two sons, Edward Earl and Charles
ifayette.

Rufus Lafayette Slaughter. The present superin-
tendent of schools at Macomb, though a young man of
only thirty years, has been identified with educational
work more or less for fully fourteen years. He did his
first school work in Oklahoma in 1910, and is one of the
highly competent educators of the state.

The family to which he belongs came from England
to Virginia in colonial times. One of his ancestors was
Philip Slaughter, who served in the Revolutionary war.
Still another ancestor was a colonial governor in North
Carolina. Professor Slaughter was born at Booneville,
Arkansas, November 21, 1885. His father, W. L.
Slaughter, who was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1857,
is still living at Booneville. He spent his early career
in Memphis, at Newport, Arkansas, but when still young
established his home at Booneville, where he married and
where for a number of years he has been successfully
practicing as a lawyer. In politics he is a democrat
and has filled the office of county judge. He is a mem-
ber of the Missionary Baptist Church, the Masonic fra-
ternity and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.
W. L. Slaughter married Dora Walker, who was born
at Booneville, Arkansas, in 1866. Their children are:
Frank L., a traveling salesman whose home is at Jones-
boro, Arkansas; Robert N., a teacher at Jonesboro;
Rufus L.; and H. S., who is a teacher at Saratago Ark-
ansas.

Rufus L. Slaughter grew up in his native village of
Booneville, attended the public schools there, graduating
from high school in 1901. His first work as a teacher
was as principal at Waldron, Arkansas, where he re-
mained two years. For another year he was principal of
the school at Cauthron, Arkansas. His higher education
was continued in the Ouachita College at Arkadelphia,
where he spent two years, finishing the sophomore course
in the normal school. Leaving educational work for a
time, from 1906 to 1910, Mr. Slaughter was in the rail-
way mail service with a run between Memphis, Tennes-
see, and McAlester, Oklahoma.

In 1910 he came to Wilburton, Oklahoma, to take the
prineipalship of the local schools for one year. During
1911-12 he was in charge of the schools at Heavener,
Oklahoma, and after being out of school work again
for a year became superintendent of schools at Asher
during 1913-15, for two school years. In the fall of
1915 he became superintendent at Macomb.

In politics he is a democrat, is a member of the
Christian Church, is affiliated with Logan Lodge No. 408,
Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, is past high priest
of Van Hoose Chapter No. Ill, Royal Arch Masons;
and is a member of the Independent Order of Odd
Fellows and the Woodmen of the World. He is active
and well known in educational organizations, a mem-
ber of both the county and state teachers ’ associa-
tions, and was chairman of the Pottawatomie County
Teachers’ Association in 1913 and 1914. In 1912 at
Fort Smith, Arkansas, Mr. Slaughter married Miss
Eleanor Hull. Her father was the late H. W. Hull,
who for a number of years was a machinist in the
employ of the Kansas City Southern Railway on the
Heavener division.

Daniel K. Cunningham. In the settlement and
development of Oklahoma thousands of men revealed
their real character and ability. Probably much the
greater part of those who came at the opening were
unable to stand the testing and sifting processes, and
have long since settled down into obscurity or have
gone to other regions. Among the hosts of men who
have had the opportunities of pioneers comparatively
a handful can be classed as “men of light and leading,’’
men who have been persistent in their ambitions, have
worked steadily for the fulfillment of ideals, and from

2050

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

first to last have exercised a great force in the upbuild-
ing of the territory and state. One of the most con-
spicuous of these lives at Kingfisher and is an attorney,
one of the three still in practice out of the 150 or more
who arrived at the town site within a few days of
the opening in 1889. Daniel K. Cunningham secured
and maintained against all opposition one of the first
locations near the land office at Kingfisher. He has
practiced law and represented hundreds of clients in
the courts of the old territory and the new state. But
perhaps his chief claim to distinction has been his broad
public spirit, his vision of the future, and his untiring
work in behalf of his home city. He is one of the men
who has supplied faith and courage through all the years
of prosperity and vicissitudes since Oklahoma first
became the home of civilized men.

Daniel K. Cunningham is a Canadian by birth, born
in County Kent on a farm in Ontario January 17, 1854.
When he was seventeen years of age he went into Michi-
gan, and for three years was identified with the lumber
industry when that business was at its height in Western
Michigan. He served as a lumber inspector at mills in
Muskegon, Whitehall and other places. Those towns
were then among the most important lumber centers in
the world. Muskegon alone operated forty-five large
mills, and all the country back of that city for miles
was one vast pine forest. The panic of 1873 caused a
severe decline in the industry, and about that time
Mr. Cunningham returned to Canada and gave serious
attention to the acquiring of a liberal education. He
attended the high school and college at Gault and
Hamilton, and spent five years in preparing for the
legal profession in the Upper Canada Law Association
at Toronto. He gave close attention to his studies in
a private office, and passed the required annual examina-
tion conducted by the association above named, until
his final examination in 1880 admitted him to Osgoode
TTall at Toronto — a body corresponding to the famous
Tnna of Court in London. Thus he became a full-fledged
attorney, solicitor and barrister. Much of the five years
of study and experience had been in the office of Richard
Baily, Q. C., of London, Ontario.

Mr. Cunningham began practice in his native county
and remained there until 1885. He then removed to
the United States, locating in McPherson County,
Kansas, and was soon in possession of a promising
practice. It was with little thought or desire to remain
in Oklahoma that he responded to the persuasion of his
friends to accompany them and take part in the long-
looked for opening. He had just completed an arduous
term of court, and being in need of a vacation he con-
sented to accompany a party of friends, and while en
route became infected with the prevailing fever which
possessed the many thousands of emigrants to the new
land of promise. On reaching the outskirts of the terri-
tory he decided to enter and secure if possible a home-
stead. The United States had designated the location of
a land office at the present site of Kingfisher, and with
this point in view he set his stake at a point about half
a mile distant from the office. His reasoning was that
he could thus secure a quarter section adjoining the
town site. At this time no town site had been provided
for by the Government. His stake was within a few
paces of the northwest corner of his tract. He was
one of the crowd of thousands of others who were con-
gregated in the same locality, but the land office for filing
of claims was not opened until April 23rd. At 2 o’clock
in the morning Mr. Cunningham found four men on the
steps of the land office, and a line was quickly formed.
By 9 o’clock, when the office opened for the filing of
the first claim, there were probably 4,000 men in line,

and about 15,000 people on or near the possible town- j
site. Mr. Cunningham ’s papers for filing were not at ]
first received, and in fact not for about thirty days, j
until considerable correspondence had passed between |
the local authorities and Washington and instructions ,
had issued from the central Government. Many others i
tried to secure this same land, and thus there ensued
contests extending over a period of two years. Mr.
Cunningham ’s claim was finally sustained. In the i
meantime he built a cabin and made it his home in order
nob to lose any rights of possession. At one time the
contention became so bitter that a United States officer
was secured to remove his house beyond the borders of
the land. This act was subsequently repudiated by the
Government, the deputy was dismissed, and the same
man who had removed the house placed it back on its
original site. A fence was also constructed for the
purpose of shutting out this determined claimant, but
with a knowledge of the location of survey lines, he (
subsequently built a far better residence, in fact, what i
was at that time the best house in the vicinity.

Mr. Cunningham has many interesting recollections
of those pioneer days in and about Kingfisher. From
the first he showed his public spirit and willingness to i
co-operate with and lead his fellow men to important
improvements and undertakings. It was generally
understood that the city blocks should be 300 feet
square, and accordingly stakes were set as near the
outer boundaries as could be determined. Naturally
those stakes which were subsequently found to be in the 1
street were thrown out and the claims thus instituted
were lost. On the 23rd day of April public meetings'
were held which brought about the organization of two
city governments. One was at the north and the other i
at the south of the land office. To one organization;
was given the name Kingfisher and to the other Lisbon..
Each village chose boards of aldermen and mayor and
other officials, and thus on one day two towns came into<
existence. The dual city continued for about two years
until they were consolidated, and the name carried by
the land office was made the title of the larger city.
There was no law in Oklahoma Territory except suchl
as emanated from the people themselves and from the
rules of the Federal authorities until 1890, when the
Government announced as a code a compilation from the
statutes of Kansas, Nebraska and Indiana which should
be applicable to the new country of Oklahoma. As is
well known, all the later openings of Oklahoma Terri-
tory were much better systematized, town sites were
established in advance, a system of registration anC
drawing was formulated, and in general these latei
openings were characterized by much less friction anc
bitterness.

In the very early days of Kingfisher about 150 attor
neys did more or less law practice, and as already statec
only three of these are still active members of the bar
Mr. Cunningham was also a leader in the movemem
when Kingfisher became an aspirant for the territoria
capital location. He and two other men were a commit
tee appointed to represent Kingfisher in the contest fo
the capital. They were in constant attendance at th
Legislature from August until December, when afte
its second passage, the bill making Kingfisher the capita
was finally vetoed by Governor George W. Steele.

Mr. Cunningham has added part of his land to th
city in subdivisions and additions, and most of thes
lots have already been sold. He has made himself
factor in both local and state affairs during the develoj
ment of Oklahoma, and has been one of the dominar
influences in the progress of Kingfisher. Some of hi
ambitions have become realities, while other are still i

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2051

process of development. For years, both in season and
out of season, Mr. Cunningham has labored for a railroad
that would give direct communication from great grain
and coal fields north and west of Kingfisher with the
Gulf of Mexico. At times it seemed as if the project
was in the way of direct fulfillment. Right of way
over hundreds of miles had been secured, a charter worth
a possible fortune was kept alive, and considerable grad-
ing done. However, opposition has developed from
various sources, and some of this opposition has been
apparently incomprehensible. An influence has been
exerted even upon local men so as to make them stand
against the enterprise, which clearly meant the greatest
good to themselves and to their city. Kingfisher was
for some years one of the world ’s greatest primary wheat
markets. Grain fields for 100 miles to the west marketed
their products at Kingfisher. Curiously enough, a num-
ber of local men argued, very shortsightedly, that if
the proposed railroad should be built it would mean the
establishment of a number of new towns along the line
and closer to the sources of production. Thus for the
sake of a temporary good they were willing to sacrifice
the great price which would eventually bring permanent
prosperity to the city. Other insidious influences have
also operated to prevent the construction of the road.
Financiers who had previously stated their approval of
the plan and were apparently ready to finance the enter-
prise mysteriously and suddenly lost interest. With all
these hindrances Mr. Cunningham still retains faith in
having that line built, and it is his greatest ambition
to make Kingfisher a great entrepot for the surround-
ing district even as it once was. Mr. Cunningham ’s
name appears in perhaps more important cases than
any other lawyer in the state.

Edwakd C. Campbell. One of the youngest school
superintendents of the state is Edward C. Campbell, at
the head of the public schools at Asher. Mr. Campbell
is only twenty-three years of age, but already has a
record which shows his proficiency as a teacher and school
executive.

j Born in Dubois County, Indiana, March 11, 1893,
Edward C. Campbell got his early education in the
schools of his native county and was reared on a farm.
From the district schools he went to the county seat at
Jasper, and graduated from the high school there in
1912. After one year in the Indiana State Normal School
at Terre Haute, he took charge of a school in Dubois
County, and remained in active educational work there
for three years. In the spring of 1915, with a view to
identifying himself with educational work in the State
of Oklahoma, Mr. Campbell entered the Central State
Normal at Edmond. In September, 1913, he began his
duties as principal of schools at Asher. Mr. Campbell
is a democrat in politics and a member of the Chris-
tian Church.

His parents are Daniel and Rosa (Zehr) Campbell.
The Campbells emigrated from Scotland to the Province
of Ulster, Ireland, during Cromwell’s time. From North;
era Ireland they came to South Carolina, and one of the
family commanded a brigade in the battle of King’s
Mountain during the Revolutionary war. Mr. Campbell’s
paternal grandfather, Horace Campbell, was born in
North Carolina, became an early settler in Indiana, and
died in Orange County of that state in 1897. By occupa-
tion he was a carpenter and farmer, and during the
Civil war he was a Union volunteer and helped to repel
Morgan’s raids. The maternal grandfather, William
Zehr, was born in Prussia, emigrated to America and
settled at Cincinnati, and from there moved to Dubois
County, Indiana, about 1859. He was bora in 1837 and

is still living in Indiana. While a young man in
Prussia he had a thorough military training, and during
the American Civil war he served four years in the
Union army, being all through the campaign of Sherman
into Tennessee and Georgia and following that great
leader on his march to the sea.

Daniel Campbell, father of Edward C., was born in
Washington County, Indiana, in 1855 and was quite
young when the family moved to Dubois County. There
he married, and has since followed farming and stock-
raising. He is a democrat, and is a member and has
served as trustee of the Christian Church and is affiliated
with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. His wife,
Rosa Zehr, was born in Saxony, Germany, in 1858, but
since infancy he has lived in this country. Their chil-
dren are: Charles, a senior in the Central State Normal

School at Edmond, Oklahoma; Sophia, who graduated
from a business college at Louisville, Kentucky, in 1913,
and is now a stenographer for the Falls City Bottling-
Works at Louisville ; Edward C. ; Frank, who lives on the
farm with his parents back-in Indiana ; Clarence, a sopho-
more in the high school at Jasper, Indiana; and Emil,
who is in the eighth grade of the public schools.-

John Collins. During the greater part of a lifetime
of fifty-six years John Collins was identified with the
country and people of the Osages. He was one of the
pioneer farmers and stock men in the locality of Avant,
and his years were spent with accomplishments not only
from a business standpoint, but also in conferring a
benefit upon the community in which he lived. He
gave service as a member of the board of county com-
missioners, and in many other ways his name was well
known throughout Osage County.

While a resident of Kansas and, Northern Okla-
homa from boyhood, John Collins was born in Cumber-
land, Guernsey County, Ohio, October 15, 1859. John
and Nellie (Kelley) Collins, his parents, were born in
County Galway, Ireland, were married there at the ages
of seventeen and eighteen, respectively, and took their
honeymoon on a sailing vessel bound for the United
States. They landed after many weeks voyage, and for
a number of years lived in Ohio. When John Collins
was twelve years of age his parents removed to Inde-
pendence, Kansas, and six years later they went along
with the Osage people into the Osage Nation of Indian
Territory, locating in the same general locality where
John Collins lived until his death. His father died when
about thirty-three years of age, and his mother passed
away April 3, 1914, aged eighty-six. John Collins, the
elder, was a soldier in the Civil war, enlisting in the
One Hundred and Twenty-second Ohio Volunteer
Infantry, and was twice wounded, though out of active
service only a short time on that account, and was
present with Grant’s army at Lee’s surrender at Appo-
mattox. Outside of his military service his years were
spent in farming and stock raising. He was a member
of the Catholic Church and a democrat in polities. His
six children are : Mrs. Mary Clark, who lives in Chicago ;
James, who died at the age of forty years, leaving a
widow and one child; Ellen Shultz, who lives with her
family in Illinois; Charles W., who died unmarried at the
age of thirty ; and Richard, who was killed while handling
a horse at the age of twenty- six.

From the time he was eighteen years of age Mr.
Collins lived in the present County of Osage. He grew
up on a farm, had only fair opportunities to attend
school, and gained a thorough training in the vocation
which became his life work, that of farming and stock
raising. His wife and two sons are both members of the
old Osage tribe, and their allotments of land make a

2052

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

total of about 1,900 acres, all located within the vicinity
of Avant. They reside in an excellent home, and have
about 400 acres out of the three allotments under culti-
vation, the remainder being in pasture lands. Over this
large estate Mr. Collins for many years until his death,
on the 30th of November, 1915, supervised his farming .
and stock raising activities, and accomplished a more
than ordinary success.

As to politics he was a republican voter from the
time he came to his majority. For three years he was
a member of the board of county commissioners after
statehood, and from the time Oklahoma became a state
was continuously a member of the local school board.
On June 7, 1895, Mr. Collins married Lulu Payne. She
was born in the Cherokee Nation, lost her parents when
she was an infant and was reared in the home of her
mother’s brother, Judge T. L. Rogers, the distinguished
citizen of the Osage tribe, of whom a sketch is published
on other pages of this work. Two children were born
to Mr. and Mrs. Collins : John W. and Roy W.

L. H. Kerr. Since the establishment of the com-
mission form of government at Enid in 1908 the local
citizens have exercised a commendable discretion and
discrimination in selecting men to fill the chief offices
of responsibility. It has been the custom to choose men
whose previous experience with business would give them
special efficiency for their respective departments, and
as a result of this care in selecting officials the City of
Enid has probably gone forward as rapidly in general
municipal development during the last ten years as any
other community in the Southwest. It was due to this
careful discrimination that L. H. Kerr was selected as
commissioner of streets, alleys and public property in
April, 1913. The capable manner in which Mr. Kerr
has performed the duties of his office has proved the
wisdom of his election, and he has made it a matter of
pride as well as duty to keep up the affairs of his
department at the highest point of efficiency.

Mr. Kerr took office on the first Monday of May fol-
lowing his election. In his department he has super-
vision of the city engineering department, the city
health officer, the milk and dairy inspector, the building
inspector, and inspector of dump grounds. Two men
are kept constantly at street cleaning, and for a part
of the year this force is increased by these additional
men. Enid has 200 miles of streets, with sixteen miles
of paving. With the exception of six blocks of brick,
the paving is entirely of asphalt. The streets are laid
out on the broad basis of 100 feet width, with paving
about sixty feet wide.

L. H. Kerr was born in Marshall County, Illinois,
near Sparland, a village on the west bank of the
Illinois River not far from Laeon, the county seat, on
September 24, 1873. His father located there in 1868.
When Mr. Kerr was seven years of age his parents
embarked in a typical prairie schooner and journeyed
out to Greene County, Iowa. In March, 1901, the family
came to Enid. The parents are Albert and Luana Kerr.
Albert Kerr was a soldier in a Pennsylvania regiment
during the Civil war. He became a prosperous farmer,
and a number of years ago visited Oklahoma and was
so pleased with the prospects that he determined to
make it his home as soon as circumstances would permit.
In Iowa he was a man of considerable prominence in
public affairs, serving as county supervisor six years,
the duties of that office including oversight of roads
and bridge building and maintenance. Since coming to
Enid he has devoted his energies mainly to carpenter
and building work.

L. H. Kerr was associated with his father while the

latter was supervisor in Iowa, and thus gained a practi-
cal experience in road construction, a knowledge that
has served him well in his duties as street commis-
sioner. Since coming to Enid he has worked as a
carpenter, and for several years was foreman for the
leading building contractor and has also been an inde-
pendent contractor. Nearly all of the best homes in
Enid and several of the churches were erected under
his superintendence.

Mr. Kerr is a member of the Baptist Church. He has
been specially prominent in the Independent Order of
Odd Fellows, has been secretary of Enid Lodge No. 31
since 1911, has passed all the chairs in the subordinate
lodge and encampment, and has represented both bodies
in the grand lodges, being now grand marshal of the
grand encampment. He is also affiliated with the
Knights of Pythias. Outside of business he finds his
chief pleasure in hunting, and takes one or two trips
for that sport every year. April 2, 1898, in Greene
County, Iowa, Mr. Kerr married Miss Bertha M. Newing-
ham. They have a family of three sons: Frank, Keith

and Carl.

William T. Hawn, M. D., a successful young physician
and surgeon at Binger, Oklahoma, is descended from
fine old colonial stock, his ancestors having come to
this country from Germany. The original progenitor
of the name in America settled in North Carolina and
subsequently members of the family removed to the
Middle West, locating in Missouri, where John D. Hawn,
father of the Doctor, was born in 1859. He lived in
Bollinger County, Missouri, until 1913 when he came to
Oklahoma and established his home at El Reno, there en-
gaging in business as a merchant. In Missouri he farmed I
for a number of years, was hotel proprietor, and for
several years served as county assessor of Bollinger
County. He is a stalwart democrat in his political ad-
herences and in religious matters is a devout member
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. He married
Miss Nancy Shell, who was born at Patton, Missouri,
in 1863, and this union was prolific of three children,
namely : Rayford, in business with his father at El Reno ;
Charles W., died in El Reno at the age of thirty years; J
and William T., subject of this review.

A native Missourian, Doctor Hawn was born at Patton,
that state, February 1, 1885. He was educated in the
public schools of Patton and graduated in the local high
school in 1903. He then entered the Marvin Collegiate
Institute, at Fredericktown, Missouri, and after com-
pleting his junior year there was matriculated as a
student in Barnes University, at St. Louis, Missouri, inj
the medical department of which he was graduated as a
member of the class of 1910, with the degree of Doctor of
Medicine. His initial experience as a doctor was ob-
tained at Glen Island, Missouri, where he remained for
eight months, at the expiration of which he came to
Caddo County, locating at Lookeba. After two years
in the latter place he established his home and profes-
sional headquarters at Binger, and here he has since
resided. He has built up a large general practice in
Binger and in he country normally adjacent to this
city and has met with unusual success in curing the sick,
He is possessed of a genial disposition and his kind
personality invariably inspires hope in the heart of his
patient. His offices are on the north side of Main Street

In politics Doctor Hawn is a democrat and in a fra
ternal way he is affiliated with Binger Lodge, Independ
ent Order of Odd Fellows. In connection with his lift
work he is a valued and appreciative member of Caddt
County Medical Society, the Oklahoma State Mediea
Society, and the American Medical Association, beinj
vice president of the first mentioned.

sti

irn

(ini

ant

fai

liir

idaj

and

Moi

nati

was
■ j 187!
I , font
man
1893
I the i
i per!
: home
pnldi
; there
; of r
Bra
inj i
rema
’his e
N.H
'J. B,
Romp:
, Conkl
sqnan

p am
wise
Jud
'her of
Iftha
'by Bi
senior
lawyer
tiee’.ai
ami ip
sions i
school
the rep
W eff

fill

Miss s
Mrs. S,
herowi
Judge

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2053

In St. Louis, Missouri, in 1910, Doctor Hawn was
united in marriage to Miss Opal F. Cander, a daughter
of Fletcher Cander, a civil engineer who died in Cripple
Creek, Colorado. Doctor and Mrs. Hawn have two chil-
,e dren: Helen, born February 28, 1911; and Euth, born
j. July 1, 1914. The Doctor and his wife are members of
m the Congregational Church, to whose charities and good
ft works they are liberal contributors.

3S James Wallace Steen. One of the pioneer attorneys
cj of the City of Enid, a participant in the opening of the
strip in 1893, James Wallace Steen has been a prom-
ite inent member of the Oklahoma bar for more than twenty
J years, and is specially remembered for his services as
he a district judge. He was appointed judge of the district
^ including Enid by Governor Haskell, and served four and
ijij a half months, and also served three years and three
ipS months in the same office under appointment by Lieuten-
ei)S ant Governor McAlester.

ng. James Wallace Steen was born June 16, 1855, on a
4 farm in Logan County, Ohio. Three weeks before his
birth his father died, and his mother lived only nine
; days. An only child, he was reared in the home of his
■•an grandfather in Ohio until sixteen, spending these years
rom on a farm near Huntsville. What he has accomplished
to in life is largely the product of his individual ambition
itor and energy. In 1874 he entered the freshman class at
aid Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois, and was grad-
the uated A. B. in 1877. Three years later that institution
m, gave him the degree Master of Arts. He studied law at
] in Bellefontaine, Ohio, in the office of Judge J. A. Price, and
e to was admitted to the bar at Cleveland in September,
>® 1879. Judge Steen practiced law at Cleveland and Belle-

rmed fontaine until March 19, 1888, and then located in King-
for man, Kansas. That was his home until the spring of
mger 1893, when he removed to Kingfisher, Oklahoma, and on
lad- the date of the opening of the Cherokee Strip on Septem-
rnber her 16, 1893, was one of the many thousands who sought
tried homes in the new country. He staked out a lot on the
•ouri, public square at Enid, but could not prove his claim and
alien, therefore was not among the lucky ones in gaining a piece
ieno; of real estate. There were about 200 lawyers in the
ears; throng of homeseekers who arrived at Enid on that open-
ing day, and Judge Steen is one of the few who still
atton, remain in active practice. Some of the others who were
J tlie his contemporaries are W. E. Cogdal, H. J. Sturgis, L.
High IST. Huston, C. H. Parker, John F. Curran, Jake Roberts,
egiate J. B. Cullison, and I. G. Conkling. Judge Steen in
e«m- company with Judge L. M. Conkling and Mr. I. G.
as i Conkling set up their first office in a tent on the public
uri, itt square, with a rough board sign on the outside announc-
dasa jug the firm of Conkling, Steen & Conkling, lawyers,
dor of a number of other lawyers and professional men like-
as ob- wise had their first offices in tents.

ed for Judge Steen is a democrat in politics. He is a mem-
iM to her of the Episcopal Church and when the first services
y®s 0f that church were held at Enid on September 17, 1893,
profes hy Bishop Brooks Mr. Steen was appointed the first
; iinre senior warden of the newly organized congregation. As a
fa in lawyer Judge Steen has always enjoyed a liberal prac-
to this tiee, and while on the bench proved himself a painstaking
he sick anj impartial judge. One of his most important deci-
is kinc sions was that upholding the rights of lessees of state
“ school lands, and his decision sustaining the vote against
Street the repeal of the anti-gambling law was also of far-reacli-
i a fra jno- effect.

depend jn 1887 at Bellefontaine, Ohio, Judge Steen married
his lit* Miss Sallie Pate, who is of Virginia birth and parentage,
f Caddo jyfj.g _ Steen is well known as a contributor of fiction under
Medics her own name to magazines. Among other public services
i. to111! Judge Steen was named by Governor Haskell as a mem-

ber of the board of control of the Institute for the Feeble-
minded; and he served on that board while the buildings
of the institution were in course of erection.

Charles Byron Hill. It was the unusual qualifica-
tions and attainments demonstrated during fifteen years
of practice at Guthrie that brought Dr. Charles B. Hill
the appointment in the summer of 1915 as superintendent
of the Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane at Supply.
Doctor Hill has had an unusually broad and thorough
experience in life. He earned his professional education,
worked as a teacher and clerk for several years during
his earlier career, and since gaining his title as a doctor
of medicine has had unusual opportunities in professional,
lines.

Though most of his life was spent in Kansas up to
the time he came to Oklahoma, Doctor Hill .was born on
a farm in Marshall County, Illinois, December 1, 1871,
a son of Byron A. and Amanda (Leigh) Hill, his father
and grandparents having been natives of Oneida County,
New York. His father was born in 1829 and in 1850
moved to Marshall County, Illinois, worked for a few
years as a carpenter, then bought land and during the
rest of his life followed farming almost altogether. He
moved out to Kansas in 1881, locating also in Marshall*
County of that state, and continued farming there until
1890. He then retired from farming, and for nine years
served as postmaster of Stolzenbach, Kansas. In 1903
he came to Oklahoma, bought property in Guthrie, and
lived retired in that city until his death on July 18,
1914. He was an active member of the Methodist
Episcopal Church. He was married in 1852 to Miss
Leigh, who was born in Illinois, in 1832. Her father was
a native of England and her mother, whose first name was
Elizabeth, was born in Virginia. Byron A. Hill and wife
became parents of nine children, five sons and four
daughters, ' mentioned briefly as follows : Rhoda, de-

ceased; Alice, wife of J. C. Smith, a farmer at Great
Bend, Kansas; Horace W., a farmer in South Dakota;
Frank L., a dairy farmer at Norman, Oklahoma; Sher-
man S., who is a gold miner in California; Renette, 'ho
is unmarried and is superintendent of trained nurses in
the State University Hospital at Oklahoma City;
Dr. Charles B. who is seventh in order of birth; and
Harry and Catherine, both of whom died in infancy.

When the family moved out to Kansas Dr. Charles B.
Hill was ten years of age. He grew up on a farm,
and in 1892 finished the course in the Marysville High
School. After that came two years of work as a teacher
in Marshall County, Kansas, followed by one year as a
salesman in a bookstore at Marysville. Partly with the
earnings of his work in these occupations he entered, in
1895, the University Medical School in Kansas City, and
after four years of hard study earned his Doctor of
Medicine degree in 1899. He was very fortunate in his
next appointment to the position of assistant superin-
endent of the General Hospital for the Atchison, Topeka
& Santa Fe Railroad at Topeka, Kansas. He remained in
the railroad hospital until September 18, 1900, and on
that date arrived in Guthrie and took up his general
practice as a physician and surgeon. In a few years he
came to be recognized as one of the leading medical men
of Oklahoma, and it was entirely without solicitation on
his part that he was appointed, August 1, 1915, as su-
perintendent of the Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane at
Supply.

Doctor Hill has long been interested in Masonry. In
1902 he attained the thirty-second degree of Scottish
Rite, in 1912 was given the title K. C. C. H. and in 1914
received the supreme honorary thirty-third degree which
was conferred upon him at Guthrie in 1915. His local
affiliation is with Albert Pike Lodge No. 162, Ancient

2054

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Free and Accepted Masons, at Guthrie. He also retains
membership in the Methodist Episcopal Church at Guth-
rie. For three years of his practice in that city he
served as city physician.

On January 7, 1901, at Haddam, Kansas, Doctor Hill
married Miss Florence Taylor, daughter of William H.
and Mary Taylor, who were natives of Indiana. Mrs. Hill
was born in Washington County, Kansas, August 7, 1876.
To their marriage was born one child, Euth, at Guthrie,
July 3, 1909.

John H. Kane is a member of the prominent Bartles-
ville law firm of Brennan, Kane & McCoy, and has been
a factor in the prestige which this firm enjoys in Wash-
ington County and Northeastern Oklahoma. He is a
lawyer of exceptional attainments, of great energy and
resourcefulness, and has made his profession a medium
of important public service since locating in Oklahoma
twelve years ago.

Aside from his profession he has become interested in
the Oklahoma oil industry as an individual operator and
a stockholder in several different companies. In this
connection it is a matter of interest to record that the
place of his birth was an oil camp in Pennsylvania.
This was at Fagundus, in Warren County, Pennsylvania,
where John Henry Kane was born November 12, 1875,
a son of James E. and Catharine (Striekler) Kane.
Both parents were natives of Pennsylvania and his
father was identified with the early petroleum industry
of Pennsylvania until the early ’80s, when he brought
his family to the West and established a home in what
is now Kiowa County, Kansas. There he was success-
fully identified with stock raising for many years.

The only son among four children, John H. Kane was
seven years old when the family moved to Kansas and
he grew up on his father ’s ranch in Kiowa County.
Graduating from the high school at Greensburg, the
county seat, he continued his education in the Kansas
State Normal School at Emporia, where he was gradu-
ated in 1896 and from there entered the University of
Kansas at Lawrence, where he graduated A. B. in 1899.
With his liberal education as a foundation, Mr. Kane
then entered the University of Kansas law department
and took his degree LL. B. in 1900. He mixed his
courses, thus taking both degrees within one year of
each other. His preliminary service and experience as
a lawyer was gained in Kansas City, Missouri, where
he remained until 1904. In that year he came to
Bartlesville, and his natural ability together with an
untiring industry in working up his cases brought him
a very active practice. For years he was associated with
Frank Burford under the firm name of Kane & Burford,
In 1907 Mr. Kane had the distinction of being chosen
the first county attorney of Washington County under
the state government. After one term he resumed his
private practice and soon afterwards formed a partner-
ship with Messrs. Brennan and McCoy. The firm of
Brennan, Kane & McCoy have a splendid clientage, and
most of their work is in corporation law.

Mr. Kane has attained the thirty-second degree of
Scottish Eite Masonry, and also belongs to the Temple
of the Mystic Shrine and the Benevolent and Protective
Order of Elks. He has exercised an influential part in
the Oklahoma State Bar Association and is now treasurer
of the association. In 1907 he married Miss Louise
Miller, who was born at Olathe, Johnson County, Kansas.
Their two children are John and Eobert.

Benjamin F. Buffington. A pioneer settler of Gar-
field County, one of the thousands who entered the strip
on the opening day of September 16, 1893, Benjamin F.

Buffington located upon a quarter section seven miles
southwest of Enid. He moved to the City of Enid about
twenty years ago, and has since been primarily identified
with the abstract and conveyancing business. He is
now one of the leading abstractors and conveyancers of
Garfield County, has built up a valuable business, and has
also connected himself in many ways with the public
affairs of his city and county.

Benjamin F. Buffington was born in Clinton County,
Ohio, near Martinsville, September 13, 1849. His father
was a physician and dentist. The first twenty-five years
of his life Mr. Buffington spent in Clinton and Highland
counties of Ohio, and in the meantime had attended dis- I
trict schools and an academy at Salem, but for the ■
greater part educated himself. For several years he j
taught country schools in Ohio, and in 1876 moved out to
Van Meter, Iowa, taught there and at Dallas Center and
Gowrie, and in the fall of 1878 moved on to Nebraska.

He was principal of the schools at Schuyler two years,
in April, 1880, moved to Osceola in Polk County, and in
1881 was elected superintendent of the county schools.

He resigned that position to enter the Osceola Bank with
which he was connected for ten years, the last five years
as cashier.

In the fall of 1892 Mr. Buffington removed to Okarche
in the Cheyenne Indian Country of Oklahoma. At ]
Okarche lie organized and conducted a bank in company !;
with Julius Loosen, whose sons are still the chief bankers '
of Okarche. On September 16, 1893, Mr. Buffington j;
made the race from the South into the Cherokee strip, and
secured 160 acres six miles southwest of Enid. He lived I
on this claim until 1895 and then moved into the City J
of Enid. During the winter of 1895 he began the prepa-
ration of a set of abstracts for Garfield County and was j
the first to compile these records. Having been in the J
county from the beginning, 'he has continued in that line
of work to this date, and through his office has offered a I
valuable service to all parties interested in lands of Gar- ]
field County.

In the fall of 1912 Mr. Buffington was elected a mem- j
ber of the Board of County Commissioners of Garfield
County. His associates in that body being L. G. Gossett 1
and H. H. Semke, who at once elected him as chairman
of the board. During the past three years he has given 1
much of his time and attention to the management of
the county’s fiscal and general administrative affairs. J
Though a republican, Mr. Buffington has been little of a j
politician, though a valuable man in local affairs and one I
who is animated by the strongest faith in Oklahoma’s
future destiny. In early life he was a member of the |
Congregational Church, but is now a Presbyterian, and j
is active in the Sunday school, teaching the young men ’s
class. For forty years he has been affiliated with the 1
Masonic fraternity, and has spent twenty years in Enid j
Lodge.

In Ohio in September, 1874, Mr. Buffington married !
Isabel Ellis, who also spent several years in work as a
teacher. She is active in church and woman’s club mat- ,
ters at Enid. Their one daughter, Ethel, is the wife of ,
E. E. Cones, formerly of Enid and now connected with ‘
the City National Bank of Lawton, Oklahoma.

Oklahoma Baptist University. In Sptember, 1915,]
came the formal opening of the Oklahoma Baptist Uni-
versity at Shawnee. This is an institution of which j
that city is particularly proud. Though its work has
only begun, its plans have been so carefully laid, such
high ideals and standards have been raised, and the
institution has such magnificent backing not only in the!
local co-operation of Shawnee citizens but in the church as

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2055

a whole, that its future prestige and usefulness are
practically assured.

The university originated in 1907 during the Baptist
General Convention of Oklahoma while in annual session
at Ardmore. The committee on location was appointed
at this session and after three years of work finally lo-
cated at Shawnee. The citizens of Shawnee deserve the
highest credit for securing this institution and for laying
the material foundation so liberally. While a number of
men deserve credit, it was, by general consent, George E.
McKinnis, who was primarily responsible for securing
the location of the institution at Shawnee, and who
almost single handed raised the fund for a beautiful
administration building, the first of the large group of
college structures which will eventually adorn the mag-
nificent campus of sixty acres on a high rolling prairie
a mile and a half north of the business center. The
university is located on the high ground commanding a
panoramic view of the Canadian River Valley.

The administration building was started in 1910 and
completed in 1913 at a cost of approximately. $100,000,
all this money having been raised among the citizens of
Shawnee. An attempt was made to start the scholastic
work of the intsitution in 1911. Halls in the city were
hired, and the work of the school begun under the
presidency of J. M. Carroll of Texas with an enrollment
of 200 pupils. However, in June, 1911, the school was
closed until the administration building should be com-
pleted, since the hiring of halls proved to be of too great
expense. At the meeting of the Baptist General Con-
vention at Shawnee in November, 1914, it was definitely
determined that the time had come to open the institu-
tion permanently. Rev. Frank M. Masters, then pastor
of the Baptist Church at Ardmore was called to the
president’s chair. He took hold at once and under his
vigorous management the administration building was
completed and equipped and opened its doors for the
first regular school year, which began September 14,
1915. There was an enrollment of 105 pupils at the
start, and eight professors in the faculty.

The central building on the campus, known as the
Administration Building, is one of the best structures of
its kind in the country, considered from the standpoint
of college administration and also architecturally. It is a
modern adaptation of the classic school of architecture,
and contains two stories and basement. The basement
has been arranged for the science department of the
institution, and also with gymnasiums and one or two
class rooms. Besides the administration offices on the
first floor there is a large auditorium with seating
capacity for about 750, and six class rooms. The second
story provides studios, society rooms and library, and
additional class rooms. Additional dormitory buildings
are one of the first needs to be provided and at least
one will be erected in 1916. On May 2d ground was
broken for the foundation of a hall for women, and an
effort will be made to have it ready by September, 1916.
Other buildings to be provided in the near future are a
Science Hall and Library Building. The college already
has the nucleus of a good library, and the Carnegie
Library of Shawnee, open to the students, is one of the
best in the state. In the session just closed 145 students
were enrolled, and the session proved a very successful
one. The institution is becoming thoroughly established
in the hearts of its constituency.

The curriculum of the Baptist University, both in the
academic and collegiate departments, has been prepared
to meet all the requirements of the state law on ac-
credited institutions. The members of the first faculty
are men and women of mature scholarship and experi-
ence, and come from the leading university and colleges
of the country.

The president, Rev. Frank M. Masters, was born in
Franklin County, Texas, July 28, 1870, and comes of
fine old American stock. His great-grandfather was a
soldier in the Revolutionary war. The Masters family
came originally from England and settled in Maryland
near Washington, District of Columbia, in colonial times.
His grandfather, Zachariah Masters, was a farmer and
planter, and died in Cartersville, Georgia, at the age of
ninety-two. President Masters’ father was B. E.
Masters, who was born in the Anderson District of
South Carolina in 1842, but when quite young his parents
removed to Georgia. He enlisted with a Georgia regi-
ment in 1861 in the Civil war, and among other engage-
ments was at the battle of Chickamauga, and was cap-
tured at Missionary Ridge in 1863 and spent the rest of
the period of hostilities in the federal prison at Rock
Island, Illinois. In 1865 he moved to Texas, became an
early prominent stock raiser in that state, and lived for
thirty-five years in Hunt County, where he died in March,

1913. He was a democrat and a member of the Baptist
faith. B. E. Masters married Mary Ellen Penn, who
was born in Alabama, and now lives on the old home-
stead in Celeste, Texas.

When President Masters was eleven years of age his
parents moved to Hunt County, Texas, and there he
continued his education in the common schools and the
high school at Celeste. In 1892 he graduated A. B.
from Calhoun College at Kingston, Texas, and for a
time he was teacher in the preparatory department of
that institution. In 1892-94 he was a teacher in Texas
public schools, aud in June, 1894, he was licensed to
preach in the Kingston Baptist Church, and was regu-
larly ordained to the ministry the following September.
In October, 1894, he entered the Southern Baptist Theo-
logical Seminary at Louisville, Kentucky, where he was
graduated Th. B. in 1896 and Th. M. in 1897. During
1897-98 he was a graduate student at the Southern
Theological Seminary, and during 1896-98 was pastor of
the Clifton Baptist Church of Louisville. Then followed
an active pastoral career until he was called to the presi-
dency of the Oklahoma Baptist University in December,

1914. In January, 1899, he became pastor of the First
Baptist Church of San Angelo, Texas, and remained
there until 1902. He was pastor of the First Baptist
Church of Weatherford in 1902-05, of the College Avenue
Baptist Church at Fort Worth from 1905 to 1910, and
of the First Baptist Church of Ardmore, Oklahoma, from
1910 to 1915. In 1908 he was lecturer in the Mid-
Winter Bible School at Howard Payne College in Texas;
was lecturer in the Mid-Winter Bible School at Simmons
College in 1909 ; a member of the State Mission Board,
Baptist General Convention of Texas, in 1908-10 ; mem-
ber of the State Mission Board, Baptist General Conven-
tion, Oklahoma, 1910-15; vice president Foreign Mission
Board, Southern Baptist Convention of Oklahoma, 1913-
14; president Baptist Pastors’ Conference of Oklahoma,
1913-15. In politics Mr. Masters is a democrat.

On June 9, 1898, at Louisville, Kentucky, he married
Miss Lillie R. Randolph, daughter of A. W. Randolph,
who was a prominent citizen of Louisville, Kentucky, and
for nineteen years before his death served as county
surveyor of Jefferson County. Mr. and Mrs. Masters
are the parents of five children: Catherine Chamberlin,

now in the first year of the preparatory department of
the Oklahoma Baptist University at Shawnee; E. Ran-
dolph, who is also in the preparatory department of the
same university; C. Kerfoot, in the sixth grade of the
public schools; Frank M. and Julian Penn, twins, who
are in the fourth grade of the public schools.

The dean of the Oklahoma Baptist University is F.
Erdman Smith, who is a graduate of the University of
Toronto, of the Oklahoma Baptist College and the Temple

2056

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

University. He was vice president during 1907-08 of
ing a part of 1908, and again vice president from 1909
to 1911. He was appointed dean of the Oklahoma Bap-
the Oklahoma Baptist College, was acting president dur-
tist University in 1911, was dean of Burleson College in
1912-13, dean and professor of education at Howard
Payne College in Texas from 1913 to 1915, and then
returned to the Oklahoma University in 1915, where, in
addition to his duties as dean, he is professor of
education.

J. W. Jent, the university registrar and professor of
philosophy and social science, is a man of unusual
scholastic attainment. He pursued his studies succes-
sively in Pierce City Baptist College, in William Jewell
College, in Baylor University, and in 1907 graduated
Th. B. at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,
and in 1908 took his degree Th. M. at Baylor University.
Later he entered Yale University, where he graduated
A. B. with general honors in 1911; was a graduate
student there during 1912-14, securing his A. M. degree
in 1914, and in 1912 he graduated Th. D. “Magna Cum
Laude ’ ’ from the Southwestern Baptist Theological Sem-
inary. He has been connected as a teacher and in an
official capacity with several of the institutions where
he was a student, and came to the Oklahoma Baptist
University in 1915.

W. D. Moorer holds the chair of Religious Education.
He is a graduate A. B. from Purman University in
South Carolina in 1892 and was pastor of a number of
churches in South Carolina up to 1900, during the fol-
lowing five years was pastor of the First Baptist Church
at Anadarko, Oklahoma, and from 1905 to 1915 was
superintendent of Sunday-school work under the Baptist
General Convention of Oklahoma. He was president of
the board of trustees of Oklahoma Baptist College from
1906 to 1913, and was elected to his present office in
June, 1915.

J. Louis Guthrie, who holds the chair of Greek and
Latin, graduated A. M. from William Jewell College at
Liberty, Missouri, was a professor in the Southwestern
University at Jackson, Tennessee, two years, and was
president of the Lane View College of Tennessee for
about the same period.

W. T. Short, mathematics and science, did his first
work as a teacher in the public schools of Oklahoma dur-
ing 1902-04, was an instructor in mathematics in Okla-
homa Baptist College from 1907 to 1911, graduated A. B.
at the Oklahoma Baptist College in 1911, held the chair
of mathematics in several collegiate institutions, and
came to the Oklahoma Baptist University in June, 1915.

W. P. Powell, who has charge of English and modern
languages, graduated A. B. from Richmond College in
1903, was a graduate student in the University of
Virginia from 1907 to 1912, and in 1910 received the
degree M. A. from that university, and in 1912 completed
his residence work for the Th. D. degree. He was an
instructor in the Texas A. & M. College and in Baylor
University prior to coming to Shawnee.

Prof. E. O. Kaserman was recently elected as the head
of the department of science. His early education was
received in the public schools of Tennessee. Mr. Kaser-
man is an A. B. and A. M. graduate from the Winchester
College, Winchester, Tennessee, and took his M. S. degree
from Carson-Newman College, Jefferson City, Tennessee.
He is also a Th. D. graduate from the Southern Baptist
Seminary, though he is not a minister. For ten years
Doctor Kaserman has been professor of science in the
Carson-Newman College. He is one of the leading science
teachers of the country.

Other members of the first faculty of the Oklahoma
Baptist University are Joshua B. Lee, who has charge
of public speaking, and Ola Gulledge, who is instructor

in piano and voice, and is a product of the musical school
of Baylor University and has also pursued her studies
abroad in the Royal Conservatory of Music at Leipsic,
Germany. Miss Inez Mazy Harris has recently been
elected to the head of the voice department. Miss Harris
has been trained under the best American talent, and
has assisted in several of the most prominent choruses in
the country. During the past two years she has taught
voice in Howard Payne College.

George J. Gensman. One of the largest and most
important mercantile enterprises in Oklahoma, with sev-
eral unique features in the form of its organization and
methods of doing business, is the Gensman Brothers &
Company, wholesale and retail hardware, the central head-
quarters of which are in Enid. George J. Gensman was
one of the founders and developers of this splendid
business, and is now president and treasurer of the cor-
poration, and is also vice president of the Central State
Bank of Enid. His business and civic career is one of the
most important to be considered in the history of Enid.

George J. Gensman was born in Washington County,
Wisconsin, March 1, 1864, a son of Conrad and Mar-
garet (Kellerman) Gensman. The former was a native
of Prussia and the latter of Bavaria, and they came to
Wisconsin with their parents aged respectively seventeen
and four years. They were married in Wisconsin, where
the father developed a farm from a heavy tract of timber,
and lived on that one place for thirty-five years. In the
meantime he had acquired extensive land interests in
Sedgwick County, Kansas, and removed to the state to
take their active management about 1891. There he
developed a large farm of 480 acres. His death oc-
curred at Enid in 1904 at the age of seventy-one, his wife
having preceded him a year and a half before. He was a
member of the Evangelical Lutheran while his wife was
a strict Lutheran in religious belief. Of their seven
children five are living in Oklahoma in or near Enid.
George, Fred C. and William R. comprise the personnel
of the old firm of Gensman Brothers. The daughter
Bertha is the wife of C. W. Hackett, also connected with
the Gensman Brothers & Company. Susie is the wife of
D. B. Barnes, a farmer in Garfield County. The other
two children are : Carrie, wife of Albert Thiel, living near
the old Wisconsin home at Schleisengerville, Washington
County; and Annie, wife of J. E. Jones, a manufacturer
and foundryman at Richmond, Indiana.

George J. Gensman has had an active and progressive
career since his boyhood on a Wisconsin farm. He at-
tended common schools, and at the age of seventeen qual-
ified as a teacher. His first school was near the old home
place. He worked on a farm, taught, and for five differ-
ent terms attended the Valparaiso Normal School, now
the Valparaiso University in Indiana. In 1889, at the
age of twenty-five, he removed to Sedgwick County, Kan-
sas, where his father had invested in land, and gave some
attention to its management for a year or two. At the
same time he continued his work as an educator. He was
principal of the Two-department School at Garden Plain,
and while there acquired a farm of 160 acres near
Wichita. This was unimproved land, and he developed
it through renters. His work as principal at Garden
Plain continued four years, after which he was principal
at Andale in the same county two years, and then for
three years was principal of the Four-department School
at Mount Hope, one of the best towns in Sedgwick
County.

In the meantime Mr. Gensman had married and there
were children to be provided for. He and his brother
Fred had taken counsel together and conceived the idea
of opening in business in a new country. Fred had already

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2057

acquired some land near Enid, Oklahoma, and that prob-
ably was the chief influence that brought them to the
town. In March, 1898, the two brothers bought an in-
terest with the H. E. Diehl & Company, a general hard-
ware and farm implement house. The business was con-
tinued as H. E. Diehl & Company until January 1, 1901.
At that date the three brothers, Fred, William and
George, bought the Diehl interests, and established the
firm of Gensman Brothers. In the meantime, under the
impulse of the aggressive enterprise of the Gensmans,
the business had grown to an annual volume of sales
amounting to $50,000, about 3% times what it was in
1898. Then came the chief calamity which this thriving,
business has known. In July, 1901, the entire plant was
burned, causing a loss of $40,000 above insurance. There
was not a moment of doubt or hesitation in the minds
of the brothers about re-establishing the business. The
plant was re-built, and the firm was accorded almost
unlimited credit. They filled up their warehouses and
shelves with a complete stock of goods on credit from the
manufacturers, and in a short time had paid off every
dollar of obligation, were discounting their bills regularly,
and that record has since been maintained, only in in-
creasing volume.

The greatest development and improvement in the busi:
Jii ness came about in 1914. At that time the house was sell-
te ing goods aggregating a quarter of a million dollars
it, annually. On January 1, 1912, the copartnership was re-
te placed by an incorporation known as the Gensman
in Brothers & Company, and the capital was increased to
to $75,000. The business has since been modified and ex-
lie tended so as to afford the advantages of organization to
oc- practically all the trade territory surrounding Enid. In
ife carrying out this plan branch retail stores have been
sa established, two of them at Enid, one at Billings, one at
ras Marshall, one at Salt Fork, one at Hunter, one at Goltry,
ven one at Nash, and one at Jefferson. All these stores have
lid. ready access by railroad with Enid, and the manager of
mel each branch store is a stockholder in the firm of Gens-
hter man Brothers & Company. At the present time about
lith sixteen men are working stockholders and participants in
e of the business. This original plan, though somewhat sim-
ther ilar to the “chain of stores” idea, has reached a high
near degree of perfection in this particular case. A purpose
gtoi always kept in mind is to give expert service to custom-
uret ers, and that principle has been emphasized in every par-
ticular. The two Enid retail stores employ from eighteen
ssive to twenty-five persons, and the entire business now repre-
e at- sents a large capital, with several hundred people engaged,
qiial^ The results have fully justified all expectations. Goods
home are purchased in large quantities, and as a result local
liffer- dealers whether within the chain of branch stores or not,
bow have the advantages of low prices and large stocks,
t tie Gensman Brothers & Company have dealings with almost
Kan- every hardware firm within the large territory compris-
some ing Garfield, Noble, Logan, Major, Alfalfa, Grant and
it the part of Kay counties, all of which territory is accessible
[e was to Enid by the eleven lines of railroads centering there.
Plain, On May 1, 1913, Mr. Gensman became vice president
i seal at the organization of the Central State Bank of Enid,
eloped In two years time this bank has become the second largest
iaiden in amount of resources and business in the State of Okla-

The executive personnel of the Gensman Brothers &
Company comprises George, president and treasurer ; Fred
C., secretary; and C. H. Haekett, vice president. The
brother William was secretary of the company until his
death by accident on January 20, 1913. At the time he
was en route to the Santa Fe Station, intending to visit
the branch store at Marshall. While driving' his auto-
alreadj mobile he came into collision with the city fire truck, and

after the accident never regained consciousness and died
within a few hours.

George Gensman has also been an active factor in civic
affairs at Enid. The city is now under an admirable
jflan of commission government. On April 27, 1902, a
committee of twelve persons, two from each ward, was
chosen to draw up a new charter. George Gensman was
one of those representing the Fourth Ward. This charter
was reported after six weeks of strenuous labor, was
adopted at a popular election, received the approval of
the courts, and is still in operation. Mr. Gensman is a
member of the board of directors of the Chamber of
Commerce and is usually found working in any move-
ment for the general advancement.

On September 4, 1890, at Wichita, Kansas, he married
Miss Dora Belle Osborn of Fort Scott, Kansas. They
have three daughters. Mabel is the wife of G. P. Legg,
who is connected with the Gensman Brothers & Com-
pany. The two younger daughters are Fay and Dorothy.

Prof. Harvey Lemuel, Allen. The distinctions of
good faithful work and successful accomplishment have
come plentifully to Harvey L. Allen, not only in liis
regular vocation as a teacher and educator, but also in
business and social and civic affairs. Professor Allen
is now superintendent of the entire public school system
of Tecumseh. He has been well known in educational
circles in different parts of the state for several years.

Born in Bates County, Missouri, September 20, 1888,
he is a son of Bev. H. W. and Mary B. (Warren) Allen,
and comes of old American stock on both sides. The
Allens were of Seotch-Irish descent, and included in one
branch of the family the noted Ethan Allen of Revolu-
tionary fame. The Warrens are direct descendants from
the same ancestry as the brilliant General Warren, who
fell at Bunker Hill.

Professor Allen and bis ancestors have been promi-
nently identified with the Masonic Order for generations,
though his father never joined that order. His fore-
father, General Warren, was the first master of the lodge
in America, serving one term and three years of a second
term until he participated in that fateful battle of
Bunker Hill and lost his life. In practically every
generation since then there have been Allens and War-
rens who have gained distinguished rank in Masonry.

Professor Allen’s grandfather was William Allen, who
was a pioneer of Oklahoma and died at Elk City in this
state in 1911. He was born in Bradley County, Ten-
nessee, in 1843. In 1852 his parents removed to Illinois,
and when he was nineteen years of age he went to the
young town of Kansas City, Jackson County, Missouri,
although at that time Kansas City had hardly come into
existence, certainly not as a city. William Allen was
proprietor of a hotel in Kansas City and subsequently
became a farmer. He served all through the Civil war
under Joe Shelby in the Confederate Army, being a
quarter master. After the war he removed to Bates
County, Missouri, homesteaded a farm, lived there quietly
and industriously until 1898 and then once more became
a pioneer, this time in Canadian County, Oklahoma. He
bought a relinquishment where the town of old Matthew-
son was later built. It was his distinction to have erected
the first house in D County, now Dewey County, Okla-
homa, and he became a general merchant. In 1909 he
removed to Elk City and went into the lumber business,
and that was his line of work until his death. The
farm which he had in Dewey County he subsequently sold
to the Leedey Townsite Company.

Rev. H. W. Allen, father of Professor Allen, was born
in Bates County, Missouri, in 1869 and died at Weather-
ford, Oklahoma, February 9, 1913. His youth and early
manhood were spent in Bates County until 1898. In

2058

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

that year lie came to Oklahoma and filed a claim where
the Town of Leedey stands. While he gave much atten-
tion to farming he was in reality first and last a minister,
and was a pioneer missionary of the Church of God.
He organized the first church of that denomination in
that section of Oklahoma, and worked as a missionary
under the national board both in Missouri and Okla-
homa, being the highest salaried missionary of the
Church of God in any state. In fact, he was at the head
of this denomination in the State of Oklahoma. A
democrat, he interested himself in politics not for per-
sonal advancement but for the good of the party and
for good government. At one time he was president
of the Democratic Club at Weatherford, and was twice
given a nomination for office by his fellow citizens. He
was a member of the Brotherhood of American Yeomen.
Eev. Mr. Allen married Mary B. Warren, a native of
Ohio, who is still living at Weatherford. Their children
were: Harvey Lemuel; Eldon H., who died in Weather-

ford, Oklahoma, at the age of fifteen; and H. F. Allen,
who is principal of the schools at Gotebo, Oklahoma.

As a boy Professor Allen attended country schools in
Bates County, Missouri. He has allowed no opportuni-
ties for learning and self improvement to pass by. In
1905 he attended the Collegiate Institute at Fort Scott,
Kansas, one year. He then entered the Southwestern
Normal School at Weatherford, Oklahoma, graduating
with the class of 1909, and has since received the degree
Master of Pedagogy from the Teachers Professional
College of Austin, Texas. During 1909-10 he was prin-
cipal of the high school at Anadarko, then became super-
intendent of schools at Alderson, Oklahoma, for two
years, and in the fall of 1912 entered Henry Kendall
College for post-graduate work, and at the same time
was an instructor in the institution. In 1913 he received
his well earned degree of Bachelor of Arts. He has also
taken a summer course of study in the University of
Missouri. In the summers of 1914 and 1915 he took
courses of instruction in the University of Oklahoma.
Professor Allen is a member of the Kappa Delta Pi
Greek Letter Honorary Educational Fraternity, the Uni-
versity of Oklahoma Chapter.

In the fall of 1913 Professor Allen accepted the
position of dean of the Collegiate Institute at Fort Scott,
Kansas. During the next year, 1914, he was superin-
tendent of schools at Cleo Springs, and in the spring
of 1915 he accepted the heavy responsibilities of super-
intendent of schools at Tecumseh. He now has under
his supervision four public schools, with a staff of nine-
teen teachers, and a total enrollment of 733 scholars.
He has been re-elected superintendent of schools of
Tecumseh for 1916-17, and is assisting in ereeting a
splendid new high school building.

Politically he is a democrat, and is a member of the
Church of God, the denomination in which his father
was a minister. Fraternally he is almost by inheritance
identified with Masonry. He has filled chairs in Anadarko
Lodge No. 21, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons; is
a member of Indian Consistory No. 2 of the thirty-
second degree Scottish Eite at McAlester; a member of
the Order of Eastern Star at Alderson; and is also a
member and has served as chaplain of the Independent
Order of Odd Fellows at Alderson. In educational circles
his acquaintance is widespread, and he is an active
member of the County and State Teachers’ associations.
At one time he was chairman of the Young Men’s
Democratic Club at Weatherford. The wide scope of
his interests is shown by the fact that for three years
he was a member of Company B of the Second Missouri
Militia. He is also a stockholder in the Farmers State
Bank at Weatherford.

In 1912 Professor Allen was married at Mounds,

Oklahoma, to Miss Neva Young. Her father, A. J.
Young, is a Union veteran of the Civil war, a republican
in politics, and has long been a farmer, and now resides
at Quincy, Missouri. Mr. and Mrs. Allen have one child,
Geraldine, born October 22, 1914.

Eedmond Selecman Cole. The achievement of such
a position as that occupied by Eedmond Selecman Cole
in legal circles of Oklahoma, when attained by one still
so young in years, is typical of American grit and the
true western spirit of enterprise. A resident of Pawnee
since 1909, he has attracted to himself a wide and influ-
ential clientele, and at the same time has become one of
the democratic leaders of Pawnee County.

Mr. Cole was born east of Savannah, in Andrew
County, Missouri, August 22, 1881, and is a»son of James
Buchanan and Virginia Lee (Bedford) Cole, and on both
sides of the family traces his ancestry back through gen-
erations of distinguished men and gentle women, promi-
nent in the professions and arts, in business, society and
polities, and in military and civil life. His grand-
parents on the paternal side were Capt. James L. and
Eliza (Patterson) Cole, of Washington County, Vir-
ginia; his great-grandparents, Peleg and Mary (Wil-
liams) Cole; his great-great-grandfather, John Cole, and
his great-great-great-grandfather, Joseph Cole, who set-
tled on the Holston Biver, in southwestern Virginia, in
1774, and was captain of a company of Patriots at
King ’s Mountain during the War of the Eevolution. On
the maternal side, Mr. Cole’s grandparents were Lieut.
Alexander Marshall and Mary (Selecman) Bedford, his
great-grandparents John and Elizabeth Burk (Howard)
Bedford, his great-great-grandparents, John and Mary
Ann (Marshall) Bedford, his great-great-great-grand-
parents, Thomas and Mary Ligon (Coleman) Bedford,
and his great-great-great-great-grandfather, Stephen
Bedford, who died in Charlotte County, Virginia, in
1758. Thomas Bedford was selected a member of the
Committee of Safety for Charlotte County, Virginia,
January 13, 1777. The grandfathers of Mr. Cole,
Capt. James L. Cole and Lieut. Alexander M. Bedford,
secured their titles as officers of the Confederacy during
the Civil war. On the Selecman side, Mr. Cole’s grand-
parents were Henry W. and Mary (Simpson) Selecman,
his great-grandparents, George and Jane (Davis) Selec-
man, and his great-great-grandparents, Henry and Mar-
garet (Harmon) Selecman, who emigrated to America
from Germany shortly before the War of the Eevolution
and settled below Washington on Oceoquan Eiver, in
Virginia. Eedmond Selecman Cole is the namesake of
Eedmond Selecman, who served in the Confederate army
with the rank of lieutenant.

Eedmond S. Cole passed his boyhood days in Andrew
County, Missouri, where he secured a common school
education, this being supplemented by attendance at the
Kirksville (Missouri) Normal School from 1899 until
1901. He spent eight years, from 1901 until 1909, at the
Missouri University, Columbia, and his college career
was one that was replete with brilliant achievements and
well-earned honors. As editor of the college paper, the
Independent, from 1905 until 1907, he gave the student
body a well-edited journal; in 1909 he acted as colonel
of cadets at the Missouri University Military School; at
various times he represented his college in debates witli
the Universities of Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma, in
which his oratorical powers and skillful and forceful logic
did much to uphold the prestige of his alma mater. He
received the degree of Fellow in Economies, 1905-9, the
Bachelor of Arts degree in 1905 and the Master of Arts
degree in 1906, and following this studied in the law
school for two years. In fraternity circles he was always

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2059

ulj

il-'i

:t-

at]

at.

his

ait

ml,

hen

the ,j
niaJ
lole,
flrcU
riiij
and-

Mr.-
Ties
itiou
r, in
;e of
army

ulreiT

"1
it II"'
until
it the
rarer
■« ami
r, the
tudent
'iilnnel
iol; at

; with

na, in'
il logic

r, Het

;-9, thi
it Aits
he law
always"

popular, and still retains membership in the Delta Tau
Delta, Delta Sigma Elio (honorary debating) and Phi
Alpha Delta (honorary law) societies.

In 1908 Mr. Cole became associate editor of the Colum-
bia, Missouri, Sentinel, but in the same year resigned
that position to accept that of editor of the Herald, a
daily and weekly publication, issued at the same place,
and continued as its editor until entering upon the prac-
tice of his profession. Admitted to the bar in Missouri,
in January, 1909, on April 26th of that year he came to
Pawnee, Oklahoma, where he became associated in prac-
tice with George E. Merritt, under the firm style of
Merritt & Cole. On February 8, 1910, he was appointed
county attorney of Pawnee County, to fill a vacancy, and
in November, 1910, was elected to succeed himself, Ris
popularity and the recognition of his ability being indi-
cated by the fact that he ran 300 votes ahead of the
democratic candidate for governor. He was re-elected to
succeed himself in November, 1912, but January 4, 1915,
retired from office to devote his attention to his rapidly
growing law practice, although he has continued to main-
tain his interest in polities, and is accounted a demo-
cratic party leader in Pawnee County. Mr. Cole frater-
nizes with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and
the Modern Woodmen of America. While a student at
the University of Missouri,' he acquired a fondness for
history and research work, and has continued to indulge
his taste for these interesting labors, being at present a
member of the state historical societies of Missouri,
Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas and Oklahoma, of
which last three named he is a life member. He is now
engaged in the preparation of a comprehsnsive history
of Pawnee County.

On June 11, 1905, Mr. Cole was married at Columbia,
Missouri, to Miss Mary Thompson Cross, who was born
at Ladonia, Missouri, October 22, 1884, daughter of
John Newton and Olivia McClure (Harris) Cross, now
of Keyes, California, granddaughter of William Blythe
and Mary Jane (Shores) Cross, great-granddaughter of
John and Sally (Blythe) Cross, great-great-granddaugh-
ter of William and Sarah (McCowan) Cross, and great-
great-great-granddaughter of James Cross, who came
from England in 1773 to fight with General Braddock and
who later fought in the Patriot army in the Revolutionary
war. On the maternal side, Mrs. Cole is the grand-
daughter of Thomas Banks and Margaret Dun (Thomp-
son) Harris, and great-granddaughter of William and
Margaret (Downing) Harris, and of Morgan N. and
Elizabeth (Williams) Thompson. Mrs. Cole graduated
from the Mexico (Missouri) High School in 1902, and
in 1908 received the degree of Bachelor of Sciences from
Missouri University. Mr. and Mrs. Cole are members of
the Methodist Episcopal Church. They are the parents
of one child, Olivia Harris Cole, born at Pawnee, Okla-
homa, June 27, 1913.

William H. Hills. In the field of corporation law one
of the ablest attorneys in Western Oklahoma is William
H. Hills, who has been identified with the Enid bar
since 1902. Mr. Hills has had a varied experience during
his career, and gained his law education while working
for the Armour Packing Company in Kansas City, study-
ing at night. As a lawyer he has since handled many
important cases, involving large values and grave prin-
ciples, and has likewise taken a leading part in polities,
church and social affairs.

William H. Hills was born in Crawfordsville, Indiana,
October 6, 1869. His father, Captain Francis E. Hills,
who is a pioneer of the Cherokee Strip, was born in
Xenia, Ohio, went to Indiana as a boy, and at the outbreak
of the Civil war enlisted as a private in the famous

Indiana Zouaves commanded by Colonel, late General
Lew Wallace, the noted soldier-author of Crawfordsville,
Indiana. Few men had a longer or more active service.
He was in the army four years and eight months, and
was with Grant at Belmont, Missouri, at the beginning
of the great campaign for the wresting of the Missis-
sippi Valley from the Confederacy, and was under that
leader at Richmond, at the end of the war. He par-
ticipated at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, where he
was wounded, in the Atlanta campaign, was with Sheridan
in the Shenandoah Valley, and thence in the final opera-
tions leading up to the fall of Richmond. He went into
the army as a private, and was discharged with the rank of
captain of Company I of the Eleventh Indiana Infantry.
From 1870 he lived in Iowa for about six years, and then
removed to the vicinity of Kansas City, Missouri, in 1876.
In 1893 at the opening of the Cherokee Strip he made
the race into the new country, secured a farm in Mc-
Henry Township twenty miles northwest of Enid, and
has lived there ever since. He is recognized as one of the
best farmers of the county, and has also made himself
an influence in politics. He is a republican, served as
chairman of the County Central Committee, and has been
a member of the school board of his locality for twenty
years or more.

William H. Hills lived at Kansas City from 1876 until
June, 1902. His common school education was acquired
at Liberty, Missouri, and he also took a classical course
in the William Jewell College at Liberty, graduating in
1893. He attended the Kansas City School of Law, and
received his degree from that institution in 1900. For
thirteen years off and on he was in the employ of the
Armour Packing Company at Kansas City, most of the
time as superintendent of the lard department.

In 1902 Mr. Hills removed to Enid and has since been
in a general practice. For six years, however, he has
specialized in corporation .cases, and now handles business
in all the courts. In several important cases he has
appeared before the United States Circuit Court of Ap-
peals at St. Paul. A varied corporation practice has
come to him, and he is entrusted with the arguing and
handling of cases involving banking and other impor-
tant matters. As a citizen Mr. Hills served on the city
council one term, and also on the board of education.
Under the auspices of the county and state committee
he has been an active campaigner in the interests of the
republican ticket, and has served as a delegate to various
local and state conventions. He has also attended na-
tional conventions of both parties as a spectator, and
heard Bryan make his great speech in the old Chicago
Coliseum in 1896. Mr. Hills is a Mason and is well
known in the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks,
being a past exalted ruler of his lodge and having sat in
the supreme lodge.

In church affairs Mr. Hills is a Presbyterian. Under
the influence of a celebrated evangelist he was converted
about six years ago, and it being his nature to enlist him-
self with a whole heart in every cause, he became an
enthusiastic Christian worker, believing that the greatest
happiness to self and humanity comes as a result of the
Christian life. He served as president of the Union
Churchmen’s League, an organization which developed
its strength to 600 members.

Mr. Hills was married at Kansas City, Missouri, in
January, 1896, to Miss Elsie C. Lindgren, of Rockford,
Illinois. She graduated from the Kansas City High
School, and became the mother of one daughter, Florence
E., who is now a student in the Searritt School at Kansas
City. Mrs. Hills died November 22, 1914, and is buried
at Kansas City beside her mother.

2060

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

John W. Browning, M. D. Among the leading mem-
bers of the Blaine County medical fraternity is found
Dr. John W. Browning, in whose long and uniformly
progressive career several personal traits are noticeable,
these including versatility of talents combined with
thoroughness of preparation and depth of medical and
surgical knowledge. A man of broad education and ex-
perience, of high personal character, courteous and
capable, he is justly accounted one of Geary’s foremost
citizens.

Doctor Browning is a member of a family which was
founded in America by three brothers of the name who
immigrated from England and settled during colonial
days, one in Virginia, one in Maryland and one in Penn-
sylvania, Doctor Browning being descended from either
the Virginia or Maryland branches. He was born at
Limestone, Washington County, Tennessee, December 23,
1869, his parents being William A. and Betty (Carr)
Browning. William A. Browning was born at Boone’s
Creek, Tennessee, in 1840, and was reared to agricultural
pursuits, in which he was engaged at the outbreak be-
tween the states. He enlisted in a Tennessee volunteer
cavalry regiment, in which he served during the war.
Since the close of the struggle he has devoted his energies
to general farming, and is now a resident of Washington
College Station, Tennessee. He is a republican in his
political belief, and a consistent member of the United
Brethren Church. Mrs. Browning was a Dunkard. She
was born in Tennessee in 1839 and died in January, 1915,
the mother of seven children, as follows • Anna, who is
the wife of H. H. Diveley, of Guthrie, and she is a
teacher in the Methodist Episcopal College at that place ;
Dr. John W. Browning; Bertha, who died at Limestone,
Tennessee, at the age of ten year's; Dora, who resides
on the home farm with her father; Bev. Samuel, who
is a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church South
at Knoxville, Tennessee; Rev. William E., also a minister
of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, with a charge
in Tennessee; and Maggie, who died in infancy.

John W. Browning laid the foundation for his educa-
tion in the public schools of Limestone, Tennessee, and
afterward pursued a business course at Washington Col-
lege in his native state. He next turned his attention to
the study of medicine, and after some preparation in the
Baltimore Medical College of Baltimore, Maryland, he
entered Barnes Medical College, St. Louis, Missouri,
from which he was graduated in 1899 with the degree
of Doctor of Medicine. While he began practice at that
time he did not cease his studies, for he has always
been a close student and has taken several post-graduate
courses, one at the Chicago Polyclinic in 1903, and he
attended the New York Post-Graduate School in 1908.
At the time of securing his degree in May, 1899, Doctor
Browning came to Geary, Oklahoma, and here his entire
professional career has been passed. He devotes his
learning, skill and energies to a general medical and
surgical practice and has offices in the Gillespie Building,
where his many patients find conveniences and equipment
for the handling of the most delicate and complicated
cases. His ability has been recognized by his profes-
sional brethren, who elected him president of the Blaine
County Medical Society, of which he is still a member,
as he is also of the Oklahoma Medical Society and the
American Medical Association. Fraternally the doctor
is a member of the Masonic Order, and his political
affiliation is with the republican party.

In 1899, at Wilson, Texas, Doctor Browning was mar-
ried to Miss Ida E. Clarke, a daughter of the late Preston
.T. Clarke. Mr. Clarke, a man of broad education, was a
justice of the peace in his native State of Georgia, and
later became postmaster at Wilson, Texas, where he was
a leading democrat and influential citizen. Four children

have been born to Doctor and Mrs. Browning: Vanda,

who is a member of the sophomore class at the Geary
High School; Margaret, a pupil in the eighth grade of
the public schools; Grace, in the seventh grade; and
Verona, attending the second grade.

Henry J. Sturgis. Before coming to Enid at the
opening of the Strip in 1893, Henry J. Sturgis was
already a well seasoned lawyer and for seven years had
practiced in Kansas. Mr. Sturgis is one of the prom-
inent men of Western Oklahoma, with recognized ability
and attainments in the law, and has made himself an
influential figure in politics and social life.

Henry J. Sturgis was born in Fayette County, Penn-
sylvania, March 5, 1862, a son of respected and sub-
stantial farming people. His early life until twenty-one
was spent on a farm, with such education as the district
schools and the neighboring academy afforded. Having
resolved to study law, he entered the law department of
the University of West Virginia at Morgantown, and
was graduated with his class in 1885. He was admitted
by examination before three circuit judges, and in 1886
came out to a comparatively new country to begin prac-
tice. His location was at Great Bend, Kansas, which
was then a frontier town.

On September 16, 1893, Mr. Sturgis made the run at
the opening of the Cherokee Strip, and arrived in Enid
by train from Hennessey. From the day of his arrival
lie made himself known as a lawyer and has been iden-
tified with a substantial general practice for many years.
A high tribute to his ability as a lawyer came when he
was nominated by the republican party as candidate for
justice of the Supreme Court in 1914.

His public service has been of varied and responsible
character. From 1903 to 1905 he served as county attor-
ney of Garfield County. He was chairman of the Repub-
lican County Central Committee in 1906' and in 1907 dur-
ing the statehood election. From 1907 to 1912 he served
as federal referee in bankruptcy. He has been a delegate
to numerous state and local conventions, and is noted as
a forceful campaigner.

Mr. Sturgis was honored by election as the first pres-
ident of the Garfield County Bar Association upon the
reorganization of that association in 1908 following state-
hood. He did much to promote the welfare and member-
ship of the organization, and continued to preside over
its meetings for two years. Each year the annual ban-
quet is held on Lincoln’s birthday. He is also a mem-
ber of the State Bar Association. For many years he
has been identified with the Benevolent and Protective
Order of Elks, and was the first exalted ruler of the lodge
at Enid, and has attended two grand conventions, one at
Los Angeles and the other at Buffalo.

At Great Bend, Kansas, in 1890 Mr. Sturgis married
Miss Lulu Luttrell, who was born in Illinois. Their one
daughter, Roqua, completed her education in St. Joseph’s
Institute at Enid.

David B. Bellis. Prominent among the retired citi-
zens of Cushing, Oklahoma, is found David B. Bellis,
who has resided in this state since the opening of the
Cherokee Strip. During the more than twenty years of
his residence here he has been interested in farming
and stock raising and kindred enterprises, and now, in
the evening of life, is resting from his labors, having
accumulated a satisfying property.

Mr. Bellis was born in Posey County, Indiana, near
the Town of Cynthiana, December 25, 1843, and is a son
of Charles H. and Mary (Benson) Bellis, natives of
Indiana, the father born July 4, 1818, and the mother
about 1827. She died about 1860, when thirty-three

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2061

years of age, and in 1863 Charles H. Beilis was again
married, being united with Jane Aleon. Two years later,
with David B. Beilis and his wife, they moved to Kansas,
and there the father was engaged in agricultural pursuits
until his death in 1885, which was caused by a fall when
he was sixty-seven years of age. Charles H. Beilis was
the father of six children: David B. ; Elizabeth, who

died as the wife of Charles Shultiee; Jane, who is the
widow of Mark Benson, of New Mexico; Euphemia,
deceased, who was the wife of Peter Gursch, deceased;
Mary, deceased, who was the wife of John Calhoun; and
William, a resident of Kansas.

David B. Beilis was educated in the district schools or
Posey County, Indiana, and grew up on the home farm,
where he was residing at the outbreak of the Civil war.
He was eighteen years of age when he enlisted in the
Union army as a private in Company B, Sixtieth Regi-
ment, Indiana Volunteer Infantry, with which organiza-
tion he served for eleven months and ten days, at the
end of that time receiving his honorable discharge on
account of disability. Returning to his home, he again
took up farming with his father, with whom he continued
operations until his marriage, October 5, 1865, to Miss
Sarah J. MeReynolds, who was born in Warrick County,
Indiana, July 18, 1847, a daughter of J. B. and Matilda
(Carnahan) MeReynolds, natives of Indiana, the former
of whom died in Kansas and the latter in California.

Shortly after his marriage Mr. Beilis and his wife
started on their wedding tour, a journey which lasted
seven weeks and five days. During this time they traveled
in a covered wagon across the country, and finally
reached their destination in Ottawa County, Kansas,
where they lived for twenty-three years. In 1868, during
the Indian raids, they moved to Missouri, but after about
four years returned to Kansas. At the time of their
arrival they found hardships and difficulties facing them.
Railroads there were none, or schools or school districts;
even ordinary highways were few and far between;
labor was to be secured at not less than $5 a day, and
even the barest necessities of life were correspondingly
high. Mrs. Beilis organized a subscription school in
their home during the latter ’60s, and soon had a class
of twenty pupils. Money was scarce at that time and
she received remuneration for her labors in various
ways, one family paying her in buffalo meat, while
another neighbor, anxious to educate her children, paid
off his debt in breaking a tract of prairie for the Beilis
family. Mr. Beilis, who devoted his time to breaking
his land and putting it under cultivation, also found
the leisure to serve as the first postmaster at Coal Creek,
Kansas, Mrs. Beilis looking after the postoffice. As the
years passed he was able to develop a good farm and
resided thereon until the opening of the Cherokee Strip,
in 1893, attracted him to Oklahoma. He first secured
a claim twelve miles south of Guthrie, on which he resided
until coming to Payne County, and four years » later
retired from active pursuits and took up his residence
at Cushing, where he now lives, one of his community’s
highly respected and substantial citizens. Mr. Beilis is
a republican in politics. The religious faith of himself
and wife is that of the Presbyterian Church, and the
only order with which he is connected is the Grand Army
of the Republic.

Mr. and Mrs. Beilis have been the parents of five
children : Mary Matilda, who is the wife of E. N. Hunt,

of Guthrie; John H., president of the Commonwealth
Cotton Oil Company, and one of the foremost business
men of Cushing, a sketch of whose career appears else-
where in this work; Etta M., for seventeen years a
teacher in the schools of Oklahoma, and now the wife
of W. L. Lormer, of Cushing; C. Oliver, who is a resident
of Klamath County, Oregon; and Alice, who was also a

teacher for several years, is the wife of L. J. Martin,
of Cushing.

Hon, Olivee C. Dale. A willingness to face hard-
ships in the working out of a well defined plan of action,
a perseverance which declined to accept defeat, a faith
in self which buoyed him up under discouragement and
disappointment, and a preparedness to grasp opportunity
when it finally presented itself, combined to place Oliver
C. Dale, now mayor of Yale and one of the leading oil
men of Oklahoma, on the high road to fortune and
position.

He and his family are now reckoned among the
wealthiest people of Oklahoma. Their wealth is not only
due to the fact that their land holdings are a part of
the great Cushing oil field, but also to'the splendid ability
with which Mr. Dale has handled the suddenly increased
responsibilities thrust upon him after the discovery of oil.
When he came to Red Fork in the Creek Nation in 1901,
he had experienced a set back in his individual fortunes
that would have terminated the efforts of one less deter-
mined in nature, but Mr. Dale would not admit failure.
He had the courage of his convictions — implicit confidence
in his own judgment. Perseveringly and along a straight
line of action he worked out his own salvation and his
career is well worthy a place among the annals of men
of Oklahoma who have lived and labored to purpose.

Oliver C. Dale was born in Jasper County, Missouri,
December 23, 1871, a son of Henry C. and Emma J.
(Barker) Dale. He belongs to a family which traces its
ancestry in America back to Sir Thomas Dale, the
founder of the family in this country, and the first
governor of Virginia. Rev. George Dale, his great-great-
grandfather, was a missionary Baptist preacher in Vir-
ginia and a man of great physique, weighing nearly 400
pounds. Elijah Dale, his great-grandfather, was born
in 1794 in Virginia, was captured by the Indians at the
battle of Tippecanoe while fighting under General Harri-
son, was subsequently exchanged and fought through the
War of 1812. When still a young man he went to Ken-
tucky and married there Frances Shelton. They went to
Boone County, Missouri, then to Jasper County, and later
to Moniteau County, where Elijah Dale died at the age
of seventy-four. His wife passed away in Jasper County
when eighty-eight years of age. They had eight chil-
dren: Alfred, Robert J., James M., Phielden, Meadley,

Mrs. Malinda Griffith, Mrs. Mary Sunday and Mrs.
Rebecca Martin.

Robert J. Dale, the grandfather of Oliver C. Dale,
was born in Kentucky in 1820 and was eighteen years
of age when he located with his parents in Jasper County,
Missouri. There he married Olive Cox, who was born in
1822 in Tennessee and was brought to Missouri by her
parents about the same time as her husband arrived.
With the exception of seven years from 1863 until 1870,
when they lived in Moniteau County, they passed the
remaining years of their lives in Jasper County and both
died at Carthage, Missouri, Robert J. at the age of
ninety and his wife when about eighty. He was a
farmer, trader and stock dealer, was clerk in the Baptist
Church for a long period and throughout his life sup-
ported the principles of the democratic party. Robert
J. and Olive Dale had seven children as follows: George
F., of Moniteau County, Missouri ; Mrs. Mary M. Hughes,
deceased; Henry C. ; Mrs. Ann F. Wise, of Carthage,
Missouri; Mrs. Permelia B. Howard of Cooper County,
Missouri; Mrs. Martha J. Johnson of Carl Junction,
Jasper County, Missouri; and Mrs. Canzada Hind,
deceased.

Henry C. Dale, father of Oliver C. Dale, was educated
in the public schools of Missouri and until reaching the
age of twenty-three resided with his parents. He then

2062

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

attended school for six mouths and for six years there-
after was occupied as an educator in the country dis-
tricts, at the end of that time turning his attention, once
more to farming, in which he was occupied for sixteen
years. Next he went to Galena, Cherokee County, Kansas,
where he followed mining for a short time and the real
estate business for two years, and then again resumed
the vocation of agriculture. He was one of the promi-
nent men of his community and served as justice of the
peace for twelve years, resigning that office when he came
to Yale, Oklahoma, February 14, 1915. He still lives at
Yale and has assisted his son Oliver in the latter’s ex-
tensive business affairs. A democrat all his life, he is a
devout member of the Missionary Baptist Church. Henry
Dale at one time owned a farm in Jasper County,
Missouri, which had been homesteaded from the Govern-
ment by a man named Hammer. Hammer sold it to
Bobert J. Dale for $500. Bobert sold it to his son
Henry for $600. Henry disposed of the land to M. L.
Beed for $1,600, who in turn received $2,200 forr it from
Tom Pete Moss. This farm has always been an object of
special association and affection in the Dale family. In
1915 Oliver C. Dale went to Missouri and bought the
land for $17,800. He now has a corps of experts en-
gaged in making a thorough test of the property, pros-
pecting for lead and zinc deposits. The property con-
tains 220 acres.

On December 11, 1870, Henry C. Dale married Miss
Emma J. Barker, who was born November 19, 1851, in
Moniteau County, Missouri, daughter of Charles L. and
Delilah (Eads) Barker. Of this union there were eight
children : Oliver C. ; Charley, who resides at Galena,

Kansas; Arthur, deceased; Mrs. Maggie Lewman and
Mrs. Canzada Jarrett, both deceased; Henry Clay, prin-
cipal of the high school at Columbus, Kansas; Gordon,
who is manager of the O. C. Dale Department Store at
Yale; and Mrs. Willa Anna Pettit, of Yale.

Oliver C. Dale received a public school education and
worked with his father on the home farm, and while
the family was living at Galena, Kansas, worked in the
mines there and at Joplin, Missouri, for about three
years. On May 6, 1896, at Galena, Kansas, he married
Miss Izora E. Miller, who was born in Luzerne County,
Pennsylvania, February 28, 1879, and at five years of age
came to Indian Territory with her parents, Charles H.
and Cevilla (Mowery) Miller. Charles H. Miller, who
was a prominent ranchman, died at the home of Mayor
Dale in 1912, while Mrs. Miller still survives and resides
on a farm in Creek County, Oklahoma. Charles Miller
was a very prominent man in the Creek Nation in the
early days. He was a quarter-blood Cherokee and was
an adopted citizen of the Creek tribe. It was his Indian
citizenship which brought to the Dale family the heritage
of land which by a happy turn of fortune have converted
his descendants into the wealthiest people in their section
of Oklahoma. In an illustrated article which was pub-
lished in the magazine section of the St. Louis Post-
Dispatch in August, 1915, something is said about Charlie
Miller and the part he played in the early days of Okla-
homa. He was one of the men who stood for law and
order in a country where lawless conditions largely pre-
vailed. He rendered special service as member of a band
of vigilantes which expelled two of the most notorious
bands of outlaws ever known in Eastern Oklahoma, one
of them being the Buck gang and the other led by
“ Narrow-Gauged Kid,” one of the most infamous cattle
rustlers in the territory. Charlie Miller himself had some
exciting battles with these marauders. Due to this and
his otherwise prominent activities he was adopted into
the Creek tribe.

After his marriage Oliver C. Dale made a trip to

the Indian country but failed to establish himself with
any degree of success and then returned to Kansas. In
1901 he came to Bed Fork in the Creek Nation, where he
helped to unload and set up the rig of- the party that
made the first oil strike in Indian Territory. Subse-
quently he came to the lands of his wife in Creek
County, nine miles southeast of Yale. Mrs. Dale and
her children had participated in the allotment of lands
in that section, she and her two daughters receiving 150
acres each. On this land Mr. Dale spent part of his
time hunting and fishing. At that time the Dale farm
was thirty miles from any railroad. He and his family
experienced all the hardships that are a part of the
life of the pioneer, and he drove on several occasions
sixty miles for the purpose of spending $2 for pro-
visions. In the Post-Dispatch article already mentioned
there is illustrated the old log house in which the Dale
family lived while on the farm. After four years he
removed from the farm to Yale in 1905, and worked for
one year in a store. Later for three years he ran an
engine in a cotton gin, which was put up originally for
the big blacksmith shop in this end of the state. Mr.
Dale in fact supported his family by work at the anvil,
and comparatively little attention was given to the family
land. Then came the great oil strike which brought
the Cushing oil field into existence. The Dale lands were
in the very center of this new oil district, and the allot-
ment of the older daughter, Yida, soon was yielding
100,000 barrels a month, while the land of her sister
Mabel developed about fourteen producing wells and was
almost equally productive.

About the beginning of the Cushing oil field Mr. Dale
gave up his work as a blacksmith and began trading in oil
leases. He proved a very shrewd trader, and in two years
built up a fortune on his own account. His oil interests
and his many other affairs now occupy his entire atten-
tion. He is identified with the Twin State Oil Company,
the Producers Oil Company, the McMann Oil Company
and the Shaffer Oil Company. In the interests of these
concerns he travels all over Oklahoma and adjoining
states. He is the owner in his own right of 700 acres
of oil land in Ada, and his holdings total 2,000 acres in
Oklahoma, D00 acres in Missouri and 1,000 acres in
Kansas. In the spring of 1915 Mr. Dale became the
owner by purchase of the O. C. Dale department store,
which is now under the management of his brother
Gordon. He has contributed materially to the upbuilding
of Yale, his latest contribution in this line being his own
residence, Fern Dale, erected in 1915 at a cost of $14,000,
This is a seventeen room house on F Street, located on
an elevation overlooking Yale and three other towns,
and is not only the costliest home in Yale but one ofi
the finest in the state. It has every modern convenience,
is finished in mahogany with white maple floors, everyi
room is hand decorated and this last item alone cost
$1,600. Mr. Dale has also erected a number of other
residences in Yale and at present owns five valuable'
homes. He is interested in the Farmers National Bankl
and in various other enterprises which contribute toi
Yale’s business importance and prestige.

A stalwart democrat in politics, in 1912 he was made a
Wilson delegate to the National Convention at Baltimore,
He was one of the original Wilson men in Oklahoma,
and has been a strong supporter of his administration
He has also had experience as a delegate to county and'
state conventions of his party, and spent six years on
the school board. He was on the board when the
district was consolidated, this being the first consolidated
district in the state.

In the spring of 1915 he was elected mayor of Yah
without opposition, and is proving himself as able ai

stalls
Beating
of ejp;
S. T.
Jr.K

wed t
partner,
sons coi

Still pj(

fos Adi

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2063

1 executive as he lias shown himself a business man. The

1 office means to him not only a distinctive honor but also

a responsibility. It is said that he has spent many

I times his salary on public improvements which he con-
siders the town should have, and is working constantly

^ for the best interests of the entire community. In fact
i the welfare of Yale has first place in his thoughts, in
s spite of the fact that his enormous business interests

II might well require his entire time. He has been one of
^ the community’s most liberal supporters of movements
“ making for religious, social, educational or civic benefit.
■? Mr. and Mrs. Dale are the parents of six children:
16 Vida May, who married Arthur I. Tull of Yale and has
13 a son named Arthur; Mabel, now about fifteen years of
°- age; and Charles Henry, Dare D., Georgia and Del Val.
^ All the younger children still reside in the magnificent
to home of their parents. The two older daughters are now
’M said to be the richest girls in Oklahoma, and on that
01 account have received much attention from the press
m and the public generally. It is an interesting fact that

wealth has left them unspoiled. Vida, the older daughter,
h did not allow her sudden wealth to interfere with the
nli continuance of her happy courtship with Arthur Tull,
k and the younger daughter Mabel has continued to be a
gM friend to her child playmates in Yale without special
® regard for the distinctions that wealth have surrounded
lotj her with.

tog

-:e[ Harky E. Alton. The Alton Mercantile Company
W; of Enid is almost in a class by itself among the whole-
sale grocery houses of the Southwest. It- is a busi-
tojg ness with more than twenty-five years of development,
iwl and has behind it a remarkable wealth of experience and
ears personal ability. ‘ ‘ The Alton Goods ’ ’ are distributed
■ests among the retail merchants all over Western Oklahoma
ton- and the City of Enid takes special pride in this mag-
nificent enterprise. The president of the corporation is
W S. T. Alton, who was formerly a traveling salesman, and
tee founded a small business at Arkansas, Kansas, during the
tong ’80s, and is now practically retired. The vice pres-
JH® ident is T. C. Smallwood, and the secretary and treasurer
esto and active manager is Harry E. Alton, a son of the
s to president.

‘ ^ The business was established at Enid in 1903 as a
stoiei branch of the main house at Oklahoma City. S. T. Alton
other engaged in the wholesale grocery business at Oklahoma
City in 1897, and that city was headquarters until 1905.
so™ In the latter year the business was concentrated at Enid,
y® and in the past ten years there has been a constant ex-
eh oa pansion. In 1905 $100,000 approximately was invested
to®: in the business. This has since been increased to an
®e o‘ aggregate of more than $250,000, including the value of
lienee, the buildings. The main building has 30,000 square feet
e®J of floor space, and an additional building containing
e cost 20,000 square feet of warehouse space, with convenient
ofter railroad connections, was erected in 1915. The trade of
tame the company extends all over Western and Southern Okla-
Baih homa, the Panhandle of Texas and Southern Kansas,
ute to There are twelve traveling representatives, who are con-
stantly on the road visiting the 1,500 or more retail eus-
oiadea tomers. About fifty persons are employed in the local
timore establishment at Enid. The growth in the ten years since
atama locating at Enid has been very satisfactory, and the limits
[ration 0f expansion are not yet in sight.
it?®1 S. T. Alton wa in the wholesale business at Arkansas
ears oi City, Kansas, from 1889, and the house which he estab-
lea ti fished there is still flourishing. He finally sold to his
ilidata partner, J. A. Ranney, who is now deceased, but whose
sons continue the business. Though Mr. S. T. Alton is
0f Tali still president and the principal owner, he has lived at
-We a Los Angeles since 1910. For fifteen years he was a
Vol. v— 20

traveling salesman representing the Chicago soap manu-
facturing house of James S. Kirk & Company, and cov-
ered the Western States. With this thorough experience
and acquaintance with the trade, he established a busi-^
ness of his own with a very modest capital at Arkansas
City. Throughout his career of residence in Oklahoma
he has been in the wholesale grocery business.

The Alton Mercantile Company, as importers, wholesale
grocers and coffee roasters, now have annual sales aggre-
gating $1,000,000. From time to time the company has
taken advantage of developing trade and transportation
conditions. When S. T. Alton moved from Arkansas City
to Oklahoma City, it was to take advantage of distribu-
tion conditions, and the same factor was prominent in
establishing the branch at Enid. At Oklahoma City the
house already had other competitors, but there was no
wholesale house at Enid. The company roasts its own
brand of coffee, and a graduate chemist from the State
University of Oklahoma is at the head of this depart-
ment. The roasting is done in the most scientific manner,
and a very superior grade -of coffee is sold as one of the
features of the Alton goods. The company also packs
grocers ’ sundries, spices, and other commodities, and this
feature is not usually found in ordinary jobbing houses.

Harry E. Alton, secretary, treasurer and general man-
ager of the company, has had the full responsibility
of management since 1910. He practically grew up
in the Arkansas City house, and the details of the
business were ground into him from the start. In 1903
he went to Enid as the active representative of the firm
in the branch house, and has filled important positions
in a progressive scale until he is now carrying the chief
responsibilities.

Mr. Alton was born in Chicago in 1880, and was edu-
cated in the public schools of Arkansas City and the
military school at Salina, Kansas. He is a clear-headed,
genial merchant, with ability to grasp the salient points
in whatever situation confronts him, has great skill as
a manager and is an aggressive worker in planning and
carrying out business campaigns. He has also made
himself a factor in good citizenship at Enid. He has
served on the city council, and has always worked to
keep Enid up to the high mark of its opportunities. He
has the faculty of co-operation highly developed, and his
business friends find him a most valuable confrere. He
is a director of the Chamber of Commerce, and the
future greatness of Enid is a subject upon which he
readily becomes eloquent. Mr. Alton serves on the vestry
of the Episcopal Church. In 1914 he married Miss
Lucile Mullett of Kansas City, Missouri.

Charles B. Swartout, president of the Oklahoma
State Bank of Cushing, has been a resident of Oklahoma
since 1889 and of his present home in Payne County
since the opening of the Sac and Fox lands. During
this long period he has been engaged in farming, in
building as a contractor and in financial enterprises, and
in each avenue of endeavor has gained a satisfying and
well-merited success. He is one of the men contributed
by the Empire State for the upbuilding of the great
commonwealth of Oklahoma, having been born at Wat-
kins, Schuyler County, New York, September 30, 1856,
and is a son of Heman C. and Sarah A. (Monroe)
Swartout.

The parents of Mr. Swartout, who passed their entire
lives in New York and died at Watkins, were agricultural
people and natives of the state, the father being born in
Yates County and the mother near Watertown, Jeffers'on
County. Of their ten children, thrpe died young and one
after reaching years of maturity, and six are still living.
Charles B. Swartout received a good common school

2064

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

education in liis youth, grew up on his father’s farm
and as a young man learned the trade of carpenter. By
the time he had reached his twenty-fourth year he was
( engaged in business as a building contractor, a vocation
’which he followed in New York until 1889, in that year
coming West to take advantage of the original opening
of Oklahoma lands. At the time he made his second run
the horse which he was riding fell, and the crowd was
so dense about him that he was unable to jump either
to the right or left, but was compelled to leap straight
over 'his horse’s head. Luckily he was uninjured, was
able to remount, and was eventually successful in securing
lots in Guthrie. In that city he made his home for two
years, and then again took part in a run for land, at the
opening of the Sac and Fox country, when he secured a
claim in the southwest one-quarter of section 3, township
17, range 5 east, on which he has resided ever since. He
has a well cultivated, valuable and productive property,
thirty acres of which is included within the corporation
limits of Cushing, while his residence adjoins the limits.
For many years, in connection with his agricultural oper-
ations, he was engaged in contracting and building, but
retired from that vocation in 1913. He was one of the
founders of the Oklahoma State Bank of Cushing, of
which he has been president for several years, a strong
and substantial institution of Payne County which has
grown and developed steadily under his capable and far-
sighted direction. Politically a democrat, he is not an
office seeker but has shown an interest in his party’s
success in Oklahoma. His progressive ideas of citizen-
ship have led him to support movements for the welfare
of his community.

In 1887 Mr. Swartout was married to Miss Edna M.
Purdy, who was born in 1867, March 6, in Shiawassee
County, Michigan, daughter of Nelson F. and Harriet N.
(Smith) Purdy, the former of whom died in Michigan,
while the latter still survives and resides at Kansas City,
Missouri. Two children have been born to Mr. and Mrs.
Swartout: Bessie, who is the wife of Henry Oursler,

who is an attorney in Cushing, and has two children —
Henry Charles and Dorothy Edna; and Annie, who is
the wife of Earl K. Odom, of Cushing.

James W. Tyler. The position of the educator was
never so valuable nor so full of intimate significance in
the life of the country as today. One of the men whose
qualifications for the heavy responsibilities of directing
the public system of education are unquestioned and who
has to a large degree realized some of the best ideals
for which the public school stands is the present county
superintendent of schools in Garfield County, James W.
Tyler. In noting the work which Mr. Tyler has accom-
plished it is clear that he is impressed with the value of
the principle that to educate the plain people for life is
more important than to educate a cultured class, and
some of the best results of his work in Garfield County
have been in the better and greater diffusion of the advan-
tages of the public schools among all the people.

This Oklahoma educator was born at Cairo in Ban-
dolph County, Missouri, July 21, 1874, and spent his life
on a farm up to the age of thirty. He attended the
country schools and also a village high school, had two
years of teaching experience when a young man, and fin-
ished his education in the Northeastern Missouri Normal
at Kirksville. Since coming to Enid he has received the
degrees A. B. and A. M. at Phillips University of that
city.

For two years following his attendance at Kirksville
Normal he was principal of the public schools at Atlanta,
Missouri. In 1901 Mr. Tyler came to Enid, and has since
been identified with the schools in that section of the
state. For two years he was in the village schools of

Fairmont, and for five years was superintendent of
Waukomis, with seven teachers under his direction, and
his work in that position was so satisfactory as to be com-
mended with an appreciable increase of salary. For the
following five years Mr. Tyler was principal of the Gar-
field Ward School at Enid, and in the fall of 1912 was
elected superintendent of the county school system, tak- j
ing up the duties of his office on July 1, 1913.

Outside of Enid there are in Garfield County 124
schools with 175 teachers, and the total scholastic en-
rolment is 9,326. In 1915 there are fourteen high schools
in the county, four having been added since Mr. Tyler
began his administration. In 1913 less than 48 per cent of !
the county’s teachers had high school or better training, !
and this percentage has now "been increased to 63.
Mr. Tyler has the rare gift of imparting his en- J
thusiasm to his subordinates and associates, and the large |
body of Garfield County teachers have enthusiastically
endorsed and adopted his educational ideas and ideals.

He has been particularly interested in securing a larger
school attendance. In 1914 900 pupils in the county re- j
ceived certificates of perfect attendance, while 1,500 had
a perfect score from three to five months. He has also
introduced a valuable feature in securing records for home
work, and this has brought about a notable increase in
the efficiency, attendance and interest on the part of
both pupils and parents. The home work which is made
a matter of record is not merely study of books, but any
task which is essentially useful and best adapted to the
needs and ability of the individual pupil. Thus the
records include such duties as housework, sewing, per-
formance of chores, etc. One backward girl pupil, men- j
tioned in particular by Mr. Tyler, had on her report card j
the record of milking eight cows twice daily. Mr. Tyler !
has organized the county schools for athletic and literary ;
work, securing a beneficent rivalry by contests. The |
county has been divided into eight districts containing j
fifteen schools each, and there are at different times con- ]
tests held between the various schools in' each district, and
the winners of the district contests meet for an annual
general exhibition, which attracts large crowds and great I
interest, and appropriate awards are given to the winners 1
in athletics, debating and other features. At the begin- |
ning some of the teachers held aloof, saying that such ]
contests were mere nonsense, but in time nearly all have
become convinced of the value of such features of school i
work. Every possible effort has been made to induce the
country pupils to advance to the high schools, with a
natural increase in high school attendance.

During 1913 124 teachers in Garfield County attended 1
the Normal Institute and eight took summer school in- |
struction. In 1914 the number who took the work of the j
Normal Institute rose to 148 while forty-one teachers took
summer school instruction. It costs about $75 to attend j
the summer schools, and in order that those availing
themselves of such instruction, probably at the cost of
much self sacrifice, might be properly rewarded, Mr. Tyler
has induced the school board to pay $5 a month above
the averages wages to teachers who have secured this I
superior training. As a result, many of the boards now
show a decided preference for the better trained and
experienced teachers. On the whole, during the past two]
or three years, the general average of wages paid to the
school teachers in Garfield County has increased between
20 and 50 per cent, and some schools are paying $25 a
month more to their teachers than in 1913. Mr. Tyler,
is also directing his efforts toward raising the standard
of school instruction by the process of consolidating small]
individual schools into one central district, and by estab-
lishing central schools that can offer a thoroughly graded

■

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2065

and organized course, including also the first year of
the regular high school work.

Mr. Tyler since beginning his work as a teacher has
been a student of educational methods and keeps himself
thoroughly abreast of educational ideas. At the present
time he is president of the State Association of County
Superintendents. In 1907 Mr. Tyler married Beulah Ben-
ton Goodding of Atlanta, Missouri. Mrs. Tyler was also
educated in the Kirksville Normal and was a teacher
before her marriage. Their two sons are Donald Jett
and Gerald Goodding. Mr. Tyler is a member of the
Christian Church, has been president of the church board
twelve years, while Mrs. Tyler is a Presbyterian.

S. B. Staton. Among the men who came to Okla-
homa at the time the Cheyenne and Arapaho lands,
consisting of 3,000,000 acres, were thrown open to white
settlement in April, 1892, is S. B. Staton, the present
postmaster of Cushing. Like many others, he was at
that time possessed of little save ambition and determina-
tion, qualities which he combined with youthful enthu-
siasm and energy to such good effect that he was able to
establish himself firmly and to lay the foundation for
what has since become a satisfying success. His activi-
ties in Oklahoma have invaded the fields of agriculture,
business and public service, and in each he has acquitted
himself commendably, so that he may lay claim to being
one of the builders of the commonwealth.

Mr. Staton was born in Dade County, Illinois, Novem-
ber 18, 1869, and is a son of John W. and Eliza (Eaton)
Staton, natives of Illinois. In the Prairie State the
parents were farming people, and on moving to Missouri
followed the pursuits of the soil, first in Dade County
and later in Worth County, in the northwestern part
of the state, where the father died in 1879, at the age
of forty-four years, the mother surviving until 1885 and
passing away in Gentry County, "Missouri, when aged
sixty-three years. There were five children in the family :
William, now a resident of Albany, Missouri; Lucy, who
is the wife of Ed Hymer, of Belle Plaine, Kansas; Pierce,
of Darlington, Missouri; Charles, ,of DeKalb, Missouri;
and S. B.

S. B. Staton was five years of age when his father died
and only sixteen when he was left an orphan by the
death of his mother. He had received a public school
education, and worked with his brother at Darlington,
Missouri, in a lumber yard and as an employe of the
postoffice during President Cleveland’s first administra-
tion. He continued to make his home with his brother,
Charles, until his marriage, in 1889, to Miss Eva M.
Garman, a native of Missouri and a daughter of Epaphras
Garman, shortly after which he came with his bride to
Oklahoma and secured a claim in Custer County. His
land at that time was sixty-five miles from the nearest
town, but the country soon began to build up, and, with
the organization of the Town of Thomas, near his prop-
erty, Mr. Staton was appointed assessor, serving in that
capacity during the first two terms of the existence of
that office. He continued to reside on his Custer County
farm until 1907, in which year he moved to Cushing,
Payne County, and here established himself in business
at the postoffiee as the proprietor of a news stand and
soda water fountain, an enterprise which he continued
with some success for two years. His next venture was
in buying cream foi- the Continental people, and he was
so engaged at the time of his appointment to the post-
mastership, May 20, 1913. He entered upon his duties
July 1st of that year and has since devoted his entire
time and attention thereto. During 4his administration
the office has advanced from a third to a second class
office and through his intelligent and energetic manage-
ment the service has been greatly improved. His un-

failing courtesy and expeditious handling of the mail has
gained him both the friendship and the confidence of
the people who have business at the postoffice, and his
conscientious labors have been generally appreciated by
business houses and individuals. Mr. Staton has been
a lifelong democrat. During a quarter of a century
he has been a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
and his fraternal connections are with the local lodges
of the Woodmen of the World and the Knights of
Pythias. Mr. and Mrs. Staton are the parents of three
daughters: Carrie, Epaphra and Levana.

Preston A. Shinn. For the past ten years Mr.
Shinn has been one of the leading members of the bar
at Pawhuska. After locating there his ability was soon
recognized in his appointment as tribal attorney for the
Osages, one of the best paid positions in the Indian
service, and his handling of the many intricate ques-
tions submitted to him in his official capacity won- many
favorable comments from the Interior Department and
from the leading members of the tribe, and this expe-
rience served to advance him to his present high stand-
ing in the Oklahoma bar. Mr. Shinn has worked to a
place of high esteem in his profession, and at the same
time has proved his usefulness and influence as a mem-
ber of the community.

It is not without due pride that Mr. Shinn refers to
that period of his early life which was marked by a
combination of hard circumstances and manual toil. For
a number of years he was a coal miner back in Illinois,
and gained his education largely through the fruits of
his labors underground. He was born at Mattoon, Illi-
nois, September 13, 1875. His parents were William
and Sarah (Cole) Shinn. His father, who died when
Preston was nine years of age, was born in North
Carolina, while the mother, who is now living at Odin,
Illinois, was born near the famous battlefield of Lookout
Mountain April 10, 1843. The parents moved to Illinois,
where the father followed farming most of his career.
There were three sons and one daughter: Frank, who

is a miner at Odin, Illinois; William, who died at the
age of' sixteen; Ina, wife of J. J. Murphy of Odin,
Illinois.

The second in age among these children, Preston A.
Shinn grew up at Odin, Illinois, and not long after the
death of his father realized that his future depended
upon his own exertions. At the age of twelve he started
working in the coal mines, and for several years spent
most of the summer season in this vocation, while he
attended school in the winter. His record as a miner
really extends from the time he was twelve years of age
until he was twenty-five. During 1899, in the last year
of his mining work, he was recording secretary of the
local union of the United Mine Workers of America at
Odin. During the many months spent by Mr. Shinn in
the hard toil of the coal mines, he was constantly in-
spired by an ambition for higher and better things, and
was utilizing all his savings to advance his education.
From his wages as a miner he paid his way through the
higher schools and law school. For one year he was a
student in law offices, and spent two years in the
Northern Illinois College of Law at Dixon. On examina-
tion before the State Bar Association of Illinois he stood
second in a class of 242 applicants, and was admitted
to practice in that state in 1901. Besides his work as a
miner Mr. Shinn -was for several years a practical rail-
roader. For four months he was conductor on a street
car in St. Louis. For two years he was train auditor on
the Wabash, with a run between Detroit and Buffalo,
and also worked for one year with the Missouri, Kansas
& Texas Bailroad.

After being admitted to the bar Mr. Shinn was in

2066

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

practice at Centralia, Illinois, one year, and in 1905
moved to Pawhuska. Here he at once identified himself
with everything that would benefit the condition of the
people and it was not long before his ability as a
lawyer brought him favorable distinction and prefer-
ment. For four years he served as assistant tribal
attorney for the Osages and for three years was tribal
attorney. He held this office under a contract with the
tribe subject to approval from the Department of the
Interior. His term expired in April, 1914, and he has
since devoted himself without interruption to his large
general practice.

In 1907 Mr. Shinn was republican candidate for the
office of county attorney. Politically he is to be classified
as an independent republican. He is also affiliated with
the Masonic Lodge and with the Modern Woodmen of
America, and is a member of the Episcopal Church.

In April, 1905, he married Miss Nellie Taplin of
Oswego, New York. Mrs. Shinn was formerly a trained
nurse and was engaged in that profession at Detroit
when she met Mr. Shinn. Without children of their own,
they are rearing in their home in Pawhuska two of
Mrs. Shinn’s brother’s children.

M. M. Callaway. As a business center Enid has
many distinctions. The fact that it has become a great
market for horses and mules ‘is largely due to the
vigorous enterprise of the firm of Callaway & Son, whose
operations have not only directed to that point the
attention of hundreds of stock raisers in Western Okla-
homa, but have also noticeably improved the quality and
general standard of horses and mules raised in that
district.

M. M. Callaway, the head of the firm, is one of the
original citizens of Enid, having come in at the opening
on September 16, 1893. He secured a homestead three
miles west of Enid, but proved up on it as soon as pos-
sible in order to concentrate his attention to the
handling of stock, a line of industry which he has
followed for forty years. For many years Mr. Callaway
was a general stock buyer and shipper in Missouri, but
transferred the headquarters of his business from there
to Wichita, Kansas, and was active at that point for
several years before the opening of the Cherokee Strip.
For the past eighteen years Mr. Callaway has concen-
trated on horses and mules. Few if any men in Okla-
homa are better known as an expert judge of horses
and a liberal dealer who recognizes that trade must
have mutual advantages to both parties concerned. In
company with his son, Ben, he has done an extensive
business, and not infrequently handled 1,500 animals
each year, with aggregate value of sales reaching more
than $400,000. Since the outbreak of the European war
all records have been broken in the horse and mule
market, and this firm has been busily engaged in
gathering, selecting and shipping hundreds of horses
and mules to be used abroad.

The operations of the firm of Callaway & Son cover
a wide area, though the bulk of the stock is purchased
within a radius of fifty miles about Enid. As already
mentioned, probably no other man has done so much to
encourage the breeding and growing of improved classes
of stock in this district. It is now acknowledged that a
superior class of both horses and mules is produced in
this section of Oklahoma. Several years ago Mr. Calla-
way erected a large and specially equipped horse barn
at an expense of $14,000. The barn at present is
occupied by the Aaron Produce Company. In addition
to his stock business Mr. Callaway has been a farmer to
such an extent as to justify his prominence in that
industry were it the only occupation which he followed.

He owns several hundred acres of land, and has made
wheat growing his specialty. In 1914 he had 350 acres
in the crop, with a yield of about thirty bushels per
acre. Thus he had about 10,000 bushels ready for mar-
ket at a time when wheat was soaring above $1 a
bushel.

M. M. Callaway was born near Springfield, Missouri,
in 1847. His parents had located in that section about
1840, his father coming from North Carolina and his
mother from Tennessee. Mr. Callaway has been a
democratic voter since early manhood, but has never
sought public distinction. His ability as a business man
and integrity as a citizen caused the people of Garfield
County to choose him as one of the county commission-
ers, in which office he served from 1904 to 1910. It was
during that period that the courthouse was erected at
a cost of $100,000. So skilfully were the county finances
managed that within four years the entire obligation
caused by this improvement was liquidated. At the same
time the tax rate, instead of being increased, was
actually lessened. While his associates on the board,
H. C. Davis and C. P. Epley, were both republicans, in
most matters the board worked in absolute harmony
and efficiency. The only important exception was Mr.
Callaway’s decided preference for locating the court-
house on the site of the old building at the north end of
the public square.

Mr. Callaway was married at Marshfield, Missouri,
where he lived during the severe cyclone which demol-
ished that town, to Elizabeth Buford. To their union
have been born a family of five children. Two daughters
live at Springfield, Missouri. The son, Charles, is operat-
ing one of the farms owned by his father, -while Ben is
associated in the horse and mule business. The daughter,
Lillie, is still at home.

for hauling goods, but the limit of capacity for his own fat

wagon was one ton.

Asa Donaldson was born at Lexington, LaGrange taeei
County, Indiana, April 21, 1846, a son of George anc carriage
Nancy (Norton) Donaldson. His father was born ii
Scotland, while the mother was a native of Connecticut
When a child George Donaldson came to America wit! Donaldso
his parents, who settled in West Virginia, but as a younj
man he went out to Northern Indiana and secured
homestead of eighty acres one mile east of the Town o
Lexington, where he lived as a farmer and blacksmith unti
about 1859. He tDen removed to Crawford County, 111:'
nois, where he was engaged in the same occupation untiftr
about 1862. Returning then to Lexington, Indiana, h

farm,

years

Asa Donaldson. It is with a comfortable sense of’
duty well performed and many responsibilities capably,
fulfilled that Asa Donaldson now enjoys the privileges
of a retired life in Cushing. When a very young man
Mr. Donaldson served in one of the concluding campaigns i
of the Union armies during the Civil war. Preliminary
to his introduction to Oklahoma he lived in Kansas and
had his share of the early struggles that were the loti
of the early farmers in that state. He became a pioneer:
of the Sac and Fox country at its opening, and has been:
identified with this section ever since.

In the early days of Cushing before railroads had
been constructed, Mr. Donaldson did a great deal of
business as a freighter. For eight years he hauled goods
back and forth across the country between Cushing and
Sapulpa and Cushing and Guthrie. Those larger cities
were the nearest railroad points, and it was forty-five
miles to either place. The roads were little better than of thirl
prairie trails, there were no bridges across the streams,
and Mr. Donaldson usually spent from four to six days
raking a round trip. He was paid 40 cents a hundred

estsoi
his fit
Mr.
eight ;
He is
theMa
The:
carried
the fat]
at the :

with th.

losllillf,

bounty;

Goldie.

John ;

'Jack”

HISTORY OP OKLAHOMA

2067

remained there until his death, when about seventy
years of age. The mother died in Crawford County,
Illinois, when ninety-two years of age.

There were nine children altogether in the family and
only three are now living. Asa 's older brother, Charles,
two years his senior, enlisted in the Ninth Michigan
Cavalry early in the Civil war and was accidentally killed
while returning home in June, 1865, after having passed
safely through the various campaigns under General
Sherman. Asa Donaldson was about fourteen years' of
when the war broke out, and his early life was spent
on a farm in Northern Indiana, with such advantages
as the common schools of that district afforded. On
August 9, 1864, he likewise enlisted for service in the
Union army, and at Sturgis, Michigan, went out with
the Ninth Michigan Infantry. He served until the close
of the war, and was in the army commanded by General
Thomas. On returning home to LaGrange County, Indi-
ana, he was married a little later, on July 1, 1866, to
Miss Lavina Culler. She was born near Canton in Stark
County, Ohio, in April, 1847, lost her father when she
was one year of age, and at the age of eleven came to
Kosciusko County, Indiana, with her widowed mother.

After his marriage Mr. Donaldson lived on a farm in
LaGrange County, Indiana, for a number of years, but
finally moved west and identified himself with the pioneer
district of Harvey County, Kansas. He was a farmer
there for six years, and then at the opening of the Sac
and Fox Reservation made his entry into Oklahoma. Up
to that time he had not greatly prospered, and it adds
to the interest of his present standing as a business man
to note that he came into Oklahoma driving two teams
and two cows, and without a pair of shoes to cover his
own feet. He secured a claim three miles north of Cushing,
and that was the scene of his industrious endeavors for
a number of years. He cleared up the land, developed
a good homestead, and lived there until 1909, at which
time he moved into the Town of Cushing and sold his
ably farm. He then spent six months in touring the Pacific
leges Coast, and returning to Oklahoma bought a tract of forty
man acres half a mile south of Cushing, and has since intro-
aigni luced many improvements in that little farm. For six
years he has been a resident of Cushing, and for two
years was in the furniture business, but now has no inter -
jsts outside of his private affairs and the management of
onee lis city property.

Mr. Donaldson is a republican in politics, and for
ight years held the position of justice of the peace,
kjple is a member of the Grand Army of the Republic,
he Masonic Order, and belongs to the Christian Church.
The active responsibilities and burdens of life are now
an iarried forward by his children. Mr. Donaldson became
citis ;he father of six. The oldest, Charles, died in Kansas
trffl it the age of twenty-one. Orsena, who died at the age
tliai >f thirty, married Frank Faulls. Maude married Leon
earns High, and she died at the age of twenty-nine, leaving two
_ day ons, William Ray and Lawrence, who are now living
uiijrei vith their grandfather, Mr. Donaldson, and with their
his iwn father, who is proprietor of a grocery store at
rushing. George, the fourth child, died at the age of
ourteen. Arbie is a farmer near Cushing, and by his
“"jl larriage to Etta Cotterman has the following children:
" j| rwin ; Floyd, deceased ; Edna ; Lloyd ; Fern ; Truman ;
iecfelj ,nd one that died in infancy. The youngest of Mr.
j ,vjti Donaldson ’s children is William, a farmer in Payne
TClW! lounty ; he married Hattie Brooks, and their children
(1^e(] re Bessie, Leland, Lavina, Henry (deceased), Ora and

rownoPoHie.

ittunb

Hi John N. Innis. There is probably no better known
,jnti r more picturesque figure in Western Oklahoma than
Jack” Innis, now settled down to the routine of busi-

ness affairs as manager of the York-Key Lumber Com-
pany of Supply. The varied incidents and exciting
scenes of the frontier are indelibly impressed as pictures
upon Mr. Innis ’ mind, since he was in this country nearly
thirty years ago, followed the range and trail over No
Man’s Land for several years, was connected with the
Government service in the different forts of Western
Oklahoma, particularly at Fort Supply, and was at the
founding of the modern Town of Supply and gave the
community one of its first stores.

As his family were pioneers before him, and moved
successively to different points as civilization advanced
toward the West, he was well fitted by birth and environ-
ment for the accomplishments of his own career. John
N. Innis was born in a log cabin in Ripley County,
Indiana, September 1, 1863, a son of James Innis.
There is another member of the family well known in
Western Oklahoma, Joseph A. Innis, also a son of
James, and a more particular sketch of the earlier
generations will be found under the former name. John
N. Innis when three years of age was taken by his
parents to Bates County, Missouri, grew up there on a
farm and a sufficient amount of education was given
him for all practical purposes in the public schools of
that section of Missouri.

He was twenty-three years of age when in 1886 he
came into Old Indian Territory. It was three years
before the first great opening of the Indian lands was
made, and his first adventures were as a cowboy on
the cattle ranch of Col. C. W. Peary in No Man’s Land,
as it was then designated in the school geography, and
perhaps better known to the present generation as the
Oklahoma Panhandle. He followed the trail in that
country for four years, and in that time became
acquainted with nearly all the picturesque characters,
both whites and Indians, who inhabited the extreme
western part of Oklahoma. In 1891 he entered the
employ of the United States army as a teamster in the
quartermaster’s department. The headquarters were at
Fort Supply, and he is one of the few men who have
witnessed the transformation of that noted old military
post into a modern city. Subsequently he was corral
boss, and worked in that capacity both at Fort Supply
and at Fort Sill altogether for four years. Still later
he proved up on a claim in Harper County, Oklahoma,
but when the new Town of Supply was founded in 1901
he established there the first general store. He con-
ducted that successfully and sold goods to all his old
friends in that vicinity and to hundreds of the new
settlers. When he disposed of his mercantile stock in
1905 he accepted the post of manager for the York-Key
Lumber Company at Supply, and has contributed not a
little to the business of this large lumber corporation in
Oklahoma. At the same time he has made himself a
factor in local improvements, is one of the stanchest'
friends of Supply as a town, and prospective city, and!
he can always be depended upon for an intelligent and
enlightened interest in its welfare. Fraternally Mr.
Innis is affiliated with the Modern Woodmen of America.

At Woodward, Oklahoma, December 27, 1897, he mar-
ried Miss Margaret Valker. She was born at old Fort
Supply, Indian Territory, December 1, 1874, a daughter
of Philip V alkeff, who was at that time serving as an
enlisted soldier in the United States army. Her mother,
now Mrs. L. Mason, came to Fort Supply with her
parents in 1868 at the time the fort was established.
Mrs. Innis was educated in a Catholic school at Purcell,
Indian Territory. To their marriage were born seven
children, four sons and three daughters: John P., born

January 31, 1899; Robert Vinton, born February 20,
1901, and died March 30, 1901 ; Joseph Everett, born

2068

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

July 19, 1903; Archie Ward, born September 28, 1905;
Josephine May, born May 20, 1907; Bessie, born Decem-
ber 30, 1910; and Mary Ellen, born February 19, 1912.

Col. Oliver R. Lilley. Always will there be a glamor
of romance about those interesting adventurers who
participated in the first opening of the Oklahoma lands.
Few men took part in more of these openings and
endured more of the inconveniences and hardships con-
nected therewith than Col. Oliver R. Lilley, who for a
number of years has been a prominent citizen of Cushing
in Payne County. Colonel Lilley has seen a great deal
of western life during his career, has been in most of
the states west of the Mississippi River, and has been
hardy, fearless, enterprising and a ready fighter for any
cause he believed to be just and right. While he has
been identified with other affairs, Colonel Lilley is
perhaps best known among most people as an auctioneer,
a profession he has followed since early youth.

Born in Whiteside County, Illinois, November 23,
1861, he was taken in the same fall out to Kansas by his
parents, Joseph John and Anna (Cross) Lilley, who were
pioneers in Kansas at the beginning of the Civil war.
His father, who was born in Pennsylvania, died in 1880
at the age of fifty on his old homestead in Riley County,
Kansas, twenty miles north of Manhattan. He had
located on that home in the fall of 1861. By occupation
he was a farmer and stock raiser. The mother was born
in West Virginia, and is now living at the old home in
Kansas at the age of eighty-six. She became the mother
of four sons and one daughter, and the father had
children by a previous marriage.

TJp to the age of ten Oliver R. Lilley lived at home
and the next six years were spent in the same locality of
Kansas, until the spirit of adventure led him entirely
away from home surroundings and out to California. He
spent 3% years in that state, earning his way at any
employment which he could secure. He did his first
work as an auctioneer at the age of eighteen, and has
since officiated at sales and has sold all manner of goods,
live stock, household possessions, land and other property,
and his operations have been carried on in Kansas,
Missouri, Texas and elsewhere.

Colonel Lilley arrived in Oklahoma June 22, 1890.
After that he took part in all the important land open-
ings. At some of these openings he has paid as high
as 10 cents a glass for drinking water. He lay for
hours at a time in the thick dust along the line which
marked the limit of the land for which thousands were
striving to gain possession. At the opening of the Sac
and Fox Reservation he had a fortunate number, No.
370, secured a claim, and lived there and developed it for
fifteen years. For several years he lived at Ripley, and
his home has been at Cushing since 1907. Here he has
spent most of his time a3 an auctioneer.

Colonel Lilley is credited with many public spirited
movements and enterprises in Payne County. He built
and still owns the Lilley Hotel, a thirty-nine-room modern
hostelry, and managed it himself for three years, and
has since leased it. He also has other real estate in
Cushing. Up to 1912 he was a republican, and has since
been identified with the progressive policies. Colonel
Lilley was for two years mayor at Cushing during the
great boom following the discoveries of the oil fields.
At that time the town was unable to provide accommoda-
tions for the hosts of people who flocked to this center,
and hundreds of persons lived in tents. Colonel Lilley
has always stood for a clean town, has lead the fight
against the illegal liquor traffic, and has done much to
keep that element of danger out of the local life. For
twenty years he has been a member of the Christian
Church, is affiliated with the Scottish Rite Consistory

of Masonry at Guthrie, and with the Temple of the
Mystic Shrine at Oklahoma City. He also belongs to
the Eastern Star, the Knights and Ladies of Security,
and many other fraternal orders.

On September 22, 1889, Colonel Lilley married Miss
Emma A. Hetherington. She was born at Racine, New-
ton County, Missouri, February 16, 1872, and died at
Stillwater, Oklahoma, April 3, 1915. Their four children,
all born in Oklahoma, are named Lenna A., Jessie O.,
John H. and Oliver L.

Chief James Bigheart. Of all the characters in the
history of the Osage tribe undoubtedly the greatest, so
far as individual influence and foreefulness in politics
and all economic measures affecting the tribe are con-
cerned, was the late Chief James Bigheart, who died in I
October, 1908.

At the time of his death he was eighty-two years old.
He was a fullblood Osage Indian, and it is conceded that
he was the brainiest member of that tribe during the
last century and was one of the keenest and shrewdest ■
Indians ever known.

He had a long and active career. When a young man
he served in the Union army during the Civil war and
for many years his name was on the pension list. During
the greater part of his lifetime Indian lands were held
in common, and it was rather as a worker and a handler
in cattle and other transactions that he gained his
fortune. Until a few years before his death he was
regarded as the richest man in the wealthiest tribe of
Indians in the country.

It was due to many other things besides his extensive ;
possessions of land that his name formed so important a i
feature of Osage life. The flourishing Town of Bigheart
is only a small but significant tribute to his life and i
career.

He held nearly every office among the Osages, includ-
ing the position as chieftain, and it is said that he
was the most respected and the most dreaded man in.
the tribe. Though many honors were given him, he >
showed no tendency toward pompous display. He wore
ordinary clothes, was quiet and thoughtful in appearance,
and spoke fluently both the English and Osage languages.,
His name is destined to be long remembered as thatu
of a great man and one whose life was devoted to whatt
he believed the best interests of the fullblood Indian.

It is said that for many years he had more influence* |
in the Interior Department than any other living Indian.!
For fully twenty years he was a controlling factor ini
his tribe, and his word was practically law among thei
fullbloods. About two years before his death he was
stricken with paralysis but up to that time the affairs!
of the tribe were largely a reflex of his action and'
influence. He was constantly consulted and the tribei
would practically refuse to act on any important matter
until his advice could be obtained. In 1896 Chief Big-;
heart advocated the investigation of the citizenship!
rolls, and though defeated at first he persistently andi
doggedly kept up the work until a second investigation!
was ordered by Congress. He was bitterly opposed tc
the allotment of the Osage lands, and many say that
he delayed that event for at least ten years. No doubt
his dominant characteristic was an unflinching courage
and a determination that knew no defeat. When h(i
undertook anything, he persisted in it until it wa!i|
finished to his satisfaction. While many of the definite
details of Chief Bigheart ’s career can not be obtained
it is only proper that the history of Oklahoma should
give at least this brief character sketch of one of thi
foremost among its fullblooded Indian citizens.

Chief Bigheart married Alice McIntosh, a Cheroke*
Indian, and of a prominent old family of Oklahoma

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2069

To Mr. and Mrs. Biglieart were born seven children.
Four of them are still living. The daughter Mary mar-
ried Tom Clendenning, and they have two sons named
James and Jack. Rosa married Sherman Heal, and
became the mother of five children named Francis,
Oliva, Julia, Roselay and Josephine. Lillian married
W. C. Spurrier, referred to, on other pages of this work.
Isabel lives at home with her mother.

On February 26, 1910, Mrs. Chief Bigheart, who is
still living, married Mr. J. C. McGraw. Mrs. McGraw
was married both times very close to the locality where
she was born. She is a woman of unusual intelligence
and ability, and her character is well reflected in the
lives of her children. Mr. McGraw is one of the leading
citizens of the Town of Bigheart, has prospered as a
cattle man and farmer, and is filling a place of useful-
ness and honor in the Osage country. Mr. and Mrs.
McGraw are the parents of three children: Blanche,

Leo and Sylvester.

Chris E. Herschberger. There is a reason for Mr.
Herschberger ’s successful work as an editor and news-
paper owner, being proprietor of The Supply Republi-
can at Supply, and there is also ground to expect much
from him in the future, judged by what he has done
in the past. Mr. Herschberger educated himself, has
been a worker ever since early boyhood, and has found
in teaching, printing and publishing congenial tasks
which have furnished a solid foundation upon which
to rear a superstructure of important accomplishment.
Born May 23, 1888, on the farm in McPherson County,
Kansas, he is a son of Moses C. and Mary (Bontrager)
Herschberger. Originally the family was undoubtedly
German, but several generations or more of the Hersch-
bergers have lived in America. Moses C. Herschberger
was born in the State of Indiana October 17, 1860, while
his parents before him were natives of Ohio. Farming
has always been his vocation since he reached mature
years, and in 1881 he ventured into what was then an
unproved country, Kansas, buying land in McPherson
County. That was his home until 1889, after which he
spent three years in the State of Missouri, but then re-
turned to Kansas. In 1899 the family came to Oklahoma,
locating on a farm near Jet in Alfalfa County until 1906.
Moses C. Herschberger is now in the grain business at
Blackwell. He and his wife were married at McPherson
in 1882, and the latter was a daughter of John C. and
Elizabeth (Miller) Bontrager, who were natives of Penn-
sylvania. She was born October 21, 1864, in Holmes
County, Ohio. They are the parents of six children,
three “sons and three daughters, namely: John Carl,

born March 28, 1886; Chris Earl; Clarence Austin,
born June 25, 1891; Mabel E., born September 24,
1893; Susana Grace, born July 21, 1896; and Alta Mae,
born August 20, 1901.

When Chris E. Herschberger came to Oklahoma with
his parents in 1899 he was only eleven years of age. In
the meantime he had profited by such opportunities as
were afforded him to attend the public schools of south-
ern Kansas. After coming to Oklahoma he worked three
years in a general store at Jet. Then in 1902 began his
experience as a printer’s apprentice in the office of
TJ. Finch. He learned the printing trade, and developed
no little talent for artistic job work and also a tendency
to the broader field of newspaper work. During 1906-07,
in order to remedy some of the deficiencies of his early
education, he attended the Woods County High School
and during 1907-08 was a student in Goshen College at
Goshen, Indiana, where he took the business course.
Then with the equivalent of a substantial education, he
took the post of editor of the Jet Visitor for two years,

but in 1911 bought the fort Supply Republican at Supply,
Oklahoma, and has been identified with the progress and
success of that journal ever since. He conducts an
excellent paper, bright, newsy, a good medium for local
advertising, and a vigorous supporter of all public im-
provements. Mr. Herschberger is popular as a citizen
and in 1915 was elected city clerk at Supply. In the
spring of 1916 he was also selected as chairman of the
Executive Committee, having charge of the Tri-County
Farm Products Exhibit, which has done much during
the past few years in encouraging the farmers of
Harper, Ellis and Woodward counties in producing bet-
ter live stock, more and better crops, etc.

On September 22, 1909, about the time he moved to
Supply he was married at Cherokee, Oklahoma, to Miss
Rhea McDaniel, daughter of George W. and Rachel
McDaniel, who were natives of Indiana. Mrs. Hersch-
berger was born May 4, 1889, at Anthony, Kansas, and
gained her education in Oklahoma, where she attended
the Northwestern Normal at Alva, and prior to her
marriage spent two years as teacher in Alfalfa County.
To their union have been born two children: Max C.,

born July 4, 1910; and George Glenn, born April 5,
1913. Mr. and Mrs. Herschberger are members of the
Christian Church.

Charles Edwin Foy. A service record which will
always make his life one of interest and esteem to his
family and descendants was that portion of his early
manhood which Charles E. Foy spent as a soldier in the
Civil war. Since then, for a period of more than a half
century, he has been successively identified with farming
enterprise in various states, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and
Oklahoma. Mr. Foy, as a result of good business man-
agement and long continued industry, is now comfortably
situated, owns both farm and city property, and is living
retired at Cushing.

Born on a farm in Hancock County, Illinois, January
28, 1844, he is a son of George and Nancy (Jones)
Foy. His father was born in New York State and his
mother in Kentucky. George Foy at the age of eighteen
came west to Illinois, was married in Hancock County,
and two years after the birth of his son, Charles E.,
moved to Whiteside County. He lived there nearly all
the rest of his life, and finally went to Missouri, where
he died shortly afterwards on April 10, 1896, at the age
of seventy-seven. His wife passed away in Whiteside
County, Illinois, in 1899, aged seventy-seven. George
Foy was a farmer all his active career, exercised unusual
thrift and intelligence in the management of his affairs,
and came to be regarded as one of the most prosperous
citizens of Whiteside County. He was a great reader
of current literature, always kept himself informed on
public affairs, was a republican voter and a member
of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In the family of
eleven children Charles E. was the oldest, four of the
children died very young, and the others are briefly
mentioned as follows : Mary, wife of George Klock

of Bureau County, Illinois; Augusta, wife of Hubert
Bonker of Denver, Colorado; Elmira, deceased wife of
Edward Forward; Wilber, deceased; Edgar, deceased,
who was a physician; and Freeman, who lives in Bureau
County, Illinois.

The early life of Charles E. Foy1 was spent on a farm
in Illinois, and he gained such education as the local
schools had to bestow. When he was about nineteen
years of age, on January 1, 1863, he enlisted in Whiteside
County and went out with the Union army as a member
of Company B in the Thirty-fourth Illinois Infantry.
His service continued until the close of the war. He was
with Sherman in the Atlanta campaign, on the march

2070

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

to the sea, in the campaign through the Carolinas, and
finally took part in the glorious review of the victorious
troops at Washington. While at Atlanta he suffered a
flesh wound in the left leg as a result of an exploding
shell, and was in the hospital two weeks. While on a
foraging expedition in North Carolina he was captured,
but was held a prisoner only about three hours until
the Union cavalry came to his rescue and released him.

After the war Mr. Foy lived in Whiteside County ou
the old farm for a year. In 1866 he married Miss
Adelia Arnold, who was born in Illinois and died in
Nebraska in 1890. For several years after his marriage
Mr. Foy followed farming in his native state, and in
1874 settled near Hastings in Adams County, Nebraska.
He secured a homestead there and practically all the
country was undeveloped, and most of the people lived
in sod houses and had to fight all the plagues which
assailed agricultural efforts in Nebraska during those
years, including grasshoppers and many successive
droughts. He continued a Nebraska farmer until the
death of his wife, and then lived for a time in Kansas
City, Missouri. The year following the opening of the
Sac and Fox Reservation he came to Oklahoma and
bought a quarter of section of land six miles west of
Cushing. He developed a farm out of what had been
for centuries a wilderness, and was quietly and indus-
triously occupied with the farming interests there until
he sold out in 1905. His next purchase was a farm
two miles south of Drumright. Three years later he
retired to Cushing, but still owns the farm of 160 acres
near Drumright. Mr. Foy also has fourteen lots on East
Broadway in Cushing, and has part of this developed,
owning three residences. At the present time his farm,
which is situated in the oil belt, is leased for productive
operation. Politically he is a republican and has an
honored membership in the Grand Army of the Republic.

By his first marriage there were six children, two of
these died in infancy and the four still living are:
Charles Edmund, who lives in Seattle, Washington;
Arthur Elberton, also of Seattle; George, of Seattle;
and Edgar, whose home is in Logan County, Colorado.
In 1895 Mr. Foy married for his second wife at Guthrie,
Oklahoma, Mrs. Anna. (Kilmer) Parker. She was born
in Van Buren County, Iowa, a daughter of Chandler
Kilmer, and her first husband was Thomas Parker. Mr.
and Mrs. Foy have one child, Hazel Fern, who is the
wife of Luther Toalson of Cushing, and by this union
Mr. Foy has a grandchild, Marlin Lueile.

Benjaman Elliott Adams Je. Now proprietor and
editor of the Okeene Leader, Mr. Adams is an Oklahoma
pioneer by virtue of the fact that he came with the
family to this territory as early as 1892. His trade and
profession as printer and newspaper man were learned
in Kansas, and while most of his active career has been
spent in that line of work, he has also been identified
with local affairs and business interests, and is a former
postmaster of Okeene. The Okeene Leader is now one
of the most influential newspapers in Blaine County, has
a large circulation both in that and in Major and neigh-
boring counties. Mr. Adams owns the plant, which is
situated on Fifth Street near Main Street. The Leader
was established July 12, 1906, as a democratic paper,
but under Mr. Adams’ management reflects republican
sentiments.

Born at Grafton, Chautauqua County, Kansas, Decem-
ber 16, 1874, Benjaman Elliott Adams Jr. is a son of
Benjaman Elliott Adams Sr., who carries in his veins
a mixture of both English and Cherokee Indian stock.
The original Burns of the Adams family came to Vir-
ginia from England in Colonial times. The senior Mr.
Adams was born in Johnson County, Missouri, in 1846,

and now lives on a ranch in Ellis County, Oklahoma, with
his son Edgar A. He was one of the men who helped
to develop the rich land of Chautauqua County, Kansas,
for agricultural purposes, having removed to that section
in 1870 from Missouri. In 1880 he went to Sedan,
Kansas, and served as undersheriff for twelve years. In
1892 he came to Blaine County, Oklahoma, and made the
run at the opening of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe reser-
vation, obtaining a homestead of one hundred and sixty
acres two miles south of Watonga. He lived on that
place and developed it as a fine farm for ten years, and
on selling out went to Ellis County, where he is still
living. He is a member of the Masonic fraternity. The
senior Mr. Adams married Miss Hattie Narron, who is
of German stock. Their children are: Oliver J., who

died in Artesia, New Mexico, in February, 1915, at the
age of forty -five; Benjaman E. Jr.; Edgar Allen, who
is a rancher in Ellis County, Oklahoma; Maude, wife
of D. D. DeLaney, who is assistant cashier of the First
National Bank of Taloga, Oklahoma; Otto, an electrician
living at Whittier, California.

Benjaman E. Adams Jr. spent all his early youth in
Kansas, completing a high school education at Sedan.
On leaving school in 1890 he spent two years in learning
the printing trade in the office of the Sedan Republican,
which at that time was under the editorial management
of former Governor T. B. Ferguson. In 1892 he came
with his father to Blaine County, and for several years
handled a plow and other implements in subduing the
virgin soil of his father’s homestead claim. He then
allied himself again with T. B. Ferguson on the Watonga
Republican, and continued that work off and on until
1900. Then going to Homestead, Oklahoma, he took
charge of the Homestead News for W. W. Waterman,
and in 1901 bought the paper and it was continued under
his effective editorial control until the spring of 1907.
Selling out he then removed to Okeene, and had charge
of the Okeene Eagle during the statehood campaign.
For several years after that Mr. Adams was not actively
identified with newspaper work. For two years he was
a director and assistant cashier of the Farmers and
Merchants Bank of Okeene, and in 1910 President Taft
appointed him postmaster, an office to which he devoted
his time and attention until August 25, 1914. In April,
1915, he bought the Okeene Leader, and is making that
one of the very successful newspapers in his district.

Politically Mr. Adams is a republican, and for three
years served as trustee of Homestead Township and for
two years was constable of Watonga Township. He is
affiliated with Homestead Lodge No. 224, Ancient Free
and Accepted Masons, and with the Brotherhood of
American Yeomen at Okeene. On December 25, Christ-
mas Day, 1900, in Watonga, he married Miss Anna
Marie Howry. Her father, J. C. Howry, lives on a farm
southwest of Watonga, where he homesteaded in 1892.
To their marriage have been born three children: Lueile
Frances, born in September 1904; Robert Howry, born
in February, 1906; and Marguerite, born in February,
1913.

John P. Hickam. One of the strong, resourceful,
versatile and loyal citizens whose influence has been
potent in connection with governmental and general
civic affairs in Oklahoma since the early territorial era
in the history of this commonwealth and whose high
ideals and downright sincerity have made him a leader
in the furtherance of the interests of the people of the
state of his adoption, is the honored member of the bar
whose name introduces this paragraph. Mr. Hickam has
been engaged in the practice of his profession at Still-
water, judicial center of Payne County, since the spring
of 1897, and is one of the representative pioneer members

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2071

reefulj

of the bar of this section of the state. He has been a
recognized leader in political activities in Oklahoma, and
that he has been one of the foremost figures in the ranks
of the progressive party in this state needs no further
voucher than the statement that in the election of 1914
he was the progressive party ’s candidate for the office of
governor of Oklahoma. Who knows the man can not fail
to have lively appreciation of his ability, his unfaltering
integrity of purpose, his admirable equipment for leader-
ship in sentiment and action, and his invincible courage '
in upholding the rights and interests of the people as
against the domination of capitalistic and corrupt politi-
cal forces.

It is but consistent that in a preliminary way be
given an outline of the political activities and public
service of Mr. Hickam within the period of his residence
in Oklahoma, and such a resume is afforded in the fol-
lowing quotations from an article published at the time
when he was in the midst of his campaign for governor
of the state, in 1914:

“In 1902 Mr. Hickam was elected to the Territorial
Senate, from the Payne-Pawnee district. He was re-
nominated for the Senate in 1904 and after one of the
bitterest fights ever waged against any candidate in
Oklahoma by the old Territorial carpet-bag, stand-pat
bunch of Federal officeholders, his majority was four
times what it was in 1902. A prominent citizen of his
own county said a short time ago: ‘Hickam has no

enemies in this county except those he has made in
fighting crooked polities and machine politicians, and we
love him for the enemies he has made.’

Hickam is in tune with the times. He has kept step
with the rapid march of human progress. He believes
that political platforms are made for fulfilment instead
of to eateh votes. In that way he is distinguished from
scheming politicians who are brokers in offices. He be-
lieves that the Progressive party must remain firm to its
principles and hold above all else its opportunity for
patriotic service, must hold itself unfettered for the
service of the great mass of the people who are looking
to it for all that is best and fairest and greatest in the
political and governmental activities. He believes that,
politically, evasion and indecision are at an end and
that the Progressive party has made its choice. The
making of that choice was no slight matter. It is no
child’s play to defy the power of entrenched party
machines drawn by the lure of Federal and State offices
whose victims will do the bidding of their masters.

Hickam made the first fight ever made against lobby-
ists west of the Mississippi river. In his speech in the
senate defying the lobbyists he said: ‘Why all this

delay, Mr. President, over the important legislation now
pending? Bills are held up in committees until it is
too late to pass matters of great interest to the people.
The fact is that the capital since the first day we met
has been full of lobbyists — a set of grafters, sir, who
have tried in every way to defeat honest legislation in
this body. These parasites have flocked about this cham-
ber like buzzards over a carcass.’ After Hickam had
nade this fight the Kansas City Star, in reviewing the
conditions around the Oklahoma Legislature, said :
Several members of the lobby lost their nerve yesterday
and could not be found when the senate sergeant-at-
arms went after them. Some are thought to have gone
;o Texas and others to Kansas. Their whereabouts are
unknown and requisitions will be required to bring them
aack if they can be located.’

“The Stillwater Advance, in speaking of Hickam ’s
fight at that time, said: ‘Hickam stands stalwart,

olossal, contending for the rights and interests of the
jreat common people — the farmer, the small cattle-
aiser, the honest business man, as against the com-

bined and powerful interests of the great cattle kings,
the railroads, the oil mills, who have kept the cloak-rooms
and hotel lobbies filled with the shrewdest and smartest
men available to defeat good legislation. But Hickam
has proved equal to the occasion and has denounced the
lobbyists in unmeasured terms. He has earned the
eternal gratitude and the confidence of the people in
the splendid and able fight he has made in their behalf
and for their interests. Senator Hickam is an able and
strong man in every way. His fight against the lobby-
ists demonstrates the fact that he is unquestionably the
strongest member of the Senate.’

‘ ‘ At the close of Mr. Hickam ’s second term in the
Territorial Senate the Stillwater Gazette had this to say:
‘Senator Hickam returns to his constituency — the people
of Payne and Pawnee counties — with a consciousness
that his labors fulfilled the promises he made to the
people in his last campaign, that he would at all times
care for their interests and fight the corrupt lobbyists,
which he did as far as human power could do. He never
missed a roll call, was ready to throw harpoon into all
kinds of corrupt legislation. For a fearless legislator
he had not a peer in the Senate, and he comes home with
a clean page and can frankly say, “I did all I could for
the interests of my people at home and in the Territory
at large.”

In view of the statements quoted above it may well
be understood that Mr. Hickam was recognized as the
most available candidate to be put forth by the progres-
sive party for the office of governor of Oklahoma, and
though he made a characteristically vigorous and effective
campaign and made a powerful impression upon the
people of all sections of the state, he encountered the
adverse political exigencies that compassed his defeat,
though this defeat was not lacking in the better elements
of victory.

John P. Hickam was born in Madison County, North
Carolina, on the 2d of December, 1870, and is a son of
Robert B. and Jane (Plemmens) Hickam, both of whom
were born in the year 1844, the father having been a
native of Virginia and the mother having been born in
North Carolina, where their marriage was solemnized.
Robert B. Hickam was a youth when he accompanied
his parents on their removal from Virginia to North
Carolina, in the ’50s, and there he was reared to man-
hood. When the Civil war was precipitated on the
nation Robert B. Hickam enlisted in the Second North
Carolina Infantry, in the Confederate service, and with
this gallant command he continued in service during
virtually the entire period of the war. He participated
in many engagements, including a number of important
battles, and made a record for able and gallant service.
His father, Jacob Hickam, who was a native of Virginia
and who attained to the patriarchal age of ninety-seven
years, was an old-line whig in politics and was vigorously
opposed to the secession of the Southern States, so that
his sympathies were with the Union when the Civil war
became imminent. His sons, however, were loyal to the
institutions and cause of the South and tendered their
aid in defense of the Confederacy, though John, the
elder of the two sons, had first decided to enlist in the
Union army, but was deflected from this course largely
on account of his kinsmen in appreciable number having
enlisted in the Confederate ranks. Both sons served until
the close of the war, and upon their return to the parental
home the most amicable relations again obtained, the
venerable father offering no criticism of the course of
his sons and both of the latter having remained on their
respective portions of the old homestead estate for
nearly a quarter of a century after the war.

In 1885, when the subject of this review was a lad
of eleven years, he accompanied his parents on their

2072

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

removal from North Carolina to Sevier County, Tennes-
see, and there his father passed the residue of his long
and worthy life, his active career having been one of
close identification with the basic industry of agriculture
and his death having occurred on his homestead farm in
Sevier County in 1914, his widow still remaining with
one of her sons on the old home place, which is endeared
to her by the memories and associations of many years.
Robert B Ilickam achieved independence and definite
prosperity through his operations as a farmer and was
a man of strong mentality and inviolable integrity, lie
having held the office of deacon in the Baptist Church
for fifty-five years prior to liis death, and his widow
likewise having been for many years a devoted adherent
of the same religious organization. He was a stanch
supporter of the cause of the republican party, but never
sought or held political office. His great-grandfather,
Jacob Hickam, was a native of Ireland and came to
America in the colonial days, as indicated by the fact
that he was enrolled as a patriot soldier in the Con-
tinental line in the war of the Revolution. Richard
Hickam, grandfather of Robert B., was born and reared
in Virginia, became a prosperous planter in that' state
and attained to the remarkable age of one hundred and
four years. The father of Robert B. Hickam was a
gallant soldier in the Mexican war, and from the brief
data here given it may well be seen that the history of
the family in America has been one of interesting order,
typifying loyal and worthy citizenship as one generation
has followed another on to the stage of life ’s activities.

John P. Hickam was the fifth in order of birth in a
family of eleven children, eight of whom are living, and
he acquired his rudimentary education in North Carolina.
As previously noted, he was eleven years of age at the
time of the family removal to Sevier County, Tennessee,
where he was reared to maturity under the invigorating
discipline of the home farm and where he made good
use of the advantages afforded in the public schools, as
shown by the fact that when seventeen years of age he
proved himself eligible for pedagogic honors, three years
having been given by him. to successful work as a teacher
in the schools of Tennessee. Thereafter he completed a.
four years’ course in Carson & Newman College, at
Jefferson City, that state. He simultaneously gave care-
ful attention to the study of law, under effective pre-
ceptorship, and in the spring of 1896 he was admitted to
the Tennessee bar. In the following autumn he came to
Oklahoma Territory, and he remained in Oklahoma City
until the spring of 1897, when he established his perma-
nent residence in Payne County. During the first four
years he maintained his home in the Village of Perkins,
where he was a teacher in the public schools, besides
serving as assistant editor of the Perkins Journal, which
had been established in 1889. Upon leaving Perkins
he removed to Stillwater, the county seat, where he has
since been engaged in the successful practice of his
profession and where he has gained definite priority as
one of the leading members of the bar of this section
of the state. He served two terms as a member of the
Territorial Senate, as noted in preceding paragraphs, and
was elected on the republican ticket. During the entire
period of his residence in Oklahoma Mr. Hickam has
shown a lively interest in political affairs and he con-
tinued a prominent representative of the republican party
in Payne County until the organization of the progressive
party, in 1912, when he transferred his allegiance to the
same and became one of its most influential exponents in
Oklahoma, as shown by the fact that he became its can-
didate for representative of his district in the United
States Congress in the national election of 1912, and
in 1914 was the progressive candidate for governor of

the state, adequate mention having already been made
of his political activities.

In a fraternal way Mr. Hickam is a Master Mason, |i
and both he and his wife are zealous members of the
Baptist Church in their home city.

In 1899 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Hickam |
to Miss Plavilla Duck, who was born in Iowa and who
was a child at the time of her parents ’ removal to Payne
County, Oklahoma, where she was reared to maturity s
and was afforded the advantages of the Oklahoma Agri- 1
cultural & Mechanical College at Stillwater. She was J
thereafter a popular teacher in the schools of Payne
County until the time of her marriage. Her father, -
John W. Duck, was a gallant soldier of the Union in the
Civil war, in which he served as a member of an Iowa
regiment. Mr. and Mrs. Hickam have three children — ■ i
Elmer, Horace and Eunice.

Wesley M. Dial. Probably the most influential white 1
man in the Osage country is Wesley M. Dial, owner and i j
proprietor of the beautiful Mount Dial homestead north t
of Pawhuska. His father was an Oklahoma eighty-
niner, and that brought Mr. Dial into contact with i
Oklahoma affairs when he was still a boy. Something:
over twenty years ago he was a plain cowboy in the1
Chickasaw Nation, and one of the early achievements j
which is mentioned to his credit was establishing a
townsite and postoffice out in Payne County. His mar-’
riage about twenty years ago with an Osage woman#
brought him into tribal relations with that people, and
it is said that he has enjoyed more of the confidence and!
distinctions of tribal honors and responsibilities than:
any other white man. For years he was employed as one-
of the principal agents in handling the vast wealth of i
the Osage tribes in the negotiations between the peoplei
and the General Government at Washington, and there-
has never been one of his acts which could be properlyfl
construed as reflecting upon his absolute integrity and||
honesty in all the aggregate of his relations as an inter-iH
mediary between his people and the controlling Govern-IJ
ment.

The career of this most interesting citizen of Okla-jl
homa began at Jasper, Newton County, Arkansas, Augustij
14, 1871, when he was born to Samuel and Susarjl
(Stallion) Dial. His father was born in Maysvillejl
Kentucky, September 13, 1834, and his mother was borrjl
near Nashville, Tennessee, November 22, 1843. Both hiiijl
father and mother had been previously married, an ell
she had two sons and he had one son by their previousll
unions. The two sons of his mother were: Witt aneijj

John Penn, while his father’s first son was Edward Dial
who died in 1879. By their second union the parent
had four sons and three daughters: Emma, now de

ceased; Clemmie Kirk, of Ripley, Oklahoma; Wesley M.
Clayton, deceased; Samuel R., who lives in California#
Arthur, of Foraker, Osage County; Mattie, wife o
Jacob Martin of Yale, Oklahoma. The mother of thes
children died in Yellville, Arkansas, in 1907, and thi
father now resides with his son Wesley at Pawhuska.

Mr. Dial spent the first ten years of his life at Han
rison, Arkansas, and his father, who was a farmer anf
stock man, then removed to Taney County, Missouri. I
1889 the family came into Oklahoma at the originsj
opening, and secured a claim at Clayton in Payn
County. Wesley M. Dial was then eighteen years c
age. His regular schooling aggregated only four month
in different district schools, and he has gained hi
education by self study and by practical experience will
men and affairs. At the age of twenty-one he went 1
the vicinity of Denison, Texas, and was employed as i
farm hand. In the spring of 1891 he went into tl1

31 STORY OF OKLAHOMA

2073

■western part of the Chickasaw Nation near Minco, and
was soon riding herd as a cow puncher.

His first real experience as an Oklahoma City citizen
came in September, 1893, at the opening of the Cherokee
Strip, when he secured a farm near Glencoe in Payne
County, and established a postoffice and store named
West Point. In 1895 he sold out and removed to
Northwestern Kansas and for a time was engaged in
the hay business. Again coming into what is now the
State of Oklahoma, he was married on September 7,
1897, in Osage County, to Eliza Penn, a widow with
four children. These children are: Dora, wife of Sid

Dalie of Osage County; Augustus M. of Arkansas City,
Kansas; Rosa E., who lives with Mr. Dial; and Kobert
E., who died in 1901.

Mrs. Dial has tribal rights in the Osage country,
and since his marriage Mr. Dial has always _ had his
home in the vicinity of Pawhuska. He and his family
have eighty acres adjoining the corporation limits on
the north and another eighty acres on the east.. His
home, known throughout the county as Mount Dial, is
located on the eighty acres north of the city. Mount
Dial is situated on an elevation which is 1,000 feet above
sea level and 185 feet above the grade of Main Street,
and from the Dial home is secured one of the finest
views of surrounding country to be found anywhere in
the state. On the south is the City of Pawhuska, and
on all other sides for a distance of seven miles or more
the eye sweeps over a panorama of hills and valleys
comprising a landscape such as is unusual even in North-
eastern Oklahoma. Mr. Dial and his family control in
the aggregate about 6,000 acres of land in Osage County.
Since these lands were allotted in severalty, Mr. Dial has
spent about $35,000 in improvements. One of the finest
farms in Northeastern Oklahoma is 1,000 acres under the
Dial ownership, cultivated to the full extent of its fertile
soil, and situated near Eoraker.

For a number of years Mr. Dial has been in the land
business at Pawhuska and has long been considered an
expert authority on land values. He is the first and
only white man who has ever been elected by the tribal
meeting of Osage citizens as an official representative
to handle tribal matters relating to the oil and gas
interests. Every one in Oklahoma and a great many
people outside the state know how vastly important and
valuable these interests are. Mr. Dial represented the
tribal interests in that capacity several months and
drew up a report which was submitted to the tribal
council, and which in turn the council forwarded to
the Secretary of the Interior at Washington. That
Teport was the basis for the subsequent negotiations
which have brought about the disposal of the oil and
gas interests in the Osage territory. In 1905 Mr. Dial
was also a delegate from the Osage people to Washing-
ton to defend claims being prosecuted against the Osage
tribe to the sum of $230,000 by the heirs of Van and
Adair, and he appeared in both the House and the
Senate committees of Congress and largely through his
arguments and effective testimony brought about the de-
feat of the claims. No other citizen with intermarried
rights in the tribe has figured so conspicuously in tribal
affairs. He also assisted in defending the Glenn oil
lease before committees of Congress, and for the past
fifteen years has made from one to two trips, to Wash-
ington annually, appearing before the various com-
mittees of Congress on department matters. At the
present time Mr. Dial is the business representative for
the IJncle Sam Oil Company in Osage County, and this
is one of the most responsible and most profitable busi-
ness positions in the state.

In politics Mr. Dial is a republican, and has helped to
make some interesting political history in Oklahoma.

Under the Enabling Act of Congress providing for state-
hood he was appointed an election commissioner of
Osage County. He established the voting places, ap-
pointed the election judges and clerks, canvassed the
returns, and with that sturdy regard for public opinion
which is characteristic of the man, when the returns
showed a democratic majority, issued his proclamation of
the result with a judicial impartiality .which was in
entire consonance with every other transaction by which
he has been known to the people of the state. For sev-
eral years he was a member of the State Republican
Committee, and was president of the Oklahoma State
Organization of Republican Clubs in 1908.

In Masonry Mr. Dial has taken thirty-two degrees in
the Scottish Rite and has also taken the various de-
grees in the York Rite, and is a member of the Nobles
of the Mystic Shrine, and is affiliated with the Benev-
olent and Protective Order of Elks. By his marriage to
Mrs. Penn he has three children: Cora E., Eva and

Charles P. The two daughters are now students in the
Loretto Academy at Kansas City, Missouri.

Probably no man in Northeastern Oklahoma has han-
dled larger financial sums and more important business
transactions than Mr. Dial. He. was chiefly instrumental
in securing a lease through the Osage Council for 230,000
acres of oil and gas lands. It should also be noted as a
matter of history that he was one of the ten men who
were tried in the Federal courts of Oklahoma City dur-
ing the months of May and June, 1914, for conspiracy
in an alleged attempt to defraud the Government in
matters connected with the Osage oil and gas lands.
While the trial and the argument of the case required
many weeks, it required the jury only ten minutes to give
him a complete acquittal and exoneration from all the
charges of the indictment.

Henry C. Chapman. A veteran of the newspaper
profession, and proprietor and editor of the Okeene
Eagle, which he founded more than twenty years ago,
Henry C. Chapman has lived a life of intensive activity
and experience for more than half a century. He was
a soldier in the Civil war on the Union side, gained
admittance to the bar about the close of the war, spent
many years with the metropolitan press in New York
and other cities in the East, and for the last thirty-five
years has lived in the western states and has been chiefly
identified with the management and editorial direction
of various newspapers.

The family to which he belongs came from England
to Holyoke, Massachusetts, during Colonial times. His
father, John S. Chapman, was born in Holyoke, Massa-
chusetts, in 1812, started West as a youth and found
a location in northern Indiana in LaPorte County, where
he was a pioneer farmer, one who cleared out a portion
of the wilderness and developed it for purposes of culti-
vation, and exercised his business ability in the buying
and selling of extensive farm lands in that region. He
died in LaPorte County in 1847. He was married there
to Lucinda Atkins, who was born in Washington County,
New York, in 1814, and died in LaPorte County in
August, 1844. Henry C. Chapman was the older of their
two children. His brother Francis M., who died in
LaPorte County in 1881, built up an extensive business
in the buying of scrap metal.

Born in LaPorte County, Indiana, September 6, 1842,
H. C. Chapman knew little of his parents, since his
mother died when he was two years old and his father
when he was five. He was also reared in a pioneer dis-
trict and among pioneer surroundings. He attended
country schools in LaPorte County, but most of his edu-
cation came from hard study directed only by his strong

2074

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

intellectual curiosity and ambition to amount to some-
thing in the world. Many nights he lay before the open
fireplace in northern Indiana and studied every good
book he could get his hands upon. By diligent applica-
tion he acquired a practical education, and at the age of
seventeen emerged from a farm in the woods and spent
one term in a village school at Laporte. Following
that* he was a farmer and taught school for two terms,
but in 1862 answered the call of patriotism by enlisting
in the Twenty-First Battery of Indiana Light Artillery.
His service continued for nine months, and in the several
engagements in which he participated he received severe
injuries to shoulder and elbow and was mustered out and
given an honorable discharge.

After returning from the war he continued teaching
and reading law in Indiana, and in the law department
of the University of Michigan gained his degree LL. B.
with the class of 1865. He remained in Indiana until
1868 and then identified himself with the trade of news-
paper man, which practically ever since has been his
real career.

Going to New York City in 1872, he did reportorial
work with practically all the great papers of the metropo-
lis. He was under Horace Greeley on the Tribune, was
also for a time in Orange County, New York, and re-
ported for the New York Herald, the Times and the Sun,
and was at one time a member of the staff working under
the direction of the firm of Raymond & Bennett. After
about eight years of metropolitan experience, he removed
to Iowa in 1880, and in that state combined newspaper
work and school teaching until 1890. From there he went
to Nebraska, later to Kansas, and in Logan County of
the latter state served as probate judge for four years,
three months.

Mr. Chapman ’s identification with Oklahoma began
in April, 1894, and in September of the same year he
located at Okeene, where he was one of the pioneers.
He started the Okeene Eagle, the first issue of which
was on September 26, 1894. He remained in active
charge of this newspaper until 1902, when he removed
to Muskogee County, and was connected with the Council
Hill Times and also edited the Boynton Eagle. Return-
ing to Okeene in 1910, he bought back the Okeene Eagle,
and has since been its proprietor and editor. The Eagle
reflects the essential principles of the republican party
for which Mr. Chapman has always stood, and it has a
large circulation over Blaine and surrounding counties.

Mr. Chapman is a member of the Oklahoma State
Press Association, and is affiliated with Excelsior Lodge
No. 191, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, back in
his native district of Laporte, Indiana. On August 23,
1865, at West Brookville, New York, Mr. Chapman
married Miss Augusta Collard. Her father, Henry Col-
lard, was a farmer in Sullivan and Orange counties,
New York. Mr. Chapman’s son, Loran H., is a jeweler
at Okeene. His daughter, Hattie J., is the wife of Dr.
J. A. Norris, who established himself in 1896 as a
pioneer physician at Okeene, but is now retired from
active practice and assists Mr. Chapman in publishing
the Okeene Eagle.

James B. Murphy, M. D. Stillwater, the judicial
center of Payne County, is the place of residence of
Doctor Murphy, who is consistently to be designated as
one of the leading representatives of his profession in
this part of the state, his high attainments, insistent
loyalty and devotion to his exacting vocation, and his
sterling attributes of character having not only proved
potent in the furtherance of his professional success
but having also given him inviolable place in popular
confidence and esteem. He maintains his well appointed

offices in the First National Bank Building, and his
definite prestige is indicated by his incumbency of the
positions here noted : Local surgeon for the Atchison,

Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad; county superintendent of
public health; city health officer; county physician; the
vice president of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Hos-
pital Association; and secretary and treasurer of the
Payne County Medical Society.

At New Albany, the judicial center of Floyd County,
Indiana, a place situated on the Ohio River a few miles
below the City of Louisville, Kentucky, Dr. James B.
Murphy was born on the 30th of November, 1856, and
he is a scion of one of the honored pioneer families of
that section of the fine old Hoosier commonwealth. The
doctor is a son of John and Serrilda (Clipp) Murphy,
and his 'father was born at Harper ’s Ferry, Virginia, ill
1815; the mother of the doctor was born in Indiana
in 1833.

John Murphy was reared and educated in his native
place, which eventually became a town in the segregated
State of West Virginia, and as a young man he came
to Indiana, where he continued his residence in Floyd
County until his death, at the age of sixty-nine years.

For many years he followed the trade of carpenter, but
the closing period of his active life was passed on his
farm, he having been one of the prosperous agriculturists
of Floyd County at the time of his death. Six sons
were born of his first marriage — Hiram, who still reside^
in Indiana, and all the others died in that state. Hiram
was a distinguished soldier of the Union during the
entire period of the Civil war, in which he rose to the
office of adjutant general of an Indiana regiment, his
enlistment having occurred at the time of President
Lincoln’s first call for volunteers. Of the children of
the second marriage — four sons and six daughters —
Doctor Murphy is the only surviving son, and four of
his sisters are living, one being a resident of Texas and
the other three still maintaining their residence in
Indiana.

Doctor Murphy left the parental home when he was
a lad of fourteen years and through his own exertions
he provided the means for gaining his higher academic
education as well as that of professional order. For
eight years he was a successful and popular teacher in'
the public schools of his native state, and in consonance
with his ambitious purpose he was finally matriculated
in the medical department of the University of Louisville,
Kentucky, in which he was graduated as a member of
the class of 1881 and from which he received his well ill f, - , r
earned degree of Doctor of Medicine. In the same year ™ 1

was solemnized his marriage to Miss Anna K. Smith,
likewise a native of Indiana, her father, George W.
Smith, having been a well known citizen of Floyd County.

In 1882 Doctor Murphy came to the West and established IS”
his residence at Milan, Sumner County, Kansas, where™1 ™

he continued in the work of his profession until 1885,

when he went to the western part of that state, but in

l!'t\

July of that year, 1889, he came to Oklahoma, about three

months after the territory had been thrown open to set-

jltlieaj

tlement, and established his residence at Stillwater, wherel

he is the pioneer physician and surgeon of Payne County, II ,
and where he has long controlled an extensive andlj;l,j ' j
representative general practice. His professional labors#

here were of most arduous order in the early years, whenlj^®

he was called upon to minister to families throughout all
wide section of sparsely settled country, his zeal and ! 1K P
unselfish devotion being such that he never hesitated tc
go forth on his work of succor, no matter what mighl
be the adverse conditions of roads, weather, etc., or the
dangers incidental to his lonely trips by night. Thu:
it is but natural that he hold the affectionate esteem o:
the many families to whom he has ministered with al

tfep
Jttofsi
toll by

»e hi

®«sof

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2075

of efficiency, kindliness and unselfishness during the years
of a signally active professional career in the now vigor-
ous young state of his adoption, and in the midst of the
manifold cares and exactions of his large practice he has
found time and opportunity to keep abreast of the ad-
vances made in medical and surgical science, so that
he well merits his high reputation as one of the able and
representative physicians and surgeons of Oklahoma.

Doctor Murphy has been loyal and progressive as a
citizen, has shown a lively interest in all things touching
the welfare of his home town and county, and has not
denied his service in public offices having direct relation
to his profession. He served as coroner of Payne County
for ten years, has been county health officer since 1907,
the year that marked the admission of Oklahoma to
statehood; and he has been city health officer of Still-
water since 1911, besides which he has in a private way
done all in his power to conserve sanitary improvements
and to maintain the best possible conditions for the
preserving of public health. The doctor was prominently
concerned in the organization of the Payne County Medi-
cal Society, has served as president of the same and is
at the present time its secretary and treasurer. He is
identified also with the Oklahoma State Medical Society
and the American Medical Association.

Doctor Murphy and his wife were among those who
“made the run” at the opening to settlement of the
now historic Cherokee Strip, and through their lively
action on this occasion they fortified themselves for per-
manent residence in this section of the state, though their
original run had Pawnee County as its objective point.
In early days the doctor served as a member of the city
council of Stillwater, and his loyal civic activities in-
cluded also effective service as mayor and as city clerk.
While the incumbent of the office of county coroner he
was for a short time acting sheriff of the county, and
he served as first assistant postmaster during the incum-
bency of Postmaster Robert A. Lowry, with whom he
was associated also in conducting the first drug store at
Stillwater, the doctor having been the first registered
pharmacist in Payne County and still retaining his pre-
rogatives along this line.

Doctor Murphy is a Knights Templar Mason, holds
membership in the Benevolent and Protective Order of
Elks, and has been actively affiliated with the Inde-
pendent Order of Odd Fellows since his twenty-first
birthday anniversary. He aided in the organization of
ithe Oklahoma Grand Lodge of the Independent Order of
” ’Odd Fellows, and later was honored by being made a life
(member of the same, he having been specially active
and influential in the affairs of this fraternal order.

Doctor and Mrs. Murphy became the parents of three
Ichildren — May, who 'is the wife of George B. Gulder, of
Stillwater, has two children, George B., Jr., and Kath-
erine; Edward Palmer Murphy, who married Miss Edna
“ Gilges, is identified with business enterprises at Still -
‘ water; and Nellie Bly, the youngest of the children, died
at the age of one year.

William T. Keys. Eligibility of definite order and
narked personal popularity were the contributing causes
that led to the election of Mr. Keys to the office of
county clerk of Payne County, and he assumed the
”l,f: administration of the multifarious and responsible duties
if this position on the 1st of January, 1915, his first
rear of service having clearly demonstrated the wisdom
ihown by the voters of the county in selecting him as
he incumbent of one of the most important executive
ifficers of the local government.

Mr. Keys was born in the City of Pittsburgh, Penn-
sylvania, on the 2d of October, 1873, and is a son of
I ugh and Lida (West) Keys, both likewise natives of

the old Keystone State, where the mother died when the
subject of this review was a child of three years. About
the year 1880 Hugh Keys removed with his family to
Edgar County, Illinois, where he continued in the prac-
tice of his profession, that of dentist, until the time of
his death, in 1889, William T., the youngest of his
children, having been a lad of about sixteen years when
thus doubly orphaned. All of the six children were sons
and of the number the subject of this review, the young-
est, is now the only survivor.

Upon the removal of his father to Illinois, William
T. Keys, because of the death of his mother, was
there received into the home of one of his uncles, with
whom he remained two years. He was then sent to the
home of another uncle, in Linn County, Missouri, where
he lived under these conditions until he had attained to
the age of thirteen years, when he became dependent upon
his own resources. In the meanwhile he had duly availed
himself of the advantages of the public schools of Illinois
and Missouri, but his broader education has been that
gained under the direction, of that wisest of all head-
masters, experience.

Mr. Keys continued his residence in Missouri until the
spring of 1890, when, at the age of seventeen years, he
came to the new Territory of Oklahoma, which was
organized in that year, and established his residence
in Payne County. Here he was employed by the month
at farm work until 1896, when he wedded Miss Ella
Grindstaff, who was born in Missouri and whose parents,
Alexander and Elizabeth (James) Grindstaff, came to
Oklahoma in 1891 and became pioneer settlers of Payne
County, where they passed the remainder of their lives
and where both died in the early part of the present
decade. After his marriage Mr. Keys engaged in farm-
ing in an independent way, near the Town of Cushing.
He rented land for a period of about six years and then
purchased a tract of eighty acres, which he later traded
for a farm of 160 acres four miles east of Stillwater.
He made excellent improvements on this property and
developed the same into one of the valuable farms of
Payne County. He still owns this homestead, where he
continued his residence until his election to the office of
county clerk, when he removed with his family to Still-
water, the county seat, where he now gives his entire
time and attention to his official duties, of which he is
giving a most efficient and acceptable administration.
Mr. Keys is found aligned as one of Payne County’s
stanch and active supporters of the cause of the demo-
cratic party, and he has been influential in its councils
and activities in this county. He and his wife are held
in high esteem in the community that has long repre-
sented their home, and they have two children — Ona and
Chester.

N. H. High. The life of N. H. High, ex-deputy United
States marshal, and now a farmer of Payne County, has
been one in which he has passed through experiences of
a thrilling character, from the days of the last great
buffalo hunt on the plains to the more recent excitement
of the opening of the various Indian reservations. It has
been his privilege to have participated personally in
bringing civilization to Oklahoma, and his energetic,
courageous and faithful service as a government official
during the early days had its part in changing the old
spirit of lawlessness into a condition in which the in-
dustries and institutions of modern life have thrived and
prospered.

Mr. High was born at Madison, Wisconsin, December
17, 1855, a son of James H. and Margaret Ann (Stuart)
High, the former a native of Seneca Flats, Seneca County,
New York, and the latter of Cork, Ireland. The mother
was two years of age when brought by her parents to the

2076

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

United States, and was reared in New York, where she
was married to George R. Ford, with whom she went
to St. Louis, Missouri, and later to Illinois. In that
state Mr. Ford died, leaving his widow with four sons.
James H. High was a young man when he went to the
West, settling in Illinois, where, as a contemporary of
Abraham Lincoln, he was a riverman on the Mississippi.
Later he engaged in railroading in that state, being en-
gaged in construction work, and while thus employed met
Mrs. Ford at Davenport, Iowa. They were married and
subsequently went to Wisconsin, where Mr. High engaged
in the lumber business, and in 1857 went to Michigan,
where both parents died, the father at Ovid and the
mother at Grass Lake. They were the parents of two
sons : N. H. and Hiram, the latter of whom is deceased.

N. H. High resided in Michigan with his parents until
he was eleven years of age, at which time he joined his
grandfather, Nathan H. High, who had settled on a farm
in Montgomery County, Kansas, and who later died in
Michigan. Mr. High remained with his grandfather for
eight years, teaching school during the winter terms and
working as a farmer during the summer months, but in
1881 went to Michigan, where he was married on October
17th of that year to Miss Alice Perkins, who was born at
Ovid, Michigan, October 26, 1864, a daughter of Josiah
and Eunice (Tower) Perkins. Mr. Perkins, a native of
New York, died in Oklahoma, while Mrs. Perkins, a
native of Michigan, passed away in New Mexico. After
his marriage Mr. High went to New Mexico, where he
entered upon a railroad career that covered a period of
fourteen years, the greater part of this time having
been passed in construction work. He had had previous
experience in the West, when, in the winter of 1872-3,
he joined a party of fourteen hunters and went to
Western Kansas and Colorado, participating in the last
great hunt that practically exterminated the great
American bison. During this trip the men traveled and
slept in covered wagons and grazed their horses, the
accepted method of living on the plains. It was about
this time also, that Mr. High saw the great Indian chief
Geronimo, who was then on the warpath.

After about four years in New Mexico, during which
time he had charge of the construction material for
the work on the Santa Fe, Mr. High returned to Kan-
sas and engaged in farming for a short time. He
later went back to New Mexico, however, and remained
there until the opening of the Sac and Fox Indian reser-
vation, when he was appointed a United States deputy
marshal and as such came to Oklahoma. At the same
time, in company with Fred Curtley, he established a
store on Euchre Creek, under the name of Curtley &
Company, and engaged in this business for six years.
Later he was for eight years a merchant at Cushing.
During the time Mr. High was in the Government serv-
ice, he was present at the opening of the Kickapoo,
Cheyenne and Arapaho country, and at one time was
the only deputy marshal allowed therein. At the open-
ing here he had the north one-half of the reservation
and his service was crowded with thrilling experiences in
which his courage was tested to the utmost and not found
wanting. When he came he had secured a claim and
obtained a deed to a tract on Big Creek, six miles west of
Cushing, but disposed of his interest therein. For one
and one-half years Mr. High was also engaged in the
transfer business with his son-in-law, but since selling
his share therein has devoted his energies to the culti-
vation of his forty-acre farm which adjoins the corpora-
tion on the northwest. At the time he sold his claim on
Big Creek, Mr. High went to Guthrie, where he spent
six years, and during that time was a member of the
police department and also contracted for excavation
work. He is a republican in political matters and has

served as a delegate to numerous conventions. Fra-
ternally he is connected with the Masons, the Independent
Order of Odd Fellows and the Knights of Pythias, and
is the oldest member in point of membership in Oklahoma
of the Ancient Order of United Workmen.

Mr. and Mrs. High have been the parents of eight chil-
dren, as follows: James L., born in New Mexico, now a
successful merchant of Cushing: LeKoy Marion, born
in Kansas, a merchant at Stroud, Oklahoma; Alie Lew,
born in New Mexico; Ena Belle, born in Kansas, who
died at the age of nineteen years; Jessie May, born in
Oklahoma, who died at the age of nineteen months;
Charles Leslie, born in Oklahoma, who resides with his
parents at Cushing; Fred Lloyd, born in Oklahoma, who-
died in infancy; and Margaret Ann, born in Oklahoma,,
who lives at home.

William J. Brockman. A representative of the class
of men who are maintaining the high standards of stock-
raising in Payne County is found in the person of
William J. Brockman, of Yale, who has been a progres-
sive and energetic breeder of stock since his arrival
here in 1890. During his quarter of a century of resi-
dence here he has seen the marvelous development of the
community and the replacing of pioneer conditions by
civilization. Mr. Brockman is an Illinoisan by nativity,
and was born at Hillsboro, Montgomery County, August
25, 1849, a son of Samuel and Charlotta (Brown) J
Brockman.

The parents of Mr. Brockman were born in Adair
County, Kentucky, and there married, and migrated to
Illinois in early days with the eldest of their children,
a baby boy, John, who died in the winter of 1914 at the
age of eighty-six years. The parents settled in Mont-
gomery County and there passed the remainder of their
lives on a farm, the mother dying in 1861 at the age of
sixty-five years, and the father surviving until 1885, ,i
when he passed away at the age of eighty-five years. 1
They were the parents of the following children: John,
Walter, Boone, Hiram and Mrs. Betsy Armstrong, all
of whom are deceased; Mrs. Artemesia Joice, who i
lives on the old homestead place in Montgomery County,' ,
Illinois; and William J. The parents of these children i
were honest, God-fearing people, who worked indus-
triously to make a home and who reared their children to
lives of integrity and useful endeavor.

William J. Brockman was brought up amid pioneer
surroundings and practically his entire career has been
passed in advance of the rush of civilization. His boy-
hood was filled with the hard work of cultivating a
prairie farm and reclaiming the land from the wilder-
ness, but it was the type of existence that builds sturdy
bodies and inures their owners to conditions which may
be found anywhere on the frontier. He well remembers
seeing deer in large numbers around his Illinois homej
while the wild geese and ducks were so numerous that
it was necessary to keep a constant lookout for them to
prevent them from destroying the growing grain in the
fields. Mr. Brockman’s education came from the district
schools of his home vicinity, where he resided and en
gaged in farming until the death of his father, in 1885
in which year he went West to Lane County, Kansas, anc
took up a claim. While there he followed the pursuitsl
of stock-raising and farming, and also found time for
public service, acting as turnkey and deputy sheriff]
positions which he had held in Illinois, for eight years
and finally being elected sheriff of Lane County for tw<
terms, being the only democrat elected to county offie
there up to that time. In 1890 he disposed of hi
Kansas holdings and came to Indian Territory, locatinj
first at Stillwater and subsequently buying a farm i;
Payne County, where he has since continued to be intei

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2077

ested extensively in the stock business, now leasing
1,000 acres of land. On September 16, 1893, when the
Cherokee Strip was opened for white settlement he made
the race for land and secured a valuable piece of prop-
erty at Pawnee, which he still owns. He also made the
run at the opening of the Cheyenne and Arapaho coun-
try and the Sac and Pox reservation, but not with an
equal measure of success. In the Indian Territory
Mr. Brockman’s former experience, gained in Illinois
and Kansas, stood him in good stead and he was able
to compete with conditions in a much more successful
way than could many who had not had his advantages.
He was a witness to much of the lawlessness which
swept over this part of the country, was personally
acquainted with several of the bad men of his district,
and was an eye-witness to the shooting of three United
States marshals at Ingalls. At one time he made the
race for sheriff of Payne County, on the democratic
ticket, but although he ran 285 votes ahead of his
party, met with defeat. In 1902 Mr. Brockman came
to Yale, which at that time was a hamlet with but one
house. He has contributed to the upbuilding of this
flourishing community by the erection of several struc-
tures, including the two fine business places which he
built in 1915 to replace the two, valued at $10,000, which
he lost by fire in April of that year. In the same year
he erected a handsome residence at Yale. He is a
Master Mason and a member of the Independent Order
of Odd Pellows, the Knights of Pythias and the Wood-
men*of the World. As a citizen he has discharged every
obligation which has devolved upon him, and in com-
mercial circles his reputation is that of a man of the
strictest integrity.

On February 25, 1873, Mr. Brockman was married to
Miss Susan C. Blackburn, who was born in Montgomery
County, Illinois, October 22, 1847, daughter of George
Blackburn, and to this union there have been born three
children: Arthur, of Eaton, New Mexico; Oscar, who is
employed on a ranch in Payne County, Oklahoma; and
Versa, who is the wife of S. W. Binnie, a resident of
Kiowa, Kansas.

John E. Spurrier. A special distinction that belongs
to John E. Spurrier of Big Heart, Osage County, is that
he is one of the native sons of the original Oklahoma
Territory, being one of the few men now active in
affairs who were born after the first land opening in
1889. Mr. Spurrier has had an active and successful
business career in various localities and states and is
now engaged in handling a large ranch at Big Heart.
Mrs. Spurrier, his wife, is a daughter of the noted
Chief Bigheart, of the Osage tribe.

The birth of John E. Spurrier occurred on a home-
stead ten miles from Oklahoma City June 30, 1891. His
parents were John and Louise (James) Spurrier. His
father was born in Virginia July 27, 1857, His mother
was born in Millville, Arkansas, in 1870, and spent the
first nineteen years of her life in her native state. The
father resided in Virginia until the age of fifteen, then
moved to Missouri, and for a time was engaged in
teaching school. After his marriage in Arkansas he
went west to Wyoming, and for a number of years was
foreman of a lumber company, and spent all his active
life as a lumberman, cattle man and farmer. He was
one of the original settlers in Oklahoma in 1889, and
for about seven years conducted a large ranch as a
stock farmer near Oklahoma City. He and his wife are
still living in Oklahoma and are the parents of three
children : John E. ; Smead, who is proprietor of a

garage and machine shop at Millville, Arkansas; and
3uy, living at home.

The independent career of John E. Spurrier may be

said to have begun when he was only twelve years of
age. In the meantime he had attended the local schools
in Oklahoma City and at that early age left home and
assisted Wess Hilton in taking a great herd of some
2,800 head of cattle from Wyoming to Buenos Ayres in
South America. After his return from this long voyage
he was employed in a garage in Denver, Colorado, and
for several years was engaged in making extended trips
in automobiles. For two years he was a special detective
in the employ of the Denver & Eio Grande Eailroad
and for two years after coming to Pawhuska was in the
secret service. Since his marriage he has been engaged
in ranching and is now owner of 640 acres in his home
place and has several hundred acres under lease. Mr.
Spurrier has recently completed the finest ranch home
in his section of Osage County, it being located on his
ranch close to Big Heart.

In December, 1914, he married Sarah L. Bigheart,
who was born on the old Big Heart homestead in Osage
County August 20, 1898. Her father, the late Chief
James Bigheart of the Osage tribe, died in 1908 when
about eighty-seven years of age. All his life had been
spent among the Osage tribe and he was one of its most
distinguished members, and held high rank not only as a
business man but as a wise statesman in tribal affairs.
Prior to the allotment of the Indian lands he had several
thousand acres under fence, and at the allotment received
the same share as other members of the tribe. For many
years one of the mos{ notable ranches in Osage County
is that known as the Big Heart Eanch, and the Town
of Big Heart was named for this notable Indian. In a
business way he was identified with several banks in his
part of the state and had merchandise store interests.
About 1885 Chief Bigheart married Alice Butler, who
was born in the Cherokee Nation and was a seven-
eighths Cherokee in blood. She is now living on the
Big Heart homestead. Chief Bigheart and his wife had
seven children: Mary, wife of Thomas Clendenning

of Broken Arrow ; Louis, deceased ; Eose Lee, wife of
Sherman Deal of Pawhuska; William, deceased; Jose-
phine, deceased; Mrs. Spurrier; and Belle, at home with
her mother. By a previous marriage Chief Bigheart
had one child, Maggie Oberlee, now deceased. The story
of Chief Bigheart ’s marriage reveals an interesting
Indian romance. Having found the young woman of his
choice, he made the usual arrangements for the marriage
with the girl’s mother and in the marriage settlement
gave a wagon, a team, an old cow and two pigs. How-
ever, the Cherokee people objected to his taking away
the Indian maiden, and after he was well started on
his way with his bride to the Osage country the Cherokees
assembled and started after the runaways with guns and
determined to restore the bride to her people. Chief Big-
heart barely succeeded in crossing the Osage line with
his wife in time to escape his pursuers. Once among his
own people he was safe, since the Osages were as ready
to defend him as the Cherokees were to attack him. In
contrast with this experience of his wife’s parents, Mr.
Spurrier took his bride to their new home in an auto-
mobile, over roads that were made almost impassable by
heavy rains. Their interesting romance and marriage
occurred while Mr. Spurrier was in the secret service,
stationed at Big Heart, and engaged in driving a car.
There he met the little Indian princess, Miss Lillian
Bigheart, now his wife, Mrs. John E. Spurrier, and
then their romance started. As several months had
passed they decided not to leave each other as long as
the grass grew and the water run, and then they began
to plan their long journey across the Osage hills and
canyons to Pawnee to get married. They had planned
this trip to Pawnee several times but something would
prevail until finally one afternoon in December they
had planned to start for Pawnee their third time and

2078

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

about 5 p. m. they were off, Mr. Spurrier running his
automobile as fast as the roads and ear would permit.
About half way from Big Heart to Pawnee it began rain-
ing and sleeting. Everything seemed against this young
couple, but in their hearts they were determined to
reach Pawnee before morning. They got lost off of the
roads and as all of the ranchers and cowboys had retired
it was difficult to arouse them at that late hour by
holloing, so Mr. Spurrier used his .45 six-shooter to
warn them that there was some one at the road wanting
them. They would respond immediately to the reports
of his .45 and then would direct him the road to Pawnee
which they finally reached at a late hour that night.
They were married and back to Big Heart at 5 p. m.
the following morning, the car being covered with ice
and snow. The little Indian bride got out of the car
to go to one of her friends, where she was to spend that
night. She bid her squaw man (Mr. Spurrier), good
night, and upon arriving at a livery stable, where Mr.
Spurrier kept his car he was frozen to the steering wheel
of his machine and had to have the assistance of the
livery stable man to help him from his car, and it was
three weeks before he could hardly use his hands and
feet, but he is now enjoying the life of a squaw man
and rancher on their magnificent estate near Big Heart,
Oklahoma. A daughter, Alice Floreine, was born to
Mr. and Mrs. Spurrier on the 8th of September, 1915.

Henry C. Dale. A recent addition to the citizenship
of Yale, Oklahoma, Henry C. Dale was formerly for
many years a resident of Kansas, where he was well
known in public and business affairs. He was born in
Jasper County, Missouri, April 6, 1848, and is a son
of Robert J. and Olive (Cox) Dale. The Dale family in
America traces its ancestry back to Sir Thomas Dale,
the first governor of Virginia.

The great-grandfather of Henry C. Dale, Rev. George
Dale, was a Missionary Baptist preacher who passed his
entire life in Virginia, and who is remembered chiefly for
his large physique, he weighing in the neighborhood of
400 pounds. His son, Elijah Dale, was born in 1794, in
Virginia, and as a young man fought in the American
army during the War of 1812-14. He was captured by
the Indians at the battle of Tippecanoe, November 7,
1811, but after being made to run the gauntlet was
exchanged for two blankets and four pounds of beads.
Subsequently he moved to Kentucky, and was there mar-
ried to Frances Shelton, with whom he moved to Boone
County, Missouri, and later to Moniteau County in that
state, where he died at the age of seventy-four years,
Mrs. Dale surviving him for some time and passing away
in Jasper County, aged eighty-eight years. They were
the parents of the following children: Alfred, Robert J.,
.Tames M., Plieldin, Meadley, Mrs. Malinda Griffith,
Mrs. Mary Sunday and Mrs. Rebecca Martin.

Robert J. Dale, father of Henry C. Dale, was born in
Kentucky in 1820, and in 1838 located with his parents
in Jasper County, Missouri, where he was married to
Oliver Cox, who was born in 1822 in Tennessee and
had come to Missouri about the same time as her hus-
band. With the exception of seven years, from 1863
until 1870, when they lived in Moniteau County, they
passed the remaining years of their lives in Jasper
County, and both died at Carthage, the father when
ninety years of age and the mother aged about eighty.
He was a farmer, trader and stock dealer, was clerk in
the Baptist Church for many years, and in politics was
a stanch democrat. They were the parents of two sons
and five daughters: George F., of Moniteau County,
Missouri; Mary M. Hughes, deceased; Henry C.; Ann F.
Wise, of Carthage, Missouri; Permelia B. Howard, of

Cooper County, Missouri; Martha J. Johnson, of Carl
Junction, Jasper County, Missouri; and Canada Hind,
deceased.

Henry C. Dale received his early education in the
public schools of Missouri and resided on the home farm
with his parents until twenty-three years of age. At
that time he further prepared himself by attending
school for six months, and for six years thereafter was
engaged in teaching in the country schools. He next
followed farming for sixteen years, and then took up
mining at Galena, Cherokee County, Kansas, but after
several years gave up that occupation to engage in the
real estate business, which he followed two years. He
became the owner of a valuable farming property, which
he later sold, and was one of the substantial and highly
respected citizens of his community. He was elected
justice of the peace of Galena, Kansas, and served in
that capacity for twelve years, resigning when he had
twenty-two months to serve. On February 14, 1915, he
came to Yale, Oklahoma, where he has since been assist-
ing his son, Oliver C. Dale, in his extensive and im-
portant business operations. Mr. Dale has been a
lifelong democrat, and his religious faith is that of the
Missionary Baptist Church.

On December 11, 1870, Mr. Dale was married to Miss
Emma J. Barker, who was born November 19, 1851, in
Moniteau County, Missouri, daughter of Charles L. and
Delilah (Eads) Barker. To this union there were born
eight children, as follows: Oliver C., mayor of Yale,
and one of the leading business men and oil producers
of this part of the state, a sketch of whose remarkable * 1
career appears elsewhere in this work; Charley, who'
resides at Galena, Kansas; Arthur, who is deceased
Maggie Lewman, who is deceased; Canzada Jarrett
also deceased; Henry Clay, principal of the high school
at Columbus, Kansas; Gordon, who is manager of the'

O. C. Dale department store, at Yale; and Willa Anna:
Pettit, of Yale.

fmtl

: a

Itijj

tofti

fa,

ill®

Milton Thompson. When it is said that Milton
Thompson is the largest property owner and tax payer
in that rich and populous County of Payne, it is evident
that he has not lived his forty years since birth with
out a great deal of practical accomplishment and success-
ful enterprise. In Payne County his name is synonymou
with push and vigor, and few men in the state startec
with less and have gained more in the course of a com
paratively brief space of time. When he was eighteer
years of age he left home with only $85.00 as hi
capital. He came as a pioneer to the Sac and Fox Indian
reservation in Oklahoma, and has long been identifier
with farming, cattle raising, with merchandising, and
more recently with the oil and gas development in th
Cushing field. It is noteworthy that Mr. Thompson ha:
had few partners during his business career. He him§fa
self says that his one best partner and chief assistan
both at home and in business has been his wife.

Representing a family of Kansas pioneers, Milto:
Thompson was born at Atchison, April 6, 1876, a son o
Marion and Nancy (Southridge) Thompson. His fatlie
was born near Chicago, Illinois, and his mother
St. Joseph, Missouri, but they were brought as chi
dren by their respective parents to Atchison, Kansas, a
the time Kansas Territory was opened for settlemen’
early in the decade of the ’50s. The parents were man
ried at Atchison and the mother died there twenty-eigl
years ago. Marion Thompson came to Oklahoma a yea
after the opening of the Sac and Fox reservation, ha !H>r
been a farmer and stock man, and for the past twent fcs. f
years has lived at Avery. He made a record as
Union soldier during the Civil war, serving in tl

120,

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2079

Fourteenth Kansas, and was out for more than four
years.

The sixth son in a family of nine boys and one girl,
Milton Thompson has lived in close touch with practical
affairs since early boyhood. After getting into in-
dependent work for himself, he supplemented the few
u; advantages which he had received in the common schools
■a as a boy, by a course in the business college at Shawnee,

\t Oklahoma, where he was graduated in 1896. He was
lip -with his father in the cattle business up to the age of
w twenty-one, and has since been working independently,
the Up to 1905 his home was in the vicinity of Avery, and
Ht for the past ten years he has been in Cushing. He
ii,!) still has ranching and cattle interests, but .has also
;hlj carried on merchandising at Cushing for a number of
ltd years, and still has two stores, one carrying a general
1 it stock and the other an exclusive shoe store, but no longer
L;#l gives his personal supervision to either of these enter-
, t, prises. In 1913 Mr. Thompson organized the Oklahoma
list. State Bank at Cushing, and was its president until he
y sold his stock on January 1, 1915.

n i As soon as Cushing came into prominence as a center
t tte Df the oil and gas business, Mr. Thompson was identified
with the movement, beginning in March, 1912. He has
landled many leases and is individual owner of much
,1 jj and which has produced both oil and gas. It is now his
mique distinction to be the owner of the largest rock
'y pressure gas well in the world, known as Thompson
Yjie Well No. 1, situated two miles east and two miles north
jy )f Cushing. The gas from this well is sold to one of
jyp ;he pipe line companies, and brings in a revenue of
y( !our thousand dollars a month. Mr. Thompson owns
|asep ifteen different farms in and about Cushing and in
. J 5ayne County, and al«o has a large acreage under lease.

in 1913 he built the Thompson Hotel, a modern 100-room
0I lotel at the corner of Cleveland and Broadway in Cush-
y,! ng, and the first up to date house of public entertain-
nent in the growing young city. For some time he
vas president of the First National Bank of Terlton,
Iklahoma, but resigned that office when the institution
ras changed to a state bank.

ipaya ]vir. Thompson’s comfortable ten-room house in Cush-
'niH ng, where he and his wife reside, was originally the
irincipal building improvement on a tract of fifty acres,
Mints has since been laid out as the Thompson & High-
mm,lt and Addition, and this part of the city is now well built
startfl p homes. Politically Mr. Thompson is a demo-

\a(® rat, though only a voter and in no sense a politician.
■| j® le is affiliated with the local lodge of Masons, with the
sltiliai Hite Consistory at Guthrie and the Temple of

jyjjt( he Mvstic Shrine at Oklahoma City.
jD„ a„ On May 2, 1898, Mr. Thompson married Miss Maude
A, iif lekes. She was born in West Virginia, but was reared
jputo l Kansas, a daughter of J. M. and Elizabeth A. (Smith)
He liii jokes. Her mother is now living at Wellington, Kansas,
assistai [er father, who died in the Thompson home at Cushing,
pril 20. 1912, was a Methodist Episcopal preacher and
Sl Hiltfl Sent four years as a soldier in the Twenty-second Ohio
, a son o egiment during the Civil war. Mrs. Thompson is an
lisiatli jtive worker in the Methodist Episcopal Church. She
i '1 a| as like her husband been identified with Oklahoma for
t as any years, and finished her education in the State
Kansas, i at Edmond. She was one of the first school

settle®* ;achers in Lincoln County, and her first school was held
| a log building without a floor. She possesses almost
(e ■ ° lique ability as a business woman, and Mr. Thompson
A ‘Aj ives ^er credit for his great success in business
(went ^a’rs- She was his bookkeeper in the stores as long
he gave his personal supervision to that branch of his

jjijsinpoo

Vol. V— 21

Freeman E. Miller. Fortunate it is for the weary
and workaday world that there are those whose lives are
attuned to deep human sympathy and appreciation, who
find time and opportunity to touch upon and glorify the
common things of life, who in realm of fancy and
gracious ideality of thought come near to the castles of
their dreams and who trail the beatitudes in their train.
Such a man is Prof. Freeman E. Miller, who is a native
of Indiana and worthy to be classed among the foremost
in the galaxy of Hoosier stars in the literary firmament.
His dreams have crystallized into deeds of kindness and
into inspiring thoughts and sentiments that have offered
le'sson and incentive to all who have read or heard.
Professor Miller has played a large part in bringing the
manifold attractions and advantages of Oklahoma before
the reading and thinking people of the Union, and his
reputation as a poet, author, editor, lawyer, legislator
and educator has far transcended local limitations. He
has been consistently designated the poet laureate of
Oklahoma, and he is now the incumbent of the chair of
English in the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical
College, at Stillwater, Payne County, a position which
he had previously filled when the institution was in the
initial stage of its development. Oklahoma shall ever
owe mueh to Professor Miller, and this publication can
not be consistent with itself if there is failure to pay
to him a measure of appreciative tribute. So admirable
is the estimate written by C. M. Sarchet and published
in Daily Oklahoman of Sunday, August 29, 1915, that it
is a pleasing privilege to incorporate at this juncture cer-
tain quotations from the article, though minor para-
phrase and certain elimination must necessarily be in-
dulged in the reproduction:

“Freeman E. Miller, of Stillwater, Oklahoma’s poet
laureate, criminal lawyer and newspaper man, has been
showing up the bright side of life and of things in gen-
eral to the people of Oklahoma for so many years that
his writings are proving to be a prolonged ‘journey in
contentment’ for the many who have followed him — and
that means thousands. For the man or woman who reads
Miller’s ‘Oklahoma Sunshine,’ which has been appear-
ing in the Daily Oklahoman for the past ten years, his
daily little sermons, cotton-patch philosophy, sayings
by the way, and from the short-grass country, can not
help be benefitted. They put a song in the heart of
men, lighten the labors, brighten the daily life and keep
dull care far in the background. Miller is constantly
directing his pen that others may be happier. He
preaches individual effort as the best method of dis-
pelling sorrow and dissatisfaction— declaring that the
man who is busy at honest labor is the happiest man of
the human race. ‘When a man whistles at his work,’
writes Miller, ‘the angels come down to boss the job.’
And again he writes: ‘Dis ole worl’ am all de time
ehtuhning debright side up, so break up dem dahrk
specs on youah eyes an ’ grab a hoe. ’ and another time —
‘there may be more devotion in tears than in laughter,
but I’ll tie up with the latter and take the risk.’

“Miller is a Hoosier by birth; perhaps that’s one
of the main reasons that' he is a poet. He came to Okla-
homa when President Harrison, also a Hoosier, issued
the proclamation that opened this country to white settle-
ment, in 1889, and he located in Stillwater. He was a
newspaper man, owned and edited a weekly paper, and
he has returned to the pastepot and shears several times
since. He has always found it difficult, although a suc-
cessful criminal lawyer, to keep away from a newspaper
office, and his friends are never surprised when he breaks
over the traces again.

‘ ‘ There are numerous sweet singers developing through-
out Oklahoma, but the newspaper men have always liked
Miller, not only because he is one of them but also

2080

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

because he has a way of saying things that appeals to
the average reader. There is no parent that can not
appreciate his ‘ Santa Claus Boy. ’

‘ ‘ It was as editor of a country weekly that Miller
first won fame throughout the Southwest as a poet, when
Oklahoma was still young. His paper always contained
some verses by the editor, but his distinction as Okla-
homa’s poet laureate was when he composed the poem
read when the Oklahoma building at the St. Louis expo-
sition was dedicated. That was ‘ Oklahoma. ’ In his
Stillwater Advance and later in his Stillwater Progress
there appeared ‘ The Opening of Oklahoma, ’ ‘ The Ballad
of the Alamo,’ ‘The Plaint of the Tenderfoot,’ ‘The
Faith Cure,’ and other poems. When statehood came he
was ready with ‘ The Birth of the State, ’ and when the
constitutional convention assembled in Guthrie, late in
1906, it was opened by the clerk’s reading of Miller’s
poem, ‘The Builders’:

“ ‘ Oh Builders, called forth of the people !

Not only for us is your toil!

For tribes that shall follow through shadows the paths
of the stars and the soil,

Through seed-time and harvest forever, whatever ye
fashion or frame

Shall live till the land is legend and time is a meaning-
less name ! ’

“Things that happen in Oklahoma and that are told
about in the news columns of the papers, the current
events, are promptly made use of by Miller. When a
Territory election was over, a number of years ago, and
the democrats were overwhelmingly defeated in Okla-
homa and also in the nation at large — Miller is a demo-
crat— he comforted his party comrades with a resignation
that caused the verses to be the most widely copied of
all of his productions up to that time. All of his verses
have been free-will offerings. They appeared originally
in his paper, ‘without money and without price,’ but
they increased the paper’s circulation just the same.
And for ten years past they have been appearing regu-
larly in the Sunday issues of the Daily Oklahoman, ever
carrying their sermon of contentment:

“ ‘Needn’t talk to me of sorrow,

Needn’t tell of Sorrow Town,

For the blossoms heap the highways
Till they hold the brambles down.’

‘ ‘ He preached contentment and happiness in his
‘Birth of the State,’ outlining that the state that is
wealthy is not the best unless the character of its men
and women is high and its people are happy :

‘ ‘ ‘ Glory and peace and power, but greater than all of
these

Is the smile of a happy people and the laugh of a land
at ease,

And the states that are rich and mighty are poor and
helpless yet,

If the lips of its men are ashen and the eyes of its
women wet ! ’

“ ‘So fashion the state in glory, but build it wise and
good,

And build it strong for the weak ones and rich for the
peasant’s brood;

And fashion it all .with justice, till the joys of the peo-
ple’s mirth

Shall conquer the ancient sorrows and gladden the sad
of earth. ’

“For a long time Miller has had his weekly grist of
‘little sermons’ for the readers, and they contain many
good, pithy sayings:

“ ‘No one except Christ ever called the devil Satan J
to his face; and then they went up into a high mountain jl
and into a private place where no one else could hear I ;
the muss.’

“ ‘All that Joy asks is a place to eat and sleep and t I
fairly good company ; but when you bring Old Trouble | 1
into the kitchen and go to introducing him to the family,
right then Joy tells you goodbye.’

“It is necessary in treating of Miller to give him due
credit for being the first member of an Oklahoma Legis-
lature to introduce a ‘Jim Crow’ or separate-coach law.
Many have claimed this distinction, but to Miller it be-
longs. He represented his County of Payne in the old
Oklahoma Territorial senate on several occasions, and in
1901, six years prior to statehood, he fathered a bill j
that sought to compel all railroads in the territory to
furnish separate coaches for negroes. Later his idea:
was enacted into a statute of the §tate. Miller lias
always been a prominent figure in politics, but never ai
partisan. An Indiana democrat, he has frequently re
turned to his native state to campaign it for his party’s
nominees, and he has been on the ticket in Oklahoma oi
several occasions. He was twice the nominee for dis
trict judge, but on both occasions in a district that wa:
decidedly republican in its voting.

“In the near future the people of Oklahoma are t
see Freeman E. Miller in a new role to many of them
but an old role to the first-day people of old Oklahom
Territory — that of instructor in English in the Oklahom:
Agricultural and Mechanical College, at Stillwater. II
held the chair of English when that institution was firs
opened, in the early ’90s, but later retired to go back t
newspaper work. Now, after many years, he is to rt
turn and be in charge of the English department. I
was a deserved honor and his selection will give a di:
tinction to the school. If the young men who atten
the college will get close to Miller, and it will not be h:
fault if they do not, they will find him a fine, ente
taining gentleman, an ever -ready friend; and if tfie
will heed his sermons in contentment they will find life',
pathways have been smoothed down in their journeying
to ‘ Happy Town ’ :

“ ‘Folks are always apt and able all their hearts’ d
sires to crown,

If they journey to the sunrise at the gates of Hap]!
Town.

They are always finding blossoms in the glories of t!

That will crown their dearest longings and their roy
robes renew. ’ ’ ’

It may be further stated at this juncture that Profess
Miller ’s ode entitled ‘ ‘ Oklahoma ’ ’ was read on Oklahor
Day, July 19, 1915, at the Oklahoma Building, Panai
Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, Ca
fornia, and that the beautiful and appreciative poem
reproduced in full on other pages of this publication
Freeman E. Miller was born in Fountain CounJ
Indiana, on the 19th of May, 1864, and is a son
Louis W. and Amanda (Rynearson) Miller, both lilcew]
natives of Fountain County and representatives
honored pioneer families of that section of the Hoos
State. The father, now of patriarchal age, still resi
on his old homestead farm, and there the devoted w
and mother was summoned to the life eternal on the i
of October, 1911, at the age of seventy years, the s
jeet of this review being the only child. The boyln
days of Professor Miller were compassed by the
nignant influences and discipline of the home farm,
he continued to look upon the parental domicile as
place of ultimate refuge and content until the timel

fc this (

Ptati

Mate

Won «
pe who;
) Ho
by v(
N eh(

| m

i finds

:« :

It mad

1(1 ire,

county

Nntln

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2081

his marriage, though he passed but irregular intervals
at home after he had attained to the age of sixteen
years. He acquired his preliminary education in the
public schools of his native state and supplemented this
by a full classical course in DePauw University, at
Greeneastle, Indiana, in which institution he was gradu-
ated as a member of the class of 1887 and from which
he received his degree of Bachelor of Arts, his alma
mater conferring upon him in 1890 the degree of Master
of Arts. He defrayed the major part of the expenses
of his collegiate course through his service as a teacher
in the district schools.

In the year of his graduation in DePauw University,
Professor Miller, then a young man of twenty-three
years, made his way to the Panhandle of Texas, and when
Oklahoma Territory was thrown open to settlement he
was one of the ambitious young men who east in his lot
with this new country. In 1890 he established his resi-
dence at Stillwater, now the thriving judicial' center of
Payne County, and here he engaged in the practice of
law, his preparation for this profession having been
compassed while he was still in his native state, and
his admission to th,e Indiana bar having been granted
in 1886. He became one of the pioneer lawyers of
Payne County and also a pioneer in the local newspaper
field. He had practiced law in Indiana, where he had
also been editor and publisher of a weekly paper at
Yeedersburg, one of the principal towns of his native
county.

In 1894 the versatile young lawyer and journalist was
elected to the chair of English in the newly established
Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College, and he
retained this incumbency until 1898, his service having
been most effective during this formative period in the
history of the college. Upon resigning his position as a
member of the faculty of the college he resumed the
practice of law, and in time he gained special prestige
as one of the able and resourceful criminal lawyers
of the territory. In 1900 he was elected representative
of his district in the council or senate of the Territorial
Legislature, and in 1902 he was a candidate for re-
' election, but was defeated by a small majority. In 1905
he became editor and publisher of the Stillwater Advance-
Democrat, and in the following year he assumed the
editorial charge of the Stillwater People’s Progress, each
Happl of these weekly papers having gained high standing in
the Oklahoma field of journalism under his administra-
i of tion. In 1910 Professor Miller was the democratic can-
didate for the office of judge of the District Court, but
was unable to overcome the large and normal republican
majority in the district. In 1915 he was again elected
to the chair of English in the Oklahoma Agricultural
’icfe® and Mechanical College, and he has entered upon his service
)kk!ion in this capacity with characteristic earnestness and enthu-
Paiffl siasm, with matured powers and with specially higli
*o, C i reputation in the domain of literature, so that the insti-
i po® tution gains to its faculty a most valuable member and
eation. one whose benignant influence can not but be far reach-
i Count ing. He is by nature buoyant and optimistic, and thus
a son is by very birthright the apostle of contentment and
l lew good cheer. He recognizes the well-springs of human
atives thought and motive, is kindly and tolerant in judgment
ie loos and finds his chiefest pleasure in trying to make others
till iesi( happy and contented — a higher mission than which no
roted J naan could ask.

ou the S As a lawyer Professor Miller had charge of the legal
s, the si flght made in the territorial days to eliminate the liquor
is toyto iraffie in Payne County, and as a result of his efforts,
by tie 1 which were ably supported by the temperance people of
faun, a ;he county, the desired end was achieved in the county
idle as months before the territory cast its popular vote on
tie time she question of prohibition. It is pleasing to record that

rts’ 4

;ir toy

many of the poetical productions of Professor Miller
have been collected and issued in book form. In 1895
was published his volume of verses entitled ‘ ‘ Oklahoma,
and Other Poems ; ” in 1898 his ‘ ‘ Songs from the South-
west Country” was issued; and in 1906 was published a
volume of his prose and verse, under the title of ‘ ‘ Okla-
homa Sunshine. ’ ’

Professor Miller is affiliated with the Masonic frater-
nity and is identified with the Oklahoma State Bar
Association and the Oklahoma Newspaper Association.
Both he and his wife hold membership in the Methodist
Episcopal Church, as did also his first wife.

On the 22d of March, 1886, Professor Miller wedded
Miss Estelle Shroyer, and she was called to eternal rest
on the 24th of September, 1912, one child, Boy E., sur-
viving her and remaining at the parental home, in Still-
water. On the 2d of August, 1914, was solemnized the
marriage of Professor Miller to Mrs. Ada M. Kelly, who
is the gracious and popular chatelaine of their pleasant
home in Stillwater.

Col. George W. Lewis. Oklahoma can claim no
pioneer citizen whose career has been one of more inter-
esting order, whose genealogical history has touched more
worthily and prominently the history of America, or
whose personal popularity is more secure than Colonel
Lewis, who has been one of the most honored and influ-
ential citizens of Payne County since the year that Okla-
homa Territory was thrown open to settlement and whose
fine farmstead home lies contiguous to Stillwater, the
county seat, his residence being one of the most modern
and attractive in this section of the state and being
worthy of its owner as well as a matter of pride to him
and the community in general. The Lewis family was
founded in America in the colonial era of our national
history and representatives of the same have been found
arrayed as gallant soldiers in every war in which the
nation has been involved, Colonel Lewis himself having
been a valiant soldier of the Union in the Civil war, and
after its close having served with distinction as an officer
of the State Militia of Kansas. As a pioneer of Kansas
he participated in early Indian wars, and he was given
the title and rank of colonel before he had attained to
his legal majority. A broad-minded, loyal and honored
citizen and representative pioneer, he is" entitled to spe-
cial consideration in this history of the state of his
adoption.

Col. George Washington Lewis was born in Yadkin
County, North Carolina, on the 16th of April, 1846, and
is a son of William and Catherine (Pinix) Lewis, the
former a native of Virginia and the latter of North
Carolina. William Lewis was about fifty-five years of
age at the time of his death, when the subject of this
review was a child of two years, and his widow passed
the closing years of her life in Douglas County, Kansas',
where her death occurred in 1886.

The founders of the Lewis family in America came
from England in the colonial days and established their
residence in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
Both the paternal and maternal grandfathers of Colonel
Lewis were loyal soldiers of the Continental line in the
war of the Revolution. His maternal grandfather, Capt.
Overton Pinix, was a member of the military staff of
General Washington, and after the close of the Revolu-
tion he served many years on the bench of the Supreme
Court of North Carolina. The father of Colonel Lewis
was a soldier in the War of 1812, and his father, William
Lewis, was an officer in a Virginia regiment in the war
of the Revolution. He was with the patriot forces at
Valley Forge and was present at the surrender of Lord
Cornwallis.

Colonel Lewis is the youngest and only surviving mem-

2082

HISTORY OF

ber of a family of eleven children, and his father was
a farmer and miller in North Carolina at the time of his
death. Alexander D. Lewis, eldest brother of the subject
of this review, was a captain in the United States army
and as such participated in the Mexican war as a member
of a cavalry regiment. He continued his service as a
member of the United States army during the greater
part of his adult life, and he died at Fort Scott, Kansas,
in 1903, at a venerable age.

Col. George W. Lewis was a lad of about thirteen years
when the family home was established at Iola, Allen
County, Kansas, in 1859, two of his brothers, Irving G.
and Albert C., having removed to that state in the
preceding year and having platted the town site of Iola,
the present comity seat. Both of these brothers, as well
as the brothers, William B., Columbus and George W.,
all enlisted from Kansas as Union soldiers in the Civil
war, and all went forth as privates in the ranks. He
whose name initiates this sketch was but fifteen years
of age at the inception of the war, and he remained at
home until his brothers had seen three years of military
service in defense of the Union. When it became pos-
sible for them to return home and assume the care of the
widowed mother, George W. himself found opportunity
to give rein to his spirit of loyalty and patriotism. In
1864 he enlisted in Company K, Sixteenth Kansas Volun-
teer Cavalry, all of his brothers likewise having been
in the cavalry arm of the service, a fact which has left
him to make the statement that a Lewis has invariably
been too lazy to walk, this fact being fortified by the
cavalry service given by Colonel Lewis and his brothers.
His personal service was entirely with the Western army,
in the region west of the Mississippi River, and he con-
tinued in the ranks until the close of the war, when he
received his honorable discharge, and, like his brothers,
resumed active association with agricultural pursuits in
Kansas. He took part in the Indian wars in Kansas in
the late ’60s, and in this connection participated in the
fights with the forces of the celebrated Indian chief,
Sitting Bull. He served about two years as senior major
of Kansas volunteers in these conflicts with the Indians,
and in the winter of 1866, when twenty years of age, he
was elected colonel of the Twentieth Kansas Regiment of
the State Militia, this election representing the unanimous
vote of the regiment, and the young colonel having been
a sturdy youth of 175 pounds, which has represented his
average weight in later years. Colonel Lewis gained wide
and varied experience in connection with Indian warfare
on the frontier, and traversed the western plains when
buffalo were still to be seen in great numbers, he having
killed a number of these animals within the period of his
pioneer experiences. He was a member of the military
forces that made the first exploration in the Powder
River Country and traversed a considerable part of the
Yellowstone National Park, as now constituted. Many
incidents of these experiences were of interesting order,
but he and his companions endured also numerous hard-
ships and privations. On one occasion, when the com-
mand was far from civilization, its stock of provisions
was exhausted and it became necessary to kill the poorest
of the mules to provide food, one of the party having
made a mistake and killed the horse of one of the lieu-
tenants, the meat from this animal having proved the
most palatable of all, and the appreciation of the men
having perhaps justified the questionable mistake that
sacrificed the horse.

Colonel Lewis became one of the representative agri-
culturists and influential citizens of Allen County, Kan-
sas, and for a time was engaged in the mercantile
business at Iola. He continued his residence in that
county until 1889, when he came to Oklahoma and, on
the 22d of April, participated in the historic opening of

OKLAHOMA

the territory to settlement, the formal organization of
the new territory having not been completed until the
following year. At that time the colonel entered claim
to his present homestead, which adjoins Stillwater on
the west. His attractive residence commands an excel-
lent view of the city and also of the grounds and build-
ings of the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College.
The colonel has been one of the most zealous and influ-
ential factors in the development and upbuilding of his
home county and its judicial center, and his active co-
operation has been given in every normal movement
and enterprise making for civic and material progress.
About fifty-one acres of his farm are platted into village
lots and constitute the Lewis Addition to the City of
Stillwater. Many of the lots have been sold and building
operations have been carried forward to the point of
making this one of the attractive residence sections of
the county seat. In 1914 Colonel Lewis completed the
erection of his present fine residence, which is a modern
house of ten rooms, with the most approved appointments
and facilities, and the same is recognized as one of the
finest residence properties in Payne County, even as it is
known as a center of gracious hospitality.

Like all other male representatives of the family,
Colonel Lewis has not deviated from the line of strict
allegiance to the democratic party, and he has been
called upon to serve in various local offices of public
trust within the period of his residence in Oklahoma.
He is at the present time chairman of the board of
county commissioners of Payne County, and has been
four times elected a member of this board, on which he
lias served since the year 1907, which marked the admis-
sion of Oklahoma as one of the sovereign states of the
Union. On one occasion he was the only democratic
candidate elected in the county, and at another election
he was one of the two democrats elected. In the terri-
torial days he served as township trustee for a number
of terms.

Since 1866 Colonel Lewis has held membership in the
Baptist Church, and he and his wife are the only two
persons who have maintained continuous membership in(
the church of this denomination at Stillwater from the,
time of its organization, in 1872, to the present time, lie
having contributed liberally to the erection of the present
church edifice. His continued interest in his old com-
rades of the Civil war is indicated by his affiliation with
the Grand Army of the Republic. In influence and
financial support no one citizen of Payne County did as
much to obtain for Stillwater the Oklahoma Agricultural
and Mechanical College as did Colonel Lewis, the city hav-
ing voted bonds for $10,000 to secure this important
state institution, and Colonel Lewis, though not a resident
within the corporate limits of the city, having been glac
to make liberal contribution to the cause, besides whiel
he made two trips to the state capitol to further tin
interests of Stillwater before the Legislature at the tim<
when the question of locating the college was unde:
consideration.

In the year 1873 was solemnized the marriage o
Colonel Lewis to Miss Vessa Moore, who was born ii
Franklin County, Kansas, on the 16th of February, 1856
her parents, Silas and Anna (Martin) Moore, havinj
removed from Indiana to Kansas in 1854 and having bee
numbered among the very early settlers of Frankli
County, the remainder of their lives having been passe
in the Sunflower State. In the concluding paragraph o
this article is entered brief record concerning the ehildre
of Colonel and Mrs. Lewis: Capt. E. G., who is now j

representative business man in the City of Tulsa, ws
educated in the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanic:!
College, where he was captain and drill master of til
military organization of the institution, and he servel

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2083

later as a captain in the Oklahoma National Guard.
Anna is the wife of Frederick Fields and they reside in
the State of Colorado. George H. is a successful farmer
in the vicinity of Stillwater. Albert E. is president of
the Liberty National Bank in the City of Tulsa, and is
prominently identified also with oil development in the
fields of that part of the state. Flossie B. is the wife
of William L. Burleson, who is a member of the faculty
of the University of Illinois, at Champaign. William
L. is cashier of the Liberty National Bank at Tulsa.
Myrtle I. is the wife of Stephen B. Johnson, who is a
professor in the University of Arizona, at Tucson. Earl
and Velma remain at the parental home; and Cecil died
when about one year of age.

Col. Jacob H. Bartles. The people of Oklahoma
have been rarely called upon to mourn the loss of a
distinguished citizen whose death occasioned as wide-
spread sorrow as did that of Col. Jacob H. Bartles. It
has been the privilege of but few men in this, or any
other, community to become the center of as wide a
circle of personal friends or to attach to themselves,
by the indissoluble chains of affectionate esteem, so
many men and women of widely varying fortune and
social rank. The founder of both the cities of Bartles-
ville and Dewey his unceasing labors, his great power
of organization, his ability to instill into other men
the great energy which he always himself possessed, and
his great good judgment, foresight and acumen, won
him the title of ‘ ‘ An Empire Builder. ’ ’ As gallant sol-
dier of the Civil war, as a pioneer of Kansas and Eastern
Oklahoma, as a successful merchant and promoter, and
as a useful and public-spirited citizen, Colonel Bartles
stood as one of the most prominent figures of his day
and locality, and in his death his community lost one
whose place has not yet been filled.

Jacob H. Bartles was born at Chester, Morris County,
New Jersey, June 11, 1842, a son of Joseph A. and
Phoebe Helene Bartles. His father, a native of New
York, put up the first telegraph wires in New York City,
and subsequently moved to New Jersey, where, in Chester
County, he was the owner of a farm that is now the
property of Childs, the famous New York restaurateur,
and from which come the supplies for the restaurants
bearing his name. In 1857 Mr. Bartles removed to
Wyandotte County, Kansas, where he was engaged in
farming and stock raising, and also was the proprietor
of a butcher business at Quindaro. There both he and
Mrs. Bartles spent the remaining years of their lives.
They were the parents .of three children: Louise, who

is the widow of Alfred Brown, of Chester, New Jersey,
and now resides in New York City with her daughter,
Mrs. Sadie Reynolds; Theodore, who is deceased; and
Jacob H.

The early education of Jacob H. Bartles was secured
in the public schools of his native place, and at the age
of fifteen years started for the West with his parents.
The family embarked on a steamer at Pittsburgh, coming
as far as St. Louis, Missouri, where they took another
boat for Quindaro, Kansas, the historic spot seven miles
west of the present site of Kansas City, which they
reached May 2, 1857. During the next three years
young Bartles made that place his home, and was en-
gaged in steamboating on the Missouri River, between
;Omaha and St. Louis, and at the end of that time moved
to a farm 'near Quindaro, which he occupied and assisted
in clearing of its heavy timber. When the Civil war
■came on, Jacob H. Bartles was found as one of his
^community ’s patriotic sons, and in that memorable strife
had a conspicuous part and one marked with zeal, cour-
age and faithfulness from beginning to end. A record of

his activities in the war, as prepared by himself in 1896,
is here given:

‘ ‘ In company with seventeen Wyandotte boys and
Captain Veale, I went to Fort Leavenworth in the early
part of June, 1861. We organized a company, with
Veale as captain, and remained there about two weeks
before they could arm us. Then we were ordered to
Kansas City and south to Little Santa Fe, where we
were compelled to put half the company on guard at a
time. The second morning the old guard were ordered
to discharge their arms, which were old Belgian muskets
with the barrels cut off to make cavalry guns. When
the guns were discharged all the men fell backwards as
if shot by the enemy, and when they had fairly recov-
ered and found out the cause of the disaster they
gathered up their Belgian muskets, as also did the boys
in camp, piled them all on a fire and burned them up.

“There we were, left without any arms whatever ex-
cept a few sabres and Colt’s revolvers. Captain Veale
sent a message to the commanding officer at Fort Leaven-
worth that if he wanted us to go further to send arms.
In two weeks they sent us some Sharp ’s carbines and we
carried them through the war. We went south next and
were at the battles of Big Blue, Lone Jack, Dry Wood,
Lincoln, West Point, Morristown, Osceola, two engage-
ments at Eutonia, the Jim Lane expedition to Springfield,
leaving Kansas City October 1st and returning Decem-
ber 8th.

“On July 3, 1862, under the command of Col. Bill
Wier, we captured a part of Stan Watie’s regiment, in-
cluding Colonel Adair in command. Camped at Wolf
Creek, on the Military Road, July 4th, and on the 6th
Colonel Ross came in arid surrendered with 600 men.
Returned to Fort Scott about August 13th and took a
trip up through Missouri, through Spring River and
Sarcoxie, which latter place we left October 3rd and
traveled all night, routing the enemy on the 6th. We
went to Bentonville on tlje 21st, and had a fight with
Cooper’s command at Maysville or Fort Wayne on the
22nd, taking four pieces of artillery; went on a scout
to Cincinnati and Cane Hill, had a fight November 28th
at the latter place, and camped at Rae’s Mills on the
29th; moved the train and had a fight at Prairie Grove,
December 6th; moved the train from Fayetteville back
to Rae’s Mills on the 9th, and started on the Van Buren
expedition on the 27th. We next had a fight and routed
the First Texas Regiment at Dripping Springs, on the
28th, running them to and through Van Buren. At
Van Buren I climbed the flagstaff, hauled down the
Confederate flag and hoisted our company ’s ‘ Old Glory. ’

“We next went on a scout down the Arkansas River
on the 29th, but returned to Rae’s Mills on the 31st;
camped at Cross Hollow, January 12, 1863, camped on
White River on the 20th, and swam the White River on
the 24th with sabre, pistols and overcoat on. Returning
to Fort Scott March 10, we camped at Rolla June 7, and
July 1, 1863, came back to Fort Scott. On August 6th
we camped at Fort Gibson, and on the 26th had a fight
with Cooper’s command at Perryville. then returning to
the Arkansas River and camping at Fort Davis on the
21st. We next moved to Camp Smith and camped on
the north bank of the Arkansas River, March 26, 1864,
starting on the Camden expedition from that place.
We formed a junction with Steele’s command on the
Little Missouri River, April 9, and this command formed
a line of battle and skirmished with the Confederates
on the following day. Our division and Steele’s formed
a line and laid on our arms during the day and night of
the 11th and on the morning of the 12th the army was
ordered forward in solid column, the Confederates re-
treating and our army, moving to the left. General

2084

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Thayer’s division had a fight in the' rear with Price’s
division, driving the latter two miles. We marched all
night on the 13th, camped at Camden on the 16th, sent
out a foraging trip of 440 wagons on the 17th, the
Confederates attacking and capturing the same and
taking also our two 12-pound Howitzers, which were
the pets of the regiment. On the 19th Steele sent out a
train to Pine Bluff, of about 500 six-mule teams which
were also captured by the Southerners. We then moved
one mile northeast of Camden, where the enemy fired
on our pickets on the 16th of April, and we then moved
across Washita River, cut up eighty-three wagons, burned
most of our camp equipment, and marched five miles
on the 26th. On the 27th we marched thirteen miles and
camped at Princeton, and on the 28th marched seventeen
miles. The Confederates had fought with the rear guard
on the 26th, and we then moved the train, artillery and
cavalry across the Saline River on a rubber pontoon
bridge, the infantry remaining on the west side. We
had a hard fight with Kirby Smith and Price and drove
them back with heavy loss, the Second Colored Infantry
capturing two pieces of artillery. We moved five miles
and secured something to eat, crossed at Jenkins Ferry
April 30, 1864, moved thirty miles and buried the bal-
ance of our train May 1st, reached Little Rock on the
3rd, crossed the Arkansas River at Little Rock on the
8th, and arrived at Fort Smith, May 17tli. We then
marched six miles south of that place and camped on
the south side of Mazard’s Prairie on the 29th, and had
a review and went to a dance on the 9th of July. Gano ’s
Confederates, about 1900 strong, attacked our camp of
about 200 men on July 22nd at 7 o’clochk, A. M., and
killed about thirteen of us, wounded twenty and took
125 prisoners, but my mule ‘Chaney’ (the best animal
on earth) took me out safe. We moved the camp to
Fort Smith on the 27th and when the Confederates drove
in our pickets, the Sixth Kansas went out with Colonel
Judson in command and scrimmaged a little, the colonel
getting hit in the leg with grape shot. We were then re-
enforced by two pieces of Smith’s battery and dis-
mounted one of the Confederate guns, driving them out
of the woods on the 31st. On October 13th we camped
at Fort Gibson, and at Baxter Springs on the 21st, and
marched up Cow Creek, where the enemy captured and
burnt the train, on the 23rd. We reached Fort Scott
on that same day, and two days later Generals Marma-
duke and Cable were taken prisoners with 448 men from
Price’s army, twelve miles northeast of Fort Scott. We
reached Kansas City October 13, 1864. I never lost a
day ’s duty or took a dose of medicine, was never
wounded, and was discharged in January, 1865. The
above is merely an outline of the many incidents which
occurred during the service of myself and comrades in
the old Sixth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry.”

After the close of his military services, Mr. Bartles
returned to the home of his father, and continued to be
associated with him until his marriage in 1868, at which
time he located on his wife ’s farm in Wyandotte County,
Kansas, remaining there until 1873. In that year, at
Silver Lake, a point six miles southeast of the present
location of Bartlesville, and in a log house, Mr. Bartles
commenced his career as a merchant. In 1874 he built
a better 'building and moved his stock there, and in
1877 built the first flour mill in Indian Territory, on
Caney River, northeast of where Bartlesville now stands.
In 1878 he built a two-story frame building, 25 by 100
feet, near the mill, for a storeroom and residence and
moved to it. In 1878 he planted the first wheat grown
on Caney River and the followng year furnished seed
to other farmers in order to increase wheat growing,
an industry in which he continued to be engaged for a
number of years, raising his banner crop of 45,000

bushels in the early ’90s. During the same period Mr.
Bartles engaged in the cattle raising business, in the
walnut log and lumber business at various places in
the Cherokee Nation, and in the mercantile business at
Alluwee, Pawhuska, Claremore, Milltown, Nowata and
Old Bartlesville. Mr. Bartles also built what is now
the Santa Fe Railroad from Caney, Kansas, to Collins-
ville, Oklahoma, in 1898-1899, and moved to Dewey in
the following year.

The Turkey Creek store and residence, in which his
son, Joseph A. Bartles, was born, was moved to the
mill at Old Bartlesville, and there used as a furniture
and cabinet shop and later was moved to Dewey and
is now the home of the Dewey World. The two-story
frame store and residence erected at the mill was made
of black walnut and was the best building in the
Cherokee Nation when erected with the exception of
the capitol building at Tahlequah. This building was
also moved to Dewey, stood across the street from the
First National Bank, and now stands opposite the Hotel
Dewey, which Mr. Bartles built in 1889 and which
always continued to be his home.

Mr. Bartles always referred with pride to the fact
that during his early business career in Indian Territory,
he had in his employ J. F. Campbell of Nowata, John
Bullet of Claymore, George B. Keeler, William Johnstone,
N. T. Carr and Frank Overlees of Bartlesville, A. H.
Gibson of Pawhuska and H. M. Brent of Dewey. He
added that these men, many of whom are now leading
citizens of Oklahoma, were all faithful employes and
that it was very gratifying to him to know that they
had become prosperous, prominent business men of
the communities in which they made their homes.

On October 1, 1868, at Leavenworth, Kansas, Mr.
Bartles was married to Mrs. Nannie M. ( Journeycake)
Pratt, who was born August 28, 1843, a daughter of the
Rev. Charles and Jane (Sancia) Journeycake. They
moved to the Cherokee Nation in 1873 and there were
remarried according to the laws and customs of the
Cherokee Nation. Rev. Charles Journeycake was a
chief of the Delawares and an ordained Baptist clergy-
man and did missionary work all through the territory,
never accepting one cent for his services, but making
his own living by farming. He was the organizer of
the Baptist Church at Alluwee. He died in 1894 and
Mrs. Journeycake in 1893. Their children were as fol-
lows: Mary E., deceased, who married Charles H. Arm-

strong; Rachel, deceased, who was the wife of N. J.
Tanner; Nannie M., who is the widow of Colonel
Bartles; Lucy Jane, deceased, , who was the wife of
Henry Armstrong; Baron Stowe, who died at the age of
three years; Emeline, who is the wife of J. E. Campbell
of Nowata; Adeline, deceased, who was the wife of
Samuel Love; Anna, deceased, who married Henry Arm-
strong, the widower of her sister Lucy; Cora Lee, de-
ceased, who was the wife of William Carey, and an
infant daughter, deceased

Mrs. Bartles was given excellent educational advan-
tages, attending the Delaware Baptist Mission at Den
nison, Kansas, and spending one year in the Baptist
College, at Granville, Ohio. She Vas the first Christian
woman along the Caney River, and on one occasion con-

given
perna
and li
listing
lueste

ducted the funeral services over an infant, there being; pa the i

no minister near. She has always been an active religious
worker, organized the Baptist Church at Dewey, and y,
has held all offices in the church and Sunday school,"
having been church clerk until 1913. In 1904 Mrs.
Bartles conceived the idea of building, a monument to
the memory of her father, and also of aiding the Baptist
Church work in the Town of Dewey. The present beau-
tiful memorial Baptist Church of Dewey is the out-
growth of that idea, the church being completed at a

lepmer
and it i
tali
ff an
if' the

ietermii

bit of

fhe Coi
itertaii
if Mr.
ias Wei
lai

raliaj
lack Tlii

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2085

cost of $5,000, and is known as The Journeycake
Memorial Baptist Church of Dewey. The dedicatory
services were held Sunday, November 25, 1906, when
Rev. J. S. Murrow, a venerable Indian missionary of
Atoka, Indian Territory, conducted the services.

Mrs. Bartles was married first to L. B. Pratt, who
was first engaged in the lumber business at Leavenworth
but turned his attention to farming when his health
failed. He went from Shurtleff to Denison, and
graduated from the latter institution. His death oc-
curred in 1865, he having been the father of three chil-
dren: Nonie, born March 2, 1861, who married J. J.

Barndollar, of Coffeyville, Kansas, and has one son,
Pratt; 'Ella May, born May 14, 1863, who married
Prank Neilson, of Coffeyville, Kansas, and has one
daughter, Nonie; and Ida P., born November 7, 1865,
who married A. H. Gibson, of Coffeyville, Kansas, afid
has one daughter, Mary Ella. Mr. and Mrs. Bartles
were the parents of two children: Charles, born August
13, 1869, who died September 6, 1870; and Joseph A.,
born December 15, 1873, who now resides at Dewey.

Colonel Bartles always took the greatest interest in
the Grand Army of the Republic, and it is with a large
degree of satisfaction that the members of his family
reflect upon the great pleasure which came to him when
he entertained the survivors of his regiment, the Sixth
Kansas Cavalry, in a three days’ reunion at Dewey, in
September, 1908. A very sick man at the time he was
still able to attend most of the campfires and those
present will never forget his beaming countenance as he
beat time to the campaign songs. A short account, as
copied from one of the local newspapers, is herewith
given: “Dressed in gala attire, with flags, bunting,

pennants and streamers flying from every available pole
and building around the square, Dewey is this week as-
They sisting Uncle 'Jake’ Bartles in the entertainment of his
guests, the survivors of the Sixth Kansas Cavalry. This
is the twenty-fourth annual reunion of the famous old
regiment and all of the survivors, who are in attendance,
are the guests at the Dewey Hotel of J. H. Bartles.
The illness of the latter, who is confined to his cot on
the veranda of the hotel, serves to mar the pleasure of
the occasion. Mr. Bartles is able, however, to sit up
and converse with his guests who are coming to the
entertainment on every incoming train. In connection
with the entertainment of his old regiment, which will
last three days, Mr. Bartles has arranged for a general
reunion which will be attended by the old soldiers of all
regiments. This is the first day of the entertainment
and it is starting with a swing that promises to make it
a notable event. The crowds began gathering late yester-
day and today the people are coming from all points
of the compass. Dewey threatens to be taxed to the
extreme in caring for her guests, but the people have
letermined to render all assistance they can to make the
visit of 'Uncle Jake’s’ guests as pleasant as possible.
The Commercial Club is taking a leading part in the
intertainment. The old cannon brought from Washington

Baptist oy Mr. Bartles was brought down from Sedan, a band
■ las been secured for the three days and nights and excur-
sions have been arranged on the Cement company’s road
find the interurban to Bartlesville. ’ ’

It was not long after the foregoing was written that
Colonel Bartles passed away, at 6 o’clock, A. M.,
Ictober 18, 1908. His death, which was due to Bright’s
lisease, occurred at the Bartles Hotel, Dewey, it being
ibout four years from the time that the disease had
irst demonstrated itself. With his old spirit and energy,
le valiantly battled against it, and the courage and
pluck which had characterized his entire life probably

added a year or more to it. It will not be inappropriate
to close this all too inadequate a review of one of Okla-
homa’s builders and benefactors, to quote from an article
which appeared in the Dewey Sentinel, June 9, 1911,
and which was written by Judge Andrew H. Norwood;
a lifelong friend of Colonel Bartles, and himself a
pioneer of this country and familiar with its develop-
ment during the past half a century. The article re-
ferred to says in part:

“In 1872 Capt. J. H. Bartles with his family located
at Silver Lake, a few miles south of Dewey, and opened
a store and at the same time put in a sawmill on the
Verdigris River, some twenty-five miles east, the mill
being the first institution of the kind ever seen in this
section of the country. After two or three years he
moved his store and residence to Whiteturkey Creek
and continued business there for several years and at
the same time opened a big farm just west of this
city and used every means within his power to pro-
mote agricultural development and achieved great suc-
cess in that direction.

“Then he began the construction of the big flouring
mill that still stands a monument to his energy and
enterprise on the bank of the Caney, some three miles
south of the city. He entered upon this undertaking
against the strenuous advice of his family and friends,
whose opposition was of such a character as would have
discouraged a less sturdy and determined man. In a
few years he had induced many farmers to locate
throughout the surrounding country and develop wheat
lands, furnished them seed and implements on long credit
and in other substantial ways helping them to get a
start, until eventually he demonstrated that this valley
was one of the greatest wheat producing sections of the
world, and his mill and store became one of the greatest
distributing points in the Southwest. At the same time
he was extensively engaged in the cattle business and
many other enterprises all. of which proved successful.

“This industrialism and enormous productiveness was
hampered by the primitive methods of transportation
prevailing at that time and to overcome this disadvantage
Colonel Bartles conceived the idea of building a railroad
and telegraph and telephone lines and thus to get in
closer touch with the outside world. He organized a
company and became its president and general manager
and at his own expense began at once the construction
from Caney, Kansas, south of what is now the Atchison,
Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, and when graded from
Caney to Collinsville, he sold it to the company under
whose name it is now operated. Desiring a more suitable
location than the one on the river and one better adapted
to all his pursuits and varied interests, he came up on
to the high rolling prairie about four miles north and
laid out and platted a townsite, and commemorative of
the world-famed hero whose marvelous exploit in Manila
Bay just at that time had stirred the civilized world
and fired the hearts of his countrymen with a military
ardor almpst beyond conception — Admiral George
Dewey — he gave to the future city the name of Dewey.
This was accomplished in 1898 and Colonel Bartles pro-
ceeded to move his holdings on the river to the new
town, the most healthful, beautiful and accessible point
on the line of his new railroad and away from floods,
marshes, swamps, impure water, and in every way
superior to his former location on the river or what is
now the city of Bartlesville.

“It has been charged that Colonel Bartles founded
Dewey in a spirit of selfishness and self aggrandizement,
prompted by a desire to obliterate the growing settle-
ment of Bartlesville that had sprung into existence at
his former location on the river, the fact of its growth

2086

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

bringing into existence interests competitive with his
own. The statement is unfounded in fact and conceived
in fiction and refuted by the footprints along the trail
of his indefatigable efforts to develop a new country,
-every change he made being inspired by advancing con-
ditions of the development he sought and an ambition,
to conserve to the utmost the rapidly growing com-
mercial and community interests of the wonderful new
country he loved and whose future greatness was re-
vealed to this remarkable man and pioneer almost with
the eye of prophecy.

‘ ‘ In passing from the story of the birth of Dewey to
Col. J. H. Bartles, its founder, a tribute is due. He was
the pioneer merchant, miller and farmer and was the
first man to establish in the state electric light and
waterworks plant; was always the first and foremost
and the most liberal in promoting educational, moral
and all public utilities and in all these undertakings was
generous to a fault. In founding and building Dewey
he was prompted and governed by the same spirit and
judgment that had directed his actions throughout the
whole of his busy and successful life. In 1908 he died
after laying down his manifold interests and with the
happy reflection that Dewey was on the high road to a
realization of his ambitions of a splendid city, and time
and the future will reveal that there was nothing chimer-
ical in his scheme to meet the demands of a new and
magnificent commonwealth, and this city will remain for
all time a monument to his genius and magnanimity.”

Archibald W. Turner. At Alexandria, the judicial
center of Eapides County, Louisiana, July 9, 1869,
recorded the birth of the present county attorney of
Payne County, Oklahoma, and in the vital young state
of his adoption he has gained secure place as one of
the able and successful members of its bar; his place of
residence has been City of Stillwater, the county seat,
since 1911.

Mr. Turner is a scion of one of the patrician old
French families that was founded in New Orleans, Louisi-
ana, when that state was still a province, and the original
orthography of the family name was Tournaire. Mr.
Turner. is a son of Squire Turner and Sally (Stone)
Turner, and his father was born in Louisiana, where
he was reared and educated, and where he continued to
maintain his home until 1872, when, immediately after
his marriage, he removed to Missouri, his father, Archi-
bald Tournaire, having been a native of France and
having come to America soon after the battle of Waterloo
brought disaster to the imperial forces of the great
Napoleon, under whom he had served as a soldier in a
cavalry command. Upon coming to America he estab-
lished his residence in Louisiana, and he was the owner
of a fine plantation near Alexandria, Eapides Parish,
that state, at the time of his death. The mother of the
subject of this review was born at Eiehmond, Kentucky,
and she now passes her time in the homes of her children,
who accord to her the deepest filial love and solicitude,
she having celebrated in 1915 the seventy-second anni-
versary of her birth, and her honored husband having
died at Columbia, Boone County, Missouri, in 1906, at
the age of seventy-two years. Mrs. Turner is of stanch
Scotch lineage, her ancestors having settled in Maryland
in the colonial era of our national history, and representa-
tives of the family having been valiant soldiers of the
Continental line in the war of the Eevolution, and one
of her ancestors, Thomas Stone, having been a signer
of the Declaration of Independence. He whose name
initiates this article is the eldest in a family of three
children : Mary Hood is the wife of Edward W. Hinton,

who is head of the chair of evidence and pleading in the
law department of the great University of Chicago; and

Catherine Elizabeth is the wife of Judge Oliver M.
Spencer, who resides in St. Joe, Missouri, and who is now
chief counsel of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Bail-]
road Company for the territory west of the Mississippi!
Eiver.

Archibald W. Turner was about three years old ati
the time of the family removal to Columbia, Boone!
County, Missouri, where he was reared to maturity, and
where he acquired his early education in the public;
schools. There he was graduated in the law department
of the University of Missouri, as a member of the class,
of 1892, and after thus receiving his degree of Bachelor]
of Laws he continued to be engaged in the practice of
his profession at Columbia until 1908, when he came
to the newly organized State of Oklahoma and engaged]
in practice at Altus, county seat of Jackson County.]
About one year later he removed to Hobart, judicial
edhter of Kiowa County, and in 1911 he established his
permanent home at Stillwater, the thriving capital of
Payne County, where he has since continued in the sue]
cessful general practice of law and has built up a sub]
stantial and representative business, in connectiou with
which he has appeared in much of the important litigation
in the courts of this section of the state. He served two
terms as city attorney of Columbia, Missouri, and in
1914 he was elected county attorney of Payne County,
an office in which he is giving a most vigorous ami
effective administration. Mr. Turner is a stalwart in the
local camp of the democratic party, is a loyal and pro-
gressive citizen, and in a fraternal way he is affiliated
with the lodge of the Benevolent and Protective Ordcf
of Elks at Hobart.

In 1910 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Titrnej
to Mrs. Clara Farley, whose first husband is survived
by one son, Max, a sturdy boy who gives cheer to the
home circle, no children having been born to Mr. and! liis a
Mrs. Turner.

Mr. Turner’s paternal and maternal ancestors were
slave holders, and both families were earnest supporter
of the Confederate cause during the period of the Civi
war. It is thus but natural that Mr. Turner himsel
should retain a full sympathy with the principles foi
which the Southern States contended as their inhereii
right, though his loyalty to the now undivided nation o
his birth is of the most insistent order.

his f,

partic

Ionia, i
■ Wife

Hon. Wilbereorce Jones. Among the leaders of th
Payne County bar, no name is held in higher esteenj
than that of Hon. Wilberforee Jones, a thorough, learnec
and talented legist, a practical citizen of public-spiritec
views and a courteous, finished gentleman of the oli ileCm
school. He has been engaged in practice at Cush in
since January 1, 1913, and during this time has add©
to the reputation which he gained first in Missouri an
later in Lincoln County, Oklahoma. Mr. Jones was bor.
in Cass County, Michigan, April 27, 1846, and is a so:
of William H. and Catherine (Messike) Jones.

The great-grandfather of Wilberforee Jones was th
original settler of the family in America, coming froi
Wales and locating in Virginia as early as 1792. Late
he became a pioneer of Madison County, Indiana, sei
tling on virgin land in the vicinity of what is nojj
Pendleton, where he passed the remaining years of h] 11,1863,
life in clearing the timber and brush, draining
swamps, and making a home for his family. His deal
occurred in 1835. His son, Smith Jones, was born :
Virginia and accompanied his parents to Indiana, whe:
his early years were passed amid pioneer surrounding

tl SCompai

;a1 sued nnt

fill, Sep

He was an industrious and energetic man and throng ISM, nnde

years of hard work managed to accumulate a satisfyii
property. His death occurred in 1834, in Indiana, ai
there the grandmother also died.

f: Mi
M the
only
feaici
Ktifying
Parade, a
plwarts

•i faithf

fcfeld
•Mam I
min agC)

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2087

William H. Jones was born near Pendleton, Madison
County, Indiana, in 1818, and after a number of years
spent in farming there went to Cass County, Michigan.
In the spring of 1853 he started from Michigan in an
ox-team, traveling slowly across the country and finally
arriving at his destination in Brown County, Kansas,
in November of that year, and locating in the vicinity
of what is now Hiawatha. He was an abolitionist and
became a squatter under the Abolition Aid Society. This
was at a time when the slavery and abolition parties were
engaged in a series of conflicts, which continued for sev-
eral years, fights taking place, towns being burned, and
illegal voting freely indulged in. In these contests
William H. Jones was a frequent participant. In 1855
there came to Kansas John Brown, who afterward fre-
quently made his headquarters at the home of Mr. Jones,
but the latter, while a warm friend of this impulsive
opponent of slavery, endeavored in every way to keep
him from going to Virginia, trying to impress upon him
tha fact that his act would be looked upon as one of
treason. Wilberforee Jones still retains a vivid memory
of John Brown, who, as is known, went to Virginia,
surprised and captured the arsenal at Harper’s Perry,
October 16, 1859, but on the following day was wounded
and captured and taken a prisoner by the Virginia
militia, and was tried and executed at Charlestown,
December 2, 1859. Mr. Jones remembers that his father
traveled with Brown through Kansas, that they would
t\ilk for hours, and that for one whole day Brown pleaded
with the elder Jones to become one of the party in the
journey to Virginia that resulted so disastrously.

During the Civil war William H. Jones served the
Union cause as captain of Company B, First United
States Colored Infantry, and at the close of the struggle
returned to Kansas, where for a short time he resumed
his agricultural operations. In 1866 he removed with
his family to Jasper County, Missouri, and that state
continued to be his home until his retirement from active
participation in farming and stock raising, when he
removed to San Benito County, California. There he
died in 1893. Mr. Jones was married at Pendleton,
Indiana, to Catherine Messike. who was born in Hardin
County, Kentucky, and reared in Indiana, and whose
death occurred in San Benito County, California, in 1899,
when she was seventy-six years of age. They were the
parents of four sons: Chester G., who served in Com-

pany A, Ninth Kansas Cavalry, for 4% years during the
Civil war period, and died at Hiawatha, Kansas, in 1905;
D. C., of Newton County, Missouri, who served 1% years
as a member of the Thirteenth Kansas Infantry during
the Civil war; Wilberforee; and James M., whose death
occurred in a runaway accident at San Francisco, Cali-
fornia, in 1912.

Wilberforee Jones was a lad of seven years when he
accompanied his parents in the long overland journey
from Michigan to Kansas, and his boyhood was passed
amid the turbulent scenes that preceded secession. He
was only ten years of age when he began to show his
allegiance to the republican' party by carrying a banner
ratifying the nomination of Fremont in a republican
parade, and from that time to the present has been a
stalwart supporter of the Grand Old Party. On February
26, 1863, when not yet seventeen years of age, he enlisted
in Company C, Seventh Kansas Cavalry, with which he
,y served until receiving his honorable discharge at Leaven-
worth, September 29. 1865, participating in a number of
engagements, and, despite his youth, displaying courage
and faithfulness to duty at all times. In November,
tronj 1864, under special act of Congress allowing soldiers
jjfyi in the field to vote, he cast his first ballot, in support of
aai Abraham Lincoln. His vote was challenged, as he was
1 under age, but-Adjt. Maj. John Utt, who was one of

the judges of election, demanded that he be permitted
his franchise on his military record.

•After the war Mr. Jones went with his family to
Missouri, but soon left home for the western plains, where
he spent five years in the hard and exciting life of the
cowboy. When he returned to Missouri he began the
study of law, after some years spent in farming, and
was admitted to the bar at West Plains, Missouri, in
1887, with permission to practice in the state and federal
courts. He soon gained an important and satisfying
practice and took an active part in public affairs, and
in 1899 was elected to the Fortieth General Assembly
of Missouri, a body in which he discharged his duties
capably and energetically. He remained in Missouri
until 1906, when he came to Oklahoma and settled in
Lincoln County, where for one term, 1910 to 1912, he
served in the capacity of county attorney. Since Janu-
ary 1, 1913, his field of practice has been the City of
Cushing, where he is recognized as one of Payne County ’s
most able practitioners. Mr. Jones has maintained his
interest in his old army comrades and is a valued and
popular member of the local post of the Grand Army of
the Republic, and was department commander of the
Grand Army of the Republic of Oklahoma in 1912.
With his family he attends the Christian Church.

In 1887 Mr. Jones was married to Miss Laura Roberts,
who was born in 1867, in Illinois, and to this union there
have been born four children: Anna Fay, who is the

wife of Fred D. Riddle, of Cushing; George W., a tele-
graph operator for the Prairie Oil and Gas Company at
Independence, Oklahoma; Lottie, who is the wife of
Jesse Jones, a telephone operator for the Magnum Oil
Company; and Walter Wilberforee, who is attending
high school at Cushing, Oklahoma.

Adam Focht. The world looks on with peculiar satis-
faction and pleasure when a career of struggle and
adversity meets an overflowing and abundant prosperity.
None could justly begrudge Adam Focht and wife the
fortune that has rewarded their later years. Mr. Focht
was one of the early settlers in Payne County, resides
at Stillwater, has been a farmer there for a quarter of
a century, but is rapidly being made wealthy through a
foresighted investment he made a few years ago in Creek
County, where he owns land in one of the richest oil
fields of the world.

About forty years ago Mr. and Mrs. Focht were com-
bating with grim determination and industry the vicis-
situdes of life on the western prairies. Both had been
reared in Iowa when that state was almost on the frontier.
They married and started life poor. After renting for
a time they went out to Gage County, Nebraska, in 1875,
at the time the Otoe Indian Reservation was opened for
settlement. Adam Focht was the ninth white settler to
locate on that reservation. People of the present time
have difficulty in understanding what difficulties and
hardships the early settlers of Nebraska endured. There
was a long chain of evils, dry weather, grasshoppers, hot
winds, uncertain crops, lack of markets, dugouts and sod
houses, and hardly was one obstacle overcome before
another even greater sprung up.

Mr. and Mrs. Focht struggled along, both of them
hiring out at times in order to make a little money to pay
household expenses. At one time it seemed that their
cup of misfortune was full and running over. Without
money in the house, they lost their only cow, and one of
their team of horses was crippled. Mr. Focht wanted to
sell his claim then, but his wife said no, stick and we
will get along some way. Persistence has its reward.
They remained, developed a good farm, and with better
times they had some money when they came to Oklahoma,
the year after it was opened to settlement. In Payne

2088

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

County they took another stake in a new country, and
there gradually developed a good farm, and from the
proceeds Mr. Focht was able to buy a tract of cheap
land in Creek County, but which today is situated in
the midst of the great oil fields around Shamrock. At
the present writing Mr. Focht has twelve producing oil
wells, the first one brought in on December 23, 1915,
and the last one only a few days before this is being
written. In the five months and eight days from Decem-
ber 23, 1915, to June 12, 1916, his royalties from all
amounted to $35,213.85. There is still room for more
wells on his farm and it would be impossible to estimate
the ultimate value of his property. Considering all they
went through in the early years, certainly Mr. and Mrs.
Focht deserve a bright fortune to illuminate their clos-
ing years. Their thought now is chiefly of their children,
and the wealth which is coming in from the royalties is
being chiefly invested in farms for his sons.

Adam Focht was born in Auglaize County, Ohio, April
27, 1847, a son of Lewis and Martha (Balyliff) Focht.
His father was born in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania,
of German ancestry. The mother was born probably in
Philadelphia, of English parentage, and she was reared a
Quaker. They were married in Ohio, and the mother
died there at the age of thirty-two. Later the father,
who was a farmer, moved to Fremont County, Iowa, and
bought a farm where he spent the rest of his days, dying
at the age of seventy-five. He was a democrat.

Adam Focht was about seven or eight years of age
when his father moved out to Iowa. He grew up on
the home farm, and received a limited education in the
graded schools. When about seventeen his own career
of adventure began. During 1862-63 he crossed the
plains, driving a team with provisions to Julesburg,
Colorado, and subsequently taking provisions to Fort
Laramie, Wyoming. That was a time when the Indians
were on the warpath, and he witnessed much of the
exciting scenes of the period. He witnessed a massacre
in 1863 in which thirty-five white men were killed by
the Indians near Poll Creek. Returning home, he rented
one of his father’s farms for three years, then operated
the home place two years, and in the meantime having
married he set out in 1875 for the recently opened Indian
reservation in Gage County, Nebraska. He and his good
wife lived there for thirteen years.

In 1890 he came to Oklahoma and took up a home-
stead in Payne County. He proved up his claim, and has
lived there ever since, though he also has a residence
in Stillwater and lived there for the purpose of educating
his children in the local schools. While his family were
in town he spent most of his time on the farm.

It was in 1911 that Mr. Focht went to Creek County
and bought 200 acres near where the Town of Shamrock
now stands. In 1912 he moved to this land, cleared
some of it, and in the following year rented it to his
son. Then in the fall of 1915 it was included in the
rich strike of oil, and one of his twelve wells now
produced 2,500 barrels. He has leased the property to
the Gipey Oil Company and receives an eighth royalty.
He sold an interest in part of his land, but what he
still owns is a fortune.

On New Year’s day, in 1872, Mr. Focht married Miss
Addie Fletcher. She was born in Fremont County, Iowa,
August 29, 1856, a daughter of Vardaman and Drusilla
(Shaw) Fletcher. Her father was a native- of Indiana
and her mother of Tennessee, and they were married
in Buchanan County, Missouri, and from there moved to
Fremont County, Iowa. Vardaman Fletcher was the
second white settler in Fremont County and was there
at such an early time that once or twice he was driven
out by hostile Indians. He spent many years in Fremont
and Mills counties and was a very successful farmer.

In 1875 he also went out to Nebraska and improved land
in that state, and in the year that Oklahoma was first
opened to settlement he again took up pioneering, though
then well advanced in years, and secured a homestead in
Payne County, which after improving he sold. For a
time he was engaged in the grocery business at Perkins,
and then made his home with his children until he died,
in 1898, when about seventy-five years of age. His wife
had died in Nebraska in 1891 at the age of sixty -four.
He was a member of the Methodist Church.

Mrs. Focht remained in the old home until her mar-
riage, and then she, too, showed her dauntless spirit by
becoming a pioneer with her husband, and by her exhibi-
tion of nerve in the face of adverse conditions she
deserves a great share of the credit for the prosperity
that has since come to them. Mrs. Focht is a member of
the Methodist Church and of the Ladies’ Aid Society.
On July 6, 1916, Mr. Focht rounds out forty years of
active membership in the Independent Order of Odd
Fellows. ,

Through all their days of struggle they were encour-
aged by the thought that what they were doing was for
the benefit of their children. Into their home came
thirteen children, five of whom died in childhood, but the
other eight are still living. James W. is a farmer in
Payne County; Emma E., now living at St. Joseph,
Missouri, is the widow of Dennis Johnson; Jessie is the
wife of George Webb of Ripley, Oklahoma; Russell C.,
Lewis Lloyd, Ralph L. and Charles G. are all farmers in
Payne County, Charles living with his parents. The
youngest is Myrtle May Clendening, at home.

Hon. Walter R. Eaton'. Few of Oklahoma’s citizens
have been engaged in equally as many business enter-
prises as has Walter R. Eaton, of Muskogee, member
of the State Legislature from Muskogee County, and
probably none has accomplished more important things.
Since shortly before the advent of statehood, his name
has appeared as an officer or director of nearly a hundred
corporations, among them railroads, interurbans, oil and
gas developing companies and other large enterprises. A
conservationist of scientific thought, his motives have
been tinged with a hue for the public weal, while out of
his projects at the same time he has prospered indi-
vidually.

Walter R. Eaton was born at Bueyrus, Crawford
County, Ohio, in 1874, and is a son of Reason B. and
Margaret (Hayes) Eaton. His father, a native of Ohio,
was a farmer of repute, who unselfishly gave considerable
of his time to politics for the public good. Mr. Eaton’s
mother, a native of Pennsylvania, was a cousin of Presi-
dent Rutherford B. Hayes. In the family there were
five sons and two daughters: Walter R., of this review:

Mrs. Ethel Richie, who is the wife of a practicing attor-
ney of Lima, Ohio; Mrs. Walter B. Richie, who is also
the wife of a Lima lawyer; Horace P., who is engaged
in the manufacturing business at Kalamazoo, Michigan;
J. H., who is a merchant at Bueyrus, Ohio; John A., who
is a Kansas City lawyer; and Reason B., who resides
some place in the West.

Walter R. Eaton acquired his rudimentary education
in the public schools, and in 1898 passed the bar examina-
tion for entrance to the University of Michigan, at Ann
Arbor, but did not enter that institution as he was forced
into politics. Prior to that time, in 1894, he had been
appointed private secretary to Walter B. Richie, of Lima,
Ohio, supreme chancellor of the Knights of Pythias, and
served in that capacity two years, at the end of that
period succeeding himself as private secretary to the,1
successor of Mr. Richie, Philip T. Colgrove, of Hastings,
Michigan, the latter term of two years, expiring in 1898.
In 1886 his parents had removed to Winfield, Kansas,

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2089

and there Mr. Eaton made his home until going to Lima
in 1894. In 1898 he began the practice of law at Hast-
ings, Michigan, and continued there until 1901 when he
moved to Oklahoma and settled at Muskogee, this being
but a few years before the advent of statehood and the
conditions being therefore favorable for profitable promo-
tion of industries. Mr. Eaton became associated with
C. N. Haskell of Muskogee, who afterwards was governor
of the state, in various business ventures, and during
the next few years was a moving spirit in no less than
100 important undertakings in the eastern part of the
state. He has been engaged in the building of railroads,
the sale of real estate, the establishment of townsites and
the development of oil and gas properties. As president
of the park board of the City of Muskogee he supervised
the laying out and beautifying of parks until no other
city in the Southwest has an equally modern and beau-
tiful. park system. Mr. Eaton has evolved a modern park
and civic improvement plan which he intends to publish
and it will probably be adopted by the State Civic
Improvement Association, of which he is a member. His
theory deals with the utilization of ground for reasons
of thrift rather than of beauty, although he is a lover
of the beautiful in park architecture.

Mr. Eaton is the author of the work entitled “Eaton’s
Method of Pheasantry, ’ ’ which has been adopted as a
text for the propagation and rearing of pheasants in all
parts of the country. For fifteen years he has made a
study of game breeding and is one of the best informed
men in the country on the subject. His ideas depart
from those of sportsmen who advocate propagation, and
he preaches rather the doctrine of game creation as
fundamental in dealing with the game problem. His
game breeder ’s bill, introduced in the State Legislature
in 1915, is said to be one of the most advanced in the
United States. Among his latest achievements may be
mentioned the establishment of the Town of Oilton, in
the heart of one of the leading oil and gas regions of
the state. Eaton & Dunn promoted and have the sale
of the townsites of Oilton, Shamrock and Pemeta, all in
the oil belt.

Mr. Eaton was elected to the Oklahoma Legislature,
on the democratic ticket, in 1914, leading the ticket in
both the primary and general elections. He was made
chairman of the committee on revenue and taxation and
a member of the committees on public buildings, public
roads and highways, code, impeachment and removal
from office, oil and gas and fish and game. He was the
author of a bill changing the method of making tax
assessments and issuing tax receipts, a measure he esti-
mated, if adopted, would save taxpayers $150,000 an-
nually. He was the author also of a bill providing for
the removal of necessity for notice before property adver-
tised for delinquent taxes should be shorn of penalty if
paid before October 1st; a bill providing means ot
breeding game and fur-bearing animals; a bill accepting
the authority conferred by Congress on county courts
with reference to Indian matters; a bill providing for
appeal from county courts in taxation matters; a bill
creating a county excise board, and a bill providing for
the establishment of school and municipal playgrounds.
He was joint author of a bill providing the establishment
of a Pasteur Institute for the treatment of hydrophobia
and of the bill providing for a tax on the gross produc-
tion of oil and gas. He is a candidate for re-election
in the fall of 1916.

Mr. Eaton was married in December, 1911, to Miss
Lillian Pittman, daughter of Judge L. P. Pittman, of
Shawnee, Oklahoma, one of the most widely known law-
yers and legislators ' of his day in Oklahoma. By a
former wife Mr. Eaton has two children: Marquis,

aged sixteen years, who is a student at Wentworth Mili-
tary Academy, Lexington, Missouri; and Richie, who
lives with his parents and attends school at Muskogee.

Mr. Eaton is a member of the Episcopal Church. He
is fraternally identified with the Knights of Pythias, in
which he has filled all the chairs, and the Dramatic
Order of Knights of Khorassan, Of which he has been
royal vizier and is now royal prince. Mr. Eaton also
holds membership in the Muskogee Chamber of Com-
merce and the Muskogee Rotary Club.

Earl W. Sinclair of Tulsa is president of the
Exchange National Bank, the largest bank in Oklahoma
and one of the largest financial institutions in the
Southwest. He is interested in the Sinclair Oil and
Refining Corporation, which owns refineries and pro-
ducing properties all over the Mid-Continent field.

During the greater part of his active business career
he has been identified with banking and other interests
at Independence, Kansas, but about three years ago
transferred his home to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Mr. Sinclair
is a man who has come up from the ranks relying on his
keen intelligence and steady industry to promote himself
to favor and position in affairs.

He was born at Wheeling, West Virginia, May 15,
1874, a son of John and Phoebe (Simmons) Sinclair.
His father was born at Woodsfield, Ohio, and died
April 1, 1896, at the age of fifty-one. His mother was
born in Wheeling, West Virginia, and is now living at
the age of sixty- two. Both the sons, Earl W. and
Harry F., are well known and prominent men at Tulsa.
John Sinclair was in the quartermaster’s department of
the Union army during the Civil war. After the war he
engaged in the drug business at Wheeling, and in 1884
removed to Independence, Kansas, where he continued
in the same business until his death. In politics he was
first a democrat and later a republican, and both he and
his wife were members of the Congregational Church.

Earl W. Sinclair finished his public school education
at Independence, then attended the Northern Indiana
Normal School at Valparaiso. His first business expe-
rience came as clerk in the freight department of the
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railway at Chicago, and
after about five years there he moved to St. Louis and
spent about four years with a lumber company. It was
at Independence, Kansas, that he received a solid posi-
tion in business affairs. After locating there he was
agent for the Independence Gas Company for a time,
until the plant was taken over by the Kansas Natural
Gas Company, with which he continued as agent for
several years.

On January 6, 1907, he helped organize the State
Bank of Commerce at Independence, and became its
cashier. Consolidated with and became viee president of
the First National Bank of Independence on January 17,
1910. On January 14, 1913, Mr. Sinclair came to Tulsa
and became vice president of the Exchange National
Bank of this city, and in January, 1916, was elected
president of the bank succeeding P. J. White.

Some of his important business interests and rela-
tions are thus described by The Oil and Gas Journal:

‘ ‘ When the Sinclair Oil & Refining Corporation took
over the Milliken, Chanute and other properties in Okla-
homa, making it the largest oil producing and refining
company in business in Oklahoma outside of the Standard
Oil Company, Earl Sinclair was unanimously chosen
secretary and treasurer. After three months’ service
he found the duties of the office too onerous and resigned
the treasurership but is still secretary and a director of
the company. In addition to his banking interests in
Tulsa, he is one of the directors of the State National

2090

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Bank at Oklahoma City, and is a large stock holder in
several Kansas City and New York financial institutions.
He has devoted himself almost exclusively to banking
during the last ten years.”

Mr. Sinclair is a member of all the bodies of
Masonry, including Wichita Consistory of the thirty-
second degree and Akdar Temple of the Mystic Shrine.
He belongs to the Benevolent and Protective Order of
Elks, the Tulsa Commercial Club and the Country Club,
and in politics is a republican. On May 20, 1902, he
married Miss Blanche Stich of Independence, Kansas.
They have two children. Besides his beautiful home in
Tulsa Mr. Sinclair has a summer home on Buzzard Bay,
Massachusetts.

Prof. C. E. Tope. The superintendent of the Chandler
public schools is one of the leading educators of Central
Oklahoma, is a man whose experience in educational work
began when he was a boy, and has shown exceptional
ability in all phases of school work. Under his adminis-
tration the Chandler schools have reached a standard
hardly second to any in Oklahoma. The Central School
Building was erected in 1900 at a cost of about $15,000,
with eight rooms and a corps of seven teachers. In 1903
another building was erected of four rooms, with four
teachers. The colored' schools of the city are in charge
of three teachers. In the white schools there is an
enrollment of nearly 500 pupils, and 110 are in the
high school proper. The Chandler schools are conducted
for nine months in the year, and it has been the pride
of local citizens and those officially connected with the
schools to keep them up to the highest standards in
equipment and efficiency of instruction.

C. E. Tope was born at Gallipolis on the Ohio River
in the State of Ohio, February 6, 1885. His father,
Richard Tope, was a native of Ohio, and his ancestors
had settled on the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, during
colonial times. The family have contributed farmers,
mechanics, teachers and members of the various profes-
sions. Grandfather Tope was a carpenter. Richard Tope
married Rebecca Irvin, also a native of Ohio, but rep-
resenting early English settlers in Pennsylvania. When
Professor Tope was about one year old, the mother died,
leaving three children.

C. E. Tope grew up on a farm, developed his body as
well as his mind, received training in the public schools,
and began his career as a teacher at the age of sixteen.
He taught in the schools of his native county, aud during
intervals of teaching attended the Oak Hill and Rio
Grande colleges of Ohio, from which he was graduated in
1905. He continued teaching in Ohio until 1907 and then
moved to Oklahoma and was superintendent of the public
schools at Mulhall for two years. Professor Tope has
been identified with the Chandler public schools since
1909, and it is a reflection of credit upon him to say
that the local schools have enjoyed their greatest period
of improvement and advancement in all lines since he
took charge.

At Mulhall, Oklahoma, in 1908, Mr. Tope married Rosa
McCall, a woman of thorough education and culture, who
was also born in Ohio, a daughter of James McCall.
Professor Tope is active in Masonic circles, having affilia-
tion with Lodge No. 58, Ancient Free and Accepted
Masons; with the Royal Arch Chapter, No. 51; the
Knight Templar Commandery, No. 4, and Consistory of
Guthrie, Oklahoma. He has held chairs in the local
lodge and has been high priest of the chapter and is
also a member of the Scottish Rite team at Guthrie.
He and his wife take much part in the Presbyterian
Church in which he is teacher of a class of thirty men.
He possesses the broad sympathy, the thorough under-
standing of young people, so necessary to the equipment

of the educator, and possesses the faculty of imparting
not only information but the more valuable one of
inspiring his pupils to work for themselves.

Julian Trumbly. The City of Pawhuska honored
one of the most distinguished men of the old Osage
Nation by naming for him one of its beautiful streets,
Trumbly Avenue. The Trumbly family have their homfe
at 119 North Trumbly Avenue. The late Julian Trum-
bly, while identified with Pawhuska from its beginning,
spent the greater part of his active lifetime on his farm
near the Kansas line, and died there May 20, 1912.

He was not only one of the pioneers and active mem-
bers of the Osage Nation but a citizen whose interests
extended in many directions, including large business
affairs, and he was frequently delegated for official duties
in connection with the tribal government and every posi-
tion of honor and trust was well bestowed in his case.

Inheriting his Osage citizenship through his mo'ther,
Julian Trumbly was born at Kansas City, Kansas, Sep-
tember 13, 1850, a son of Francis Louis and Lorene
Trumbly. His father was of French ancestry and his
mother partly French and a quarter blood Osage. They
were regularly enrolled among the tribe in Neosho Coun-
ty, Kansas, and both died at St. Paul in that state.
They were survived by three sons: Francis, Julian and

John Baptiste, all of whom are now deceased.

In the late ’60s Julian Trumbly accompanied the other
members of the Osage tribe to Indian Territory and in
company with the venerable Indian agent of that time,
Isaac Gibson, assisted in locating the old agency at
what is now Pawhuska. He was employed in a store for
several years until after his marriage, and in 1875 moved
to a farm near the state line in the Caney Valley, and for
forty years that farm was his home and the center of his
extended activities in business.

In 1906 Mr. Trumbly served as an Osage . townsite
commissioner, and helped to lay out all the towns in
Osage County, including Pawhuska. He was prominent
in tribal affairs from the early days and made many
trips to Washington as an Osage delegate. He spent one
entire winter, four months, in Washington acting for the
Osage people in company with William T. Leahy. For
many years he was a member of the Osage Council, and
at one time declined the high honor of election as chief
of the nation. In a business way the late Mr. Trumbly
was interested in the Southern Kansas Supply Company
of Elgin, was identified with the First National Bank
of Pawhuska and had interests in three other banks, was
a stockholder in the Pawhuska Oil & Gas Company and
the Pawhuska-Cleveland Oil & Gas Company. For many
years he gave active supervision to the large landed inter-
ests of his family, their aggregate allotment comprising
about twelve sections of land. In politics Mr. Trumbly
was a democrat, and was reared in and was always faith-
ful to the Catholic Church.

On February 10, 1873, he married Miss Eliza Ann
Tinker, who was born in Neosho County, Kansas, Sep-
tember 11, 1854, and came to Indian Territory with the
removal of the Osages from Southern Kansas. Her par-
ents were George and Lucretia (La Shappel) Tinker, and
through her mother she inherits one-fourth French blood
and three-quarters Osage. The Tinker family has long
been prominent in the Osage country, and further infor-
mation concerning its members will be found on othei
pages. Mrs. Trumbly is still living at the old family resi
denee in Pawhuska. She was the mother of nine children
George Francis is a farmer in Osage County. Mary E. i:
the wife of A. J. McClintock of Osage County. Maude C
is the wife of Bruce Todd of Osage County. Clarence A
is a merchant at Elgin, Kansas. Oliver W. lives on th<
old homestead in the northern part of Osage County

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2091

Henry is also a farmer in that county. Augusta is the
■wife of Bruce Hendricks, a farmer in the Caney Valley
of Osage County. Charles was married February 14, 1915,
to Minna A. Chambers, and they live in Pawhuska.
Theresa, the youngest child, is still at home with her
mother.

Waldo E. Moeeis, a prominent young attorney of
Harper County, now filling the office of county attorney,
has been identified with that section of the state for the
past fifteen years, was a homesteader and farmer, then
took up the law, and a few years ago gravitated into
journalism, and is now editor and manager of the May
Record at May.

He was eighteen years old when his family came to
Oklahoma. Mr. Morris was born in a log house on a
farm in Jasper County, Illinois, March 25, 1883, his
parents being James and Ora J. (Melton) Morris. His
father was born April 9, 1854, in Ohio, and has spent
his active career as a farmer and merchant. In 1901 he
brought his family to Oklahoma, and he is now in the
hotel business at May. In 1879 he married Miss Melton,
who was born in 1860, a daughter of John Melton, a
native of Illinois, and her death occurred February 14,
1890. She is survived by five children, four sons and one
daughter, as follows: Clinton, born in 1881 and a farmer
in Ellis County, Oklahoma; Waldo E.; Emmons Gray,
born December 20, 1884; Verna Valeria, born September
20, 1887, was married in 1906 to Robert V. Patton, a
farmer of Ellis County; and John Israel, born August 31,
1889, and a farmer in Ellis County.

Waldo E. Morris received his public school education in
I Jasper County, Illinois. When he came to Oklahoma in
11901 he located a claim of Government land in Woodward
1 County, and vigorously followed up his business as a
[practical farmer and homesteader until 1909. With
[such money as he had been able to acquire and save he
entered Washburn College at Topeka, Kansas, and was
graduated LL. B. from the law class in 1912. In that
year he began practice at May, and has done very well
in his profession.

In 1914 he was elected county attorney of Harper
County. His election came on the Socialist ticket and for
several years he has been a recognized leader in that
party in Oklahoma. In 1914 he bought the May Record
and has made it a vigorous exponent of the principles of
socialism, and has not only extended its circulation
throughout Harper County, but to many remote points
in the state. Individually and through his paper he has
i constantly espoused the cause of political reform.
Mr. Morris deserves the credit of having inaugurated a
state usury league, and this league brought about the
passage of new usury measures through the State Legis-
lature.

On February 20, 1909, Mr. Morris married Miss Lilly
Frances Getz, who was born in Effingham County, Illi-
nois, September 20, 1889, a daughter of William and
Elizabeth Getz, who were also natives of Illinois.
Mr. and Mrs. Morris have four children: Lillian Eliza-
beth, born November 6, 1909; Theodore Earl, born
December 20, 1911 ; Thera May, born April 20, 1913 ; and
Erma Catherine, born February 20, 1915.

Clyde Musgeove. Though for a number of years his
principle work has been in the postoffice at El Reno,
where he is now senior clerk under the civil service rules,
Clyde Musgrove is a well known newspaper man and
writer, and as cartoonist, correspondent, editor and
publisher was identified with several of the prominent
sarly papers in the western section of the state.

He was born December 11, 1874, at South Haven,

Kansas, son of Jacob R. and Isabella C. ‘(Graham) Mus-
grove. The late Jacob R. Musgrove was prominent as a
pioneer both in Kansas and Oklahoma. He was born in
Jackson County, Ohio, of which state his parents were
also natives, and of Scotch stock Reared on a farm,
Jacob R. Musgrove served full four years as a private
in Company E of the Twenty-second Ohio Volunteer
Infantry. He was with his regiment in all its battles
and campaigns, followed Sherman on his march from
Atlanta to the sea, and was finally mustered out at
Washington, D. C.

In 1870, some years after the close of the war, he
moved into the sparsely settled and undeveloped districts
of Southern Kansas, acquiring a tract of Government
land in Pottawatomie County. In 1872 he opened one of
the first stores at Winfield, Kansas. In 1873 he founded
the Town of South Haven in Sumner . County. For a
number of years he was one of the leading merchants
along the South Kansas border, erecting stores at old
Salt City, Guelph and South Haven. He was the first
and for many years was postmaster at South Haven.
His stores along the border of Indian Territory were
conducted largely as Indian trading posts. In the
early days be organized and maintained an ox wagon
freighting train for the hauling of supplies to the
Fort Reno and Darlington agency.

In 1889 the late Jacob R. Musgrove participated in
the original Oklahoma opening, and located at old Reno
City. The railroad avoided that town, and he moved
and identified himself with the new railroad station at
the present City of El Reno, having acquired a home-
stead right near the town. This homestead is still a
part of his estate, and is situated a mile east of El Reno.
Jacob R. Musgrove was a prominent republican, and
took part in the organization of Canadian County. He
was a member of the Masonic order and of the Grand
Army of the Republic. His death occurred at South
Haven, Kansas, July 28, 1899.

Jacob R. Musgrove and wife were married January
27, 1874. They were the parents of two sons and two
daughters, namely: Clyde; Birdie, deceased; Carl, a
resident of Oklahoma City; and Edith, deceased.

Clyde Musgrove acquired his early education in the
public schools of Winfield, Kansas, and also attended the
Southwestern Methodist College at Winfield. When eight-
een years of age he entered a printing office and learned
the trade. In time he became versed in all the phases
of the printer ’s trade and the newspaper profession, and
in 1896 he established and for five years was editor of the
News at El Reno, now the El Reno American. He made
this one of the most influential newspapers of old Okla-
homa Territory, and as a political cartoonist his work
received recognition and appreciation over the state.
He served as city editor of the Oklahoma City Star
during its existence, and in 1901 founded the News at
Lawton, soon after the opening of that section of the
state.

After his father’s death Mr. Muserrove returned to
El Reno and accepted a clerkship in the postoffice under
civil service, and is now senior clerk.

On August 19. 1905, at Girard, Kansas, he married
Miss Alice E. Firmin. She was born in London, Eng-
land, September 20, 1875, a daughter of John T. Firmin,
also a native of England. Mr. Mus<rrove has made him-
self, a considerable factor in El Reno affairs and since
1910 has been a member and is now president of the
board of directors of the Carnegie Library.

Na% Emmons Ligon. That integrity and ability, as
combined with untiring industry and good judgment, will
not lack recognition and appreciation has been signifi-

2092

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

cantly shown ii» the meteoric career of Mr. Ligon, who
is now serving as counsel for the Mid-Co. Petroleum
Company and Mid-Co. Gasoline Company, two of the
largest independent oil producing and oil refining com-
panies operating in the great mid-continent field, with
offices in the City of Tulsa, Tulsa County, Oklahoma.

Having already served for two years as assistant pros-
ecuting attorney for Tulsa County, from which office he
was elevated to that of United States Probate Attorney
for the Creek Indians, and, later, at the age of twenty-
six years, employed as chief legal representative of two
large corporations whose combined property holdings
aggregate millions of dollars in value, and whom he rep-
resents both as legal adviser and in litigation involving
hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property,
Mr. Ligon bears the distinction of being the youngest
corporation lawyer in the state.

Fine personal address, buoyant and optimistic nature
and unbounded kindliness and geniality have gained to
Mr. Ligon a wide circle of friends in the state of his
adoption, and all rejoice in his success, for the same
has been won entirely through his own ability and earnest
endeavors. His brilliant achievements have placed him
foremost in the ranks of the younger generation of pro-
fessional men, and it is gratifying to accord him recog-
nition in this history.

A scion of staunch old Southern stock, Mr. Ligon was
born at Gloster, Amite County, Mississippi, on the first
day of September, 1888, and he is the son of William
O. Ligon and Jennie D. (Faust) Ligon, the former of
whom was one of the earliest settlers of Amite County,
and the latter of whom was born at Liberty, Mississippi,
their present home being at Gloster, Mississippi. Wil-
liam O. Ligon served for twelve years' as Deputy United
States Marshal and for three years as United States
Marshal in the Southern Judicial District of Mississippi,
with official headquarters in the cities of Vicksburg and
Jackson, respectively. In early life he was a prosperous
planter and merchant, and during the Civil war he
served the Confederacy under General Wirt Adams of
Mississippi. He resigned from the office of United
States Marshal in July, 1914, and returned to Gloster
where he is now living, virtually retired.

Nat Emmons Ligon (universally known and referred
to as Nat Ligon), the youngest in a family of six sons,
acquired his early education in the public schools of his
native state and thereafter entered the University of
Mississippi at Oxford. For two years he was a student
in the academic or literary department of the university
and later entered the university law school. On account
of financial reverses which came to his parents, Mr. Ligon
remained in the university only through endurement of
untold difficulties and hardships. For a time he earned
his own expenses by directing the university band and
orchestra, for which the authorities allowed him board
and tuition. While thus engaged he, as president of
the sophomore class, was largely instrumental in organiz-
ing the Students Self Help Bureau, which has since
enabled hundreds of worthy young men of limited
resources to be self-sustaining while pursuing their course
of study. He took an active interest in debating and
public speaking and his present effectiveness as a trial
lawyer is due largely to his forensic ability. He won
two class medals for oratory, represented his alma mater
in a collegiate state oratorical contest and in a collegiate
inter-state debating contest and was undefeated during
his scholastic career. Financial difficulties and ill health
finally forced him to withdraw from the law school three
months prior to the graduation of his class, and he came
direct, from Oxford to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he arrived
on the 8th day of March, 1911.

With his finances at the lowest possible ebb and with-

out an acquaintance in the city, he was not discouraged I
but turning his face toward the dawn of a new day for "

him, he sought employment that would enable him to
provide the necessities of life and, at the same time, con-
tinue his study of the law. He was received as a clerk #
in the first office to which he applied for admission, that
of Davidson & Williams, attorneys, where he remained
and eked out a scanty subsistence for the first year of
his residence in the new and growing city. At night he
vigorously continued his study of the science of juris-
prudence and in the following June he was admitted to
practice in the courts of Oklahoma — the same week in
which his class in the law department of the University
of Mississippi was graduated.

In June, 1912, Mr. Ligon was employed by the city
authorities of Tulsa to revise and codify the municipal 1
ordinance, and this work demanded his attention for
three months. In August, 1912, with his work for the
city scarcely begun, he was appointed to the position
of assistant prosecuting attorney of Tulsa County under
Pat Malloy. Only a few weeks after his appointment*
to this office Mr. Ligon gained prominence for himself
and drew words of lavish praise from the press in
Oklahoma, and throughout the country, for his master-
ful efforts in the prosecution of Mrs. Laura T. Beuter,
and her co-conspirators, for the murder of her husband,
Charles T. Beuter, a prominent attorney of Tulsa. In
three successive trials of the different defendants in
this famous ease, Mr. Ligon made the opening address
for the prosecution to the jury. In speaking of his
argument in the first of these trials, the Tulsa Daily
World of October 30, 1912, used, in part, the follow-
ing language:

‘ ‘ Probably never before in the history of criminal,
practice has a better argument been made by an attorney
with so few years on his shoulders than that of the
young assistant prosecutor who has just passed his
twenty-fourth birthday. It was his second appeal to
jury and it happens that the first appeal was also in
murder case. Old attorneys who listened for two hours
and a half while Ligon reviewed the evidence and made
a strong plea for the maximum penalty, death, were
unanimous in their opinion that his effort was worthy
of a man years older, both in age and experience. ’ ’

In February, 1914, Mr. Ligon resigned as assistant
prosecuting attorney to accept an appointment as United
States Probate Attorney for the Creek Indians, with
official headquarters in the City of Sapulpa, Creek|
County.

The United States Government spends the sum
$85,000.00 annually in the employment of probate atto:
neys, one in each of the counties inhabited by citizens
of the Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma, whose duty
it is to guard the interests of minor and incompetent
Indian allottees against the inroads made on their estates
by corrupt guardians and designing persons. During the
first twelve months that he held this office, Mr. Ligor
saved and recovered for the estates of minors and ineom
petents in Creek County alone, more than $90,000.00, o
more than the entire annual appropriation of Congresi
for the salaries and expenses of twenty other probati
attorneys in Oklahoma.

In September, 1915, while serving as probate attorney
further professional distinction was conferred upon Mi
Ligon, when he was elected special judge to preside i:
the trial of an important murder ease in the Distric
Court of Creek County. The youngest jurist who eve
presided in the trial of a murder case in Oklahoma, h
thus occupied the position on the bench for three dayi
and his rulings bore the stamp of true judicial wisdoi
and a broad and accurate knowledge of the law.

Mr. Ligon is a Boyal Arch Mason, a member of th

land

Mltlei

|ihel
If ter;

» ado
(ltd i.

kh, i

» °T

JWand

Hth

Heel

P» a

lileJ

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2093

Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and holds
membership in the secret order of Kappa Alpha, a Greek
letter college fraternity. He is a member of the First
Baptist Church at Tulsa.

On January 20, 1916, Mr. Ligon was happily married
at Sapulpa, Oklahoma, to Miss Zula Lee Nash, formerly
of Austin, Texas. Mrs. Ligon was born in Bastrop
County, Texas, and is the daughter of Horace Nash and
Lillian L. (Billingsley) Nash, both of Bastrop County,
Texas. The forefathers of her mother (the Billingsleys)
are well known in Texas history, having been active in
establishing the independence of Texas. Long before this
time, however, her ancestors had won fame in the struggle
for the American Independence and their deeds of virtue
engraved on the tablets of American history. Her ances-
try dates back to the tenth century, she being the direct
descendant of the historic Puleston family in England,
and of Edward I of England and Ferdinand, King of
Spain.

The proud descendant of a family with a long list of
noble achievements, one of the Southland’s fairest
daughters and a typically American woman, Mrs. Ligon
represents the crowning success of her husband’s many
brilliant attainments.

Campbell Eussell. Coming to Indian Territory as a
youth of seventeen years, Senator Eussell has had a
broad and varied experience in pioneer life on the
frontier and has been a prominent and influential force
in connection with the civic and industrial development
of what is now the State of Oklahoma. He has shown
himself a man of resourcefulness and decisive action,
and stands today as one of the vigorous and successful
representatives of the agricultural and live-stock inter-
ests of this commonwealth, the while his civic loyalty
and public spirit are indicated in the fact that he was
a member of the first State Senate after the admission
of Oklahoma to the Union and that he is at the present
time a member of that body, as representative of the
Twenty-seventh senatorial district. The senator’s liber-
ality and progressiveness have been of noteworthy order
and have inured greatly to the march of development and
advancement in the vital young commonwealth within
which he has maintained his residence for more than
thirty years.

Campbell Eussell was born in Northern Alabama, on
the 22d of October, 1863, and is a son of Thomas and
Margaret (Stringer) Eussell, the former a native of
North Carolina and the latter of Kentucky, in which
state her father was a pioneer settler. Thomas Eussell,
as a young man, established his home in the northern
part of the State of Alabama, where he became a pioneer
teacher in the common schools and where he was long
a prosperous agriculturist and influential citizen. Both
he and his wife continued their residence in Alabama
until their death, the former having passed away in 1895
and the latter in 1901.

After availing himself of the advantages of the com-
mon schools of his native state Senator Eussell com-
pleted, in 1881, a course in the business college of the
University of Lexington, in the metropolis of Ken-
tucky. In the same year he immigrated to Indian
Territory and found employment on the Three Bar
Eanch, which was at that time the largest cattle ranch
in the Cherokee Nation and which was situated twelve
DisW myes distant from Muskogee. This great ranch was
et; owned and controlled by Gen. Pleasant Porter and C. W.
’■ Turner, the former of whom was the principal chief of
the Creek tribe. Eventually Senator Eussell engaged in
farming and stock-growing on his own account, and in
1895 he handled 14,000 head of cattle, this representing

the largest herd that up to that time had ever been
assembled in Indian Territory. His ranch was in
Younger’s Bend on the Canadian Eiver, this bend hav-
ing been named for the well known bandits, the Younger
Brothers, of Missouri, who there maintained a rendez-
vous during their days of outlawry on the frontier, the
locality having likewise been a headquarters for Belle
Starr, a woman known throughout the Southwest as an
accomplice and associate of the Younger Brothers.

In that historic district Senator Eussell cleared and
improved a ranch of 400 acres, and there he established
the first free school for white children within the entire
confines of Indian Territory, the sehoolhouse having been
erected by him at his own expense and he having defrayed
individually also the expense of employing a teacher in
the school each summer for a period of five years. As
one of the most enterprising and energetic of pioneers,
the senator made his constructive influence felt in many
other avenues of progress. After his removal to Warner,
his present home, he individually graded at his own
expense sixteen miles of public ro'ad besides which he
erected a sehoolhouse, at a cost of $5,300, and donated
the same to the township. Such is the spirit of liberality
and unselfish devotion to the public weal that has ani-
mated him and that has made an honored and influential
citizen of the state of which he may consistently be
termed one of the founders and builders.

After initiating the development of his ranch in the
vicinity of the Village of Warner Senator Eussell directed
his attention definitely to the breeding of registered
cattle, from select stock which he purchased in the
northern states. He raised principally Shorthorn and
Hereford cattle, and later he made disposition of much
of his stock product in various years by means of public
sales in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas
and Oklahoma, the proceeds of each of several of these
sales was above $30,000. At the Louisiana Purchase
Exposition, in the City of St. Louis, in 1904, Senator
Eussell won twenty-seven premiums on his exhibit of
Hereford cattle and also a diploma as the champion
breeder of Herefords in the sub-quarantine (or southern)
division of the country. It may well be understood that
he had done much to advance the standards of live-stock
and agricultural industry in Oklahoma, and a detailed
record of his progressive activities would make a context
sufficient for an entire published volume.

As a resident of the domain of the Five Tribes,
Senator Eussell cast his first vote for Joel Mayes for
chief of the Cherokees, and his next vote was for Green
McCurtain for chief of the Choctaws. Having by mar-
riage a “right” in both of these nations, he traveled
on horse-back forty miles from outside of the Cherokee
Nation to vote in a Cherokee election, and traveled sixty
miles to exercise a similar function in a Choctaw elec-
tion. The senator served three years as a member of
the executive committee of the Farmers’ Educational &
Cooperative Union of Oklahoma; one term as president
of the state union; and three terms as secretary of the
board of directors of the national union. Upon his re-
tirement from the latter office, on the 5th of September,
1911, the board of directors presented him with a hand-
some gold medal, on which were inscribed the words,
“Weighed in the balance and not found found wanting,”
a most consonant expression touching his character and
services during the long years of his residence in what is
now the State of Oklahoma. In 1896 the senator effected
the organization of the Canadian District Protective
Association, which later was merged with the Indian
Territory division of the Anti-Horse-Thief Association.
Of this latter and more comprehensive organization he
served three years as president, one year as vice presi-

2094

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

dent, and has since continued a member of its executive
committee. During one year he captured nine men
charged with the theft of horses and cattle, and he
succeeded also in recovering during that year ten horses
that had been stolep.

Senator Russell was a member of the first state
senate of Oklahoma and in the initial session of the
Legislature he came into special prominence as the chief
champion of what became known as the “New Jerusa-
lem” capital scheme, a measure that provided for the
establishment of the capital of the new commonwealth
near the geographical center of the state and which was
carried at a popular election held in 1908. In the first
session of the Legislature Senator Russell was chair-
man of the senate committee on roads and highways
and at succeeding sessions his membership in the senate
having been continuous, he has served as chairman of the
committee on agriculture. In the Second Legislature
three of the first five bills passed in the senate were
introduced and championed by him, and one of them
authorized the establishing of county agricultural demon-
stration farms; another prevented married minors from
selling inherited real estate. In this session also he
obtained in the senate the passage of a bill providing
for the carrying out of the provisions of the “New
Jerusalem ’ ’ measure, but the bill failed to pass the House
of Representatives. A constitutional amendment, of
which he was the author, providing for per capita dis-
tribution of tax paid by public-service corporations for
school purposes, was five times given enactive approval by
the senate, but three times the resolution was killed in
the house, and twice it was submitted to the people.
In the first popular election it received more than two-
tliirds of the votes but it was defeated by reason of
not having met the requirement of receiving a majority
of all votes cast in that election. In a special session
of the Legislature, in 1913, the proposition was again
submitted and carried by a substantial majority.

In the Fourth Legislature Senator Russell introduced a
measure providing for congressional representation of
Oklahoma upon the basis of the relative strength of
the various political parties, but this bill failed enact-
ment. He also succeeded in securing the passage of an
act providing for a 2 per cent gross production tax on
oil and gas. In this session he secured the passage of a
provision recalling the state board of agriculture. This
board was twice recalled inside of twelve months; first
by initiative petition, and second by provision submitted
by the Legislature. In the Fifth Legislature Senator
Russell was author of a rural credits bill which was
enacted without a dissenting vote, and also of a proposed
constitutional amendment fixing a graduated land tax
which was defeated in the house. In the First Legislature
he had put through a similar measure, but five years
later this was declared by the Supreme Court to be un-
constitutional. He passed another bill for the same pur-
pose in the Fourth Legislature, which was invalidated by
the court on account of premature adjournment of the
Legislature. He was the author of graduated tax upon
net income, which is now being successfully applied in
Oklahoma, also of the 3 per cent gross production tax
upon oil and gas, which is still being contested in the
court.

In 1910 Senator Russell was defeated for the demo-
cratic nomination of representative of the third district
in the United States Congress, by Hon. James Daven-
port; and in the newly created second district he was
again defeated for congressional nomination in 1914,
his sncoessful onnonent in the pr;mnr;es ^avin" bpen
Hon. William W. Hastings, of Tahlequah. Senator
Russell is a member of the Christian Church, is affiliated

with the lodge of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons
in his home Village of Warner and with the chapter of
Royal Arch Masons at Muskogee; with the Independent
Order of Odd Fellows at Warner, and with the local
organization at Warner of the National Farmers’ Educa-
tional and Cooperative Union. He has one sister,
Mrs. Nannie Windes, of Tempe, Arizona, and one
brother, James E., who is a resident of Texas.

On the 25th of December, 1890, Senator Russell mar-
ried Martha Shinn, who was of Cherokee Indian blood,
and she died a few years later, leaving no children. In
November, 1896, was solemnized the marriage of the
Senator to Mamie Overstreet, who is of Choctaw des-
cent. Concerning the children of these unions brief data
is given in conclusion of this article: Connie is engaged
ill business at Warner; Carl is a teacher in the Oklahoma
Secondary Agricultural School at Helena; Christopher is
a student in the law department of the University of
Oklahoma; Mary is a teacher; Margaret is a student in
the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College at
Stillwater; and Clayton and Martha remain at the pa-
rental home.

Frank D. Northup. Incidental to the individual
career and ancestral history of Mr. Northup there are
many points of distinctive interest, and even this neces-
sarily epitomized record can not fail measurably to
denote the consistency of the above statement. Per-
sonally he is to be designated as a pioneer in each of two
counties in the present State of Oklahoma; he was one
of the early and valued members of the faculty of the
Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College at Still-
water; he has been specially prominent and influential in
connection with the development of the agricultural and
live-stock industries in this state; and is at the present
time one of the interested principals and efficient
executives of the company publishing the Oklahoma Farm
Journal, the leading agricultural periodical of the South-
west, besides being secretary and business manager of
the Times Publishing Company, which publishes the
Oklahoma City Times, one of the most important daily
papers of the state. Apropos of the genealogical his-
tory of this well known and honored citizen it may be
stated that the original progenitors of the Northup
family in America immigrated from England in first
decade of the seventeenth century, and settled at New
Providence, Rhode Island. In 1735 an ancestor of the
subject of this review became one of the pioneer set-
tlers of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and the family
name has long stood representative of prominence and
influence in the annals of that picturesque section of the
old Bay State.

Frank D. Northup was born on a farm near the city
of Pittsfield, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, on the
14th of July, 1870, and is a son of Langham D. and
Addie M. (Baird) Northup, the former a native of
Massachusetts and the latter of Ohio. In 1874 the
family removed from Massachusetts to the West and the
father became a pioneer farmer in Kansas; he developed
a fine farm in that state, and continued a prominent
and honored citizen of that section of Kansas until his
death, in 1904, his widow being now a resident of
Oklahoma City.

He whose name initiates this review was about four
years old at the time of the family removal to Kansas,
where he was reared to adult aere under the invigorating
discipline of the home farm and where he was afforded
the advantages of the excellent public schools. In the
Sunflower State he also gained practical experience in
the printing and newspaper business, and in April, 1892,
about three months prior to his twenty-second birthday

I feet i
1 that
lAfeof

Jj'l el

(lell
Meal
Wo,
Meatl
Pi was

JjiStt

TilT-m

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2095

anniversary, he came to the newly organized Territory of
Oklahoma and became one of the pioneer settlers of
Taloga, Dewey County. There he continued as editor
and publisher of the Taloga Occident, a weekly paper,
until May of the following year, when he removed to
Stillwater, and thus became likewise a pioneer of Payne
County. In September, 1893, when the famous Cherokee
strip, or outlet, was thrown open to settlement,
Mr. Northup was among those who made the historic
"run” to obtain land in the new district, and he secured
a tract of 160 acres, eligibly situated nine miles from
Stillwater. He reclaimed this land to cultivation and
perfected his title to the property, of which he is still
the owner. On the 1st of March, 1899, Mr. Northup
became a member of the faculty of the Oklahoma Agri-
cultural and Mechanical College at Stillwater, in which
institution he became superintendent of the department
of printing. Of this office he continued the incumbent
until the 1st of May, 1901, when he resigned and
assumed that of editor and publisher of the Stoekman-
Parmer, at Stillwater. While still identified with the
affairs of the college he had served for a time as
editor of the Stillwater Gazette, and after publishing
the Stockman-Farmer one ' year he became associated,
in 1902, with John Fields in the purchase of the Okla-
homa Farm Journal, the publication of which paper they
continued at Stillwater until the 1st of October, 1906,
when they removed the plant to Oklahoma City, which
in the following year became the capital of the new State
of Oklahoma. In this city the Oklahoma Farm Journal
has since continued to be published, and with constantly
expanding influence, its progressive business and editorial
policies have made it the leading farm publication of the
state and its circulation now extending into virtually all
agricultural sections of the Southwest. In January, 1915,
Mr. Northup and his associates purchased also the stock
of the Times Publishing Company, publishers of the
Oklahoma City Times, the issuing of which daily paper
is continued in connection with the publishing of the
Farm Journal. Mr. Northup is secretary and adver-
tising manager of the Oklahoma Farm Journal Company
and secretary and business manager of the Times Pub-
lishing Company.

In polities Mr. Northup has ever given unwavering
illegiance to the republican party. In 1898 he enlisted
for service in the Spanish- American war, as a member
jf the First Territorial Volunteer Infantry, and with
;his command he held the rank of corporal during the
period of active military operations in Cuba, though his
egiment was not called to the front. Mr. Northup is
)ast commander of Oklahoma City Post of the United
Ijpaflish- American War Veterans, and since 1910 he has
>een secretary of the Oklahoma State Historical Society,

fact that indicates his deep and abiding interest in
ill that touches the history and advancement of the
tate of which he is a pioneer and in which his circle of
fiends is coincident with that of his acquaintances. He
s past chancellor of Stillwater Lodge No. 8, Knights of
’ythias, and both he and his wife hold membership in
he Methodist Episcopal Church.

December 25, 1895, Mr. Northup wedded Miss Myrtle
I. Hutto, daughter of Isaac N. Hutto, of Stillwater, and
er death occurred in June, 1897. On the 27th of June,
900, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Northup to
liss Elsie M. Parker, daughter of H. Parker, of Clai-
orne, this state, and the two children of this union are
porothy Elizabeth and Carolyn Duane. The family resi-
enee is at 424 East Park Street, Oklahoma City, and
business offices of Mr. Northup are at 220 West
econd Street.

Vol. v— 22

Warren Zimmerman. Since 1907 Mr. Zimmerman has
been the capable editor and owner of the Guymon Herald
at Guymon. Since reaching manhood Mr. Zimmerman
has always worked at the printer’s trade or in news-
paper business, and has been identified with Oklahoma
journalism for ten years. He has more than succeeded
in keeping the Guymon Herald at the high place it
deserves by reason of a quarter century’s existence in
this district of Western Oklahoma.

The primitive conditions of western pioneer i life sur-
rounded Warren Zimmerman at his birth. He was born
January 8, 1880, in a sod house on a farm in Osborne
County, Kansas. His parents were Benjamin Franklin
Grush and Phoebe (Smiley) Zimmerman. His father
was born in Perry County, Pennsylvania, September 14,
1844, a son of William Zimmerman, also a native of
Pennsylvania. The father spent all his active career as
a farmer. During the Civil war he enlisted in the One
Hundred and Forty-fourth Regiment of Pennsylvania
Infantry, but was out only six months, being discharged
on account . of illness. A vfew years after the war, in
1871, he moved out to Kansas, locating on Government
land in Osborne County. Like many of the early settlers
there he was a man of limited means and he put up
the kind of house which was typical of that district then
and for many years afterwards. He and his family
lived in the sod dugout, enduring hardships and priva-
tions, and for several years practically all the meat that
was consumed in the family came from buffaloes, which
were still numerous on the Kansas prairies. In politics
he was a republican, but had no aspirations to official
position, although he was one of the organizers of
Osborne County. His death occurred at Porter, Kansas,
January 15, 1910. He was a member of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, and was active in Grand Army circles.
In 1874, at Waterville, Kansas, Benjamin F. Zimmerman
married Mrs. Phoebe (Smiley) Kistler. She was born
in Pennsylvania, September 17, 1846, and in 1868 she
married William Kistler. There was one child by this
union, Lillian, now the wife of Bert Long of Liberal,
Kansas. Mr. Kistler died in 1870. By her second union
she became the mother of five children, two sons and
three daughters, namely : Gertrude, who was the first

born, was born June 6, 1875, and died in 1881; William
Luther, born February 8, 1876; Warren; Mary Smiley,
born November 17, 1882; and Winifred, born May 3,
1884, now the wife of John Hahn of Osborne, Kansas.

Warren Zimmerman came to manhood with the equiva-
lent of a liberal education. He attended the public
schools in Osborne and the Kansas Wesleyan College
at Salina. In 1901, at the age of twenty-one, he entered
the office of the Osborne County Farmer at Osborne,
and there learned the printer’s trade and many details
of practical newspaper management. In 1903 he was
made editor and manager of the Osborne News, directed
that paper for two years, and then in 1905 came to
Oklahoma and bought an interest in the Chandler News.
He remained at Chandler two years, and then in 1907
bought the Guymon Herald at Guymon.

Since taking charge of the Herald Mr. Zimmerman has
introduced many changes and improvements in the inter-
ests of a modern newspaper plant. In towns of the size
there are few newspaper plants in the state that equal
the Herald office. The Herald is a republican paper,
has a large and influential circulation, and is a credit
to the large district it serves as the chief medium for
news, opinion and advertising. It was established in
1890 and was the pioneer paper of Texas County.

On January 22, 1906, at Fort Worth, Texas, Mr.
Zimmerman married Martha Edgemon. She was born

2096

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

January 22, 1883, at Athens, Tennessee, where her par-
ents were also born. To their union has been born one
child, Richard Grush, born February 4, 1909, at Guymon.
Mr. Zimmerman and wife are members of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, and fraternally he is a Knight Templar
Mason.

Col. S. A. McGinnis. One of the most prominent
lawyers and citizens of Kay County is Colonel McGinnis
of Newkirk. Colonel McGinnis has been identified with
Oklahoma as a lawyer and man of affairs since 1893,
and for twenty-two years has made his help and service
count for value and progress in the Southwest.

S. A. McGinnis was born in Coffey County, Kansas,
November 10, 1867. His father, Dr. J. A. McGinnis,
was a native of West Virginia and an early settler in
Kansas. He was a soldier in the Union Army during
the Civil war, and was the son of a soldier in the Mexi-
can war, while his great-grandfather has served in the
War of 1812, and a great-grandfather was a soldier
of the Eevolution. Thus there has been a strong tend-
ency to military life in every successive generation, and
Colonel McGinnis of Newkirk has his title as a result
of active participation in the National Guards of both
Kansas and Oklahoma. Dr. J. A. McGinnis was a suc-
cessful physician and well known factor in Coffey and
Butler counties, Kansas. He had moved from the East
to Indiana, later to Illinois, and finally to Kansas, being
identified for varying lengths of time with all these
states.

Col. S. A. McGinnis was married in 1890 to Laura
Laughlin, a woman of culture and intelligence and be-
longing to a family of noted educators. Her father,
George H. Laughlin, was at one time president of Hiram
College in Ohio, the insitution over which James A.
Garfield at one time presided, and a strong and intimate
friendship existed between Mr. Garfield and Professor
Laughlin. The children born to Colonel and Mrs. Mc-
Ginnis are: Harold, who has served four years in the

United States navy as an electrician, and has visited
every important part of the Globe; Eilene; Ward A.;
Grant; and Arthur.

Colonel McGinnis rose to the rank of colonel in the
Second Begiment of Kansas troops in the National
Guards, and has also served as captain of Troop I, First
United States Volunteer Cavalry, “Roosevelt Rough
Eiders,” of Oklahoma. He was attorney to the Dawes
Commission in Indian Territory for eighteen months,
and has also served in many other legal capacities. He
was attorney for Butler County, Kansas, and has also
served as county attorney in Oklahoma. He is a man
of most pleasing address and manner, is a splendid
speaker and is a large man both physically and mentally.

Louis Rogers, Sr., is one of the men who have known
Pawhuska in all its growth and development from an
Indian agency to a thriving and flourishing city. Mr.
Rogers has himself been a part of that development and
growth. His is a name synonymous with integrity, good
business ability, and all the sterling qualities of citi-
zenship.

Though most of his life has been spent in Oklahoma,
he was born in Georgia, March 15, 1843. His parents
were Nelson and Rosa (West) Rogers, both of whom
were natives of Georgia, where they married. They were
the parents of two sons and two daughters. The oldest
and the youngest of the family are still living. Nelson
Rogers and his wife came to Indian Territory in the
early days, and he was successfully identified with
general farming and the cattle business.

For many years Louis Rogers was a successful farmer

near Avant, Oklahoma, and conducted ranching on a
small scale. After the death of his first wife he sold
his farm in that locality and has since had his home at
Pawhuska. In his long and active career Mr. Rogers
has also acquired military experience. He served three
years in the war between the states and is one of the
honored veterans of that great struggle. All his life
he has been a democrat, and for twenty years has been
affiliated with the Knights of Pythias. While he himself
has no church affiliations, his wife is a Methodist.

About forty years ago Mr. Rogers married Miss Helen
Ross, a daughter of Louis Ross, a prominent name among
the early Indian families of Indian Territory. Louis
Ross brought his family to Oklahoma from Georgia. Mr.
Rogers by his first marriage had five children. Three
are now deceased. His daughter is the wife of Ben
Avant, reference to whom is found on other pages of
this work. Mr. Rogers’ son lives near Avant. For his
second wife Mr. Rogers married Mrs. Hood, a white
woman from Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Robert Lee Flynn. Perhaps no one class of men
more thoroughly appreciate the fact that Oklahoma is a
new state than those upon whom are thrust the respon-
sibilities of county offices. In the older states it is
customary for each distinct set of duties to be performed
by a special official. As a matter of economy and on
account of the great expense involved in organizing and
establishing county government all over the state, it is

not unusual to find in Oklahoma one official filling what
is in reality half a dozen offices at once.

This state of affairs is well illustrated in the person
of Robert Lee Flynn of Shawnee, whose official designa-
tion is court clerk. He has his offices both in the City
Hall at Shawnee and in the County Courthouse at Tecum
seh. He is clerk of the District Court of Pottawatomie
and Lincoln counties; is clerk of the Superior Court
located at Shawnee, with jurisdiction over Pottawatomie
County ; and is also clerk of the Pottawatomie County
Court at Tecumseh. Robert E. Flynn is a Missourian
and was born in Howard County, April 4, 1885. His
father, Stephen A. Flynn, was born in Ireland in 1839
came to America about 1855 when little more than a
boy, and after living for a time in New York State and
in Ohio came out to Missouri, where he married and)
soon afterward established his home in Howard County.

He was one of the pioneer settlers in Oklahoma, having!
located in Lincoln County in 1892, not long after the
original opening of lands in that district. In 1899 he
removed to Keokuk Falls in Pottawatomie County, and
homesteaded a claim. He was not only a farmer but
also a school teacher. He also rendered service to his
adopted country during the dark days of the Civil war as
a Union soldier for three years. In one battle he was fee
severely wounded, but recovered in time to join his com-
rades and served the full term of three years. He was
a member of the Masonic fraternity. The death of this
old Oklahoma settler occurred at Keokuk Falls in June
1904. The maiden name of his wife was Sarah C. Low
den, who was born in Missouri and now lives at Seminole
Oklahoma. Their family comprised nine children, noted
briefly as follows : Mrs. Maggie Buck, who lives at

Anadarko and whose husband is a farmer; Maud, wh<
married L. Tribble, who is a harness maker and merchanl
at Seminole City, Oklahoma; William H., who is nov
filling the office of sheriff in Lubbock County, Texas
Ivan L ., who is a minister in the Nazarene Church ii
Seminole City; Thomas S., whose home is at Drumright
Oklahoma; Robert Lee, who comes next in order of birth
Joseph S., who is an employee in the United States Naw
Yard at San Francisco; James W„ a farmer at Ana

iff

Pest

fife Sf
Inland.

“isilll;

Hate

"stonily
totlony I

to Stott
the t

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2097

darko ; and May, wife of James Embree, a carpenter and
builder at Perry, Oklahoma.

As will be noted Robert L. Flynn was only about
* seven years of age when his parents came to Oklahoma.
e During their residence in Lincoln County he attended

j public school at Ardmore. Still later he was sent to

school at Whitewater, Wisconsin, and was graduated
from the high school of that city in 1904. During 1905
he attended the Indianola Business College at Tecumseh,
where he took a course in bookkeeping, and in 1906 learned
™ stenography in the New State Business College at
? Shawnee.

'I13 From 1907 to 1911 Mr. Flynn was a stenographer in
' the law offices of Standard, Wahl & Ennis at Shawnee,
!ee and left that work to accept the position of deputy in the
>el. district clerk’s office of Pottawatomie County. He con-
tinued as deputy until January 4, 1915, when he assumed
13 his present onerous duties, having been elected to the
119 office of court clerk in the preceding November. Mr.
Flynn resides at 513 Louisa Street in Shawnee. He is
a stockholder in the Fidelity Loan Company of that city,
men and is affiliated with the Knights of Pythias at Shawnee
is a and Camp No. 7781 of the Modern Woodmen of America,
[on- In politics he is a democrat. In 1909 he became iden-
t is tided with the Oklahoma National Guard at Shawnee
'Jiei and is now lieutenant of the company.

1 on On December 24, 1912, he was married at Shawnee to
aad Miss Winnie McColgan of Shawnee. They have one
it is daughter, Glorya Louise, born January 20, 1914.

W. R. Kelly, M. D, A man to whom may be con-
ersoa sistently ascribed much versatility of talent, but the
ignaj genius of whose success has been well ordered personal
Citj effort, is the sterling pioneer citizen whose name initiates
i«m this paragraph and who was one of the host of ambitious
tomi men who came into Oklahoma Territory at the time when
Court the historic Cherokee Strip was thrown open to settle-
itomii ment. He has had the prescience and judgment to make
'omit] good use of the manifold opportunities afforded in the
mriai state of his adoption and has become one of the sub-
Hi stantial capitalists of Oklahoma, with large and varied
1839, interests. He still gives a considerable attention to
Ian! the work of his profession, is the editor and publisher
teanl of the Watonga Herald, has been largely concerned with
ii ani the real estate business and with banking interests, and
kraut has been one of the foremost in the development and
bavinj upbuilding of the thriving Town of Watonga, the judicial
ter thi center of Blaine County, where his property interests are
§59 li large and valuable and where he maintains his residence,
ry, sii as one of the honored and influential citizens of that
l'er ki section of the state. Of him it has been properly said
tolii that “He is a type of the men of genius and courage
nan who established civilized communities upon the prairies
h? ns where only Indians had previously held sway, and who
liscou have contributed greately to the civic advancement and
He 4 material wealth of the new state. ’ ’ The doctor is the
of thi owner of one of the largest and most effectively improved
in June farms in Blaine County, and is the owner of a large
C, Low cumber of properties in Watonga, including business
emboli md residence buildings to the number of thirty or more.
n, note Doctor Kelly was born in the City of Fond du Lac,
lives i Wisconsin, in 1864, and is a representative of a sterling
md, 4 pioneer family of the fine old Badger State, where his
neichai father settled in 1848, soon after his immigration from
, is «o Ireland. The doctor was one of a family of six sons
Texas md six daughters, and the mental alertness of the family
juich i s indicated by the fact that all of the sons and daughters
[jnuigll sventually became successful teachers, the parents,
ofhirtt Anthony and Abbie (Malley) Kelly, both of stanch old
rtes Nai rish stock, having continued their residence in Wisconsin
at Am mtil the time of their death. The six sisters of Doctor

Kelly are still living, and concerning them the following
brief record is consistently entered: Mrs. R. H. Murphy

is a widow and resides in the City of Los Angeles, Cali-
fornia, her husband having become known as the king
of wheat farmers in North Dakota many years prior to
his death; Mrs. B. A. Kindergan is the wife of a suc-
cessful contractor in Sioux City, Iowa; Mrs. J. M. Rider
resides in the same city and is a widow, her husband
having been a prosperous farmer; Mrs. Frank Malley is
the wife of a prominent real estate dealer in Sioux City;
Miss Mary E. is a popular teacher in the high school in
the City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Mrs. T. J. Conley
is the wife of a retired farmer, their home being now in
Oklahoma City.

After duly availing himself of the advantages of the
excellent public schools of his native state Doctor Kelly
attended the Wisconsin State Normal School at Oshkosh
from 1880 to 1884, and after the completing of his
effective normal course he turned his attention to the
pedagogic profession, of which he became a successful
and popular representative as a teacher in the public
schools of Wisconsin and later those of North Dakota.
After devoting three years to this vocation the doctor
was for a time engaged in farming in North Dakota, and
then, in consonance with his ambition and well matured
plans, he began the work of preparing himself for his
chosen profession. He entered the celebrated Rush Medi-
cal College in the City of Chicago, in which he was
graduated in 1892, with the degree of Doctor of Medicine.
He forthwith entered upon a post-graduate course in the
medical department of the University of Illinois, and in

1893 this institution likewise conferred upon him the
degree of Doctor of Medicine. In the latter year he
engaged in the practice of medicine at Watonga, Okla-
homa Territory, and in the pioneer community he soon
built up a substantial practice that marked him as one
of the representative physicians and surgeons of the
territory. He early became identified with other lines
of productive activity in connection with which he resided
for a time at Geary, Blaine County, and Weatherford,
Custer County. In 1900 Doctor Kelly effected the organi-
zation of the First National Bank of Watonga, and of
this institution he served six years as president. In

1894 he passed an examination before the territorial
pharmaceutical board and then opened a drug store at
Watonga, the same having been conducted in connection
with his medical practice. Retiring from the banking
business in 1906, he engaged in the real estate business,
in connection with which he built up a large and im-
portant enterprise in the handling of both town and
farm property. In the meanwhile he had become a
stockholder in the company that published the Watonga
Herald, and to protect his interest he was finally com-
pelled to assume control of the newspaper plant and
business, the result being that he has become well known
also as one of the successful newspaper men of Oklahoma.
He is still the owner and publisher of the. Watonga
Herald, of the editorial department of which he main-
tains personal supervision, and for a time he was the
owner also of the Geary Bulletin and the Okeene Leader,
in two other of the prosperous towns of Blaine County.
The doctor is a member of the Oklahoma Press Asso-
ciation, the Oklahoma State Medical Association, the
Blaine County Medical Society, the Oklahoma Pharma-
ceutical Association, the American Medical Association
and the Oklahoma Telephone Association, besides which
he was formerly an active member of the Oklahoma
Bankers’ Association. He is serving as health officer of
Blaine County and as a member of the board of United
States pension examiners for the county, besides being
local surgeon at Watonga for the Chicago & Rock Island

2098

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Railroad. For the past ten years he has been president
of the Watonga Commercial Club and has been a valued
leader in the furtherance of its progressive civic policies
and ideals, with special influence in giving to this
thriving little city its excellent municipal waterworks
and electric lighting systems and other public utilities.
Under the energetic and capable direction of Doctor
Kelly was constructed the first mile of modern improved
road in Oklahoma, and he has been one of the liberal and
zealous supporters of the good roads movement. Most
of the brick buildings in Watonga were erected by this
progressive and public-spirited citizen, and he is still
the owner of fully thirty buildings in the town, includ-
ing business structures and houses. He had also the
distinction of being the prime factor in the movement
to effect the erection of a suitable • county courthouse
at Watonga, and he is looked to for leadership and
decisive action in every progressive measure advanced
for the social and material benefit of his home city and
county.

In the time-honored Masonic fraternity Doctor Kelly
has received the thirty-second degree of the Ancient
Accepted Scottish Rite, as a member of the Consistory
in the City of Guthrie; his ancient craft affiliation is
with Watonga Lodge No. 176, Ancient Free and Ac-
cepted Masons; and at Oklahoma City he holds mem-
bership in the Temple of the Ancient Arabic Order of
Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. He is past master of the
Masonic lodge in his home city, and is identified also
with the Knights of Pythias, the Modern Woodmen of
America, and the Ancient Order of United Workmen.

In 1896, at Watonga, was solemnized the marriage
of Doctor Kelly to Miss Iva Carpenter, and she was
summoned to the life eternal in July, 1911, being sur-
vived by two children, Cleo, who is a graduate of the
Watonga High School and is one of the popular young
women in the social activities of her home city, and
William C., who was twelve years of age in 1915 and
who is still attending the public schools.

Bert Smith. On the basis of his record, Bert Smith
is undoubtedly the most popular man in Garfield County
politics. As everyone acquainted with things political
in Oklahoma knows, Garfield County has long been one
of the republican strongholds of the state, and yet Mr.
Smith, as a democrat, has succeeded in overcoming the
opposition forces on several occasions, and at the present
time is holding the dual office of county clerk and register
of deeds.

Bert Smith was born in Crawfordsville, Indiana, Nov-
ember 28, 1871, and in 1880, at the age of nine years,
went with his parents to Reno County, Kansas, growing
up on a farm in that section of the Sunflower State.
From the farm he entered an office of the Rock Island
Railway and learned telegraphy, was a telegraph opera-
tor at McPherson, Kansas, and in 1895 was transferred
by the Rock Island Company to El Reno, Oklahoma. In
1897, leaving the railway service, Mr. Smith removed
to Enid, and the following two years was engaged in
farming seven miles west of that city. For ten years he
sold nursery stock all over the state. He was also in
business as a merchant at LaHoma for two years.

In 1912 Mr. Smith was elected register of deeds of
Garfield County, and while he was in that office by act
of the Legislature the duties of a register of deeds were
combined with those of county clerk, and in November,
1914, Mr. Smith was elected to the combined office. In
that campaign he had a strong, contest with the former
county clerk, a republican, who had not only the prestige
attaching to him on the ground of his previous service,
but also the backing of a normal republican majority

in the county of 600. In 1912 Mr. Smith had carried
the county with the largest majority ever given to any
democrat, going into office with a margin of 731 votes.
In 1914 he carried the county by a majority of sixty-
nine. His duties as county clerk and register of deeds
began on January 1, 1915, and he now gives all his time
to this office, having three deputies.

Mr. Smith is affiliated with the Masonic and Odd
Fellows fraternities. He married Miss Thirza I. Willis
of Kirksville, Missouri. They have one daughter, Julia
Pauline.

Jesse M. Robberson. Farmer, banker and one of the
old-timers of the Chickasaw Nation, Jesse M. Robberson
lives at Loco in Stephens County, but his interests in
farming lands and financial affairs are so extended as
to make him one of the leading business figures in the
state.

Jesse M. Robberson was born in Cedar County, Mis-
souri, August 4, 1855, and there spent the first six years
of his life, after which he went to Dade County, Mis-
souri, in company with his parents, Richard Allen and
Maria H. (Mitchell) Robberson. Several generations
back the Robberson family were among the pioneer set-
tlers of Middle Tennessee. Mr. Robberson ’s grandfather,
William Robberson, was a Methodist preacher, and lived
at Ebenezer, near Springfield, Missouri, and probably
died there. Robberson Prairie, near Springfield, was
named in his honor. The maternal grandfather, Jesse
Mitchell, was also a minister of the Methodist Church
and spent his last years at Brighton in Polk County,
Missouri. In 1865 Richard A. Robberson took his family
to Polk County, Missouri, renting a farm near Brighton.
While the family lived there Jesse M. Robberson found
plenty of work on the farm, after which he spent two
years at Pleasant Hope or Pinhook. The father then
removed his family to a tract of 160 acres of unimproved
timber land, and the son helped to clear and reduce that
to cultivation. Finally selling the farm, Richard A.
Robberson removed to Paul’s Valley, Indian Territory,
in November, 1874. Several years later he went on a
journey to Bellevue in Cooke County, Texas, to make
arrangements to secure the benefit of the schools of that
place for his children, and finally went on to Sherman,
Texas, to procure lumber for the building of a home for
his family in Bellevue. While in Sherman he was taken
ill and died there September 28, 1878, and was buried in
Sherman. His widow died March 4, 1884, and is also
buried at Sherman. Their children, nine in number, are'
enumerated briefly as follows: Jesse M.; W. F., twin

brother of Jesse, who is now a farmer near Edna ini
Jackson County, Texas; James W., who owned a liveryi
stable at Wynnewood, Oklahoma, where he died in 1901 ; j
Newton S., who is a retired farmer at Davenport, Okla-
homa; Lillian, who died at the age of two years; B. W.J
who is a farmer near Perry, Oklahoma; Dora, whose
clothing caught fire and was burned to death at Paul’s
Valley, Oklahoma, in February, 1880, she being at that
time the wife of John T. Hill, a Paul’s Valley farmer,
who died in 1914; Allen G., a well known business man
of Loco, of whom there is individual mention in follow-
ing paragraphs; and Annie, twin sister of Albert, now
the wife of Henry Smith, a farmer and stock raiser a(
Clarendon, Texas.

.Jesse M. Robberson continued to aid in the operatioi
of the home farm until 1874, when he removed to Paul’s
Valley in the Indian Territory and for a year eontinuec
at home helping his father. For five years following
1875 he was afflicted almost to the point of being ;
cripple by rheumatism and a malady of the eyes. Hi
was employed with the firm of Miller & Green, Paul’:

I. ga

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2099

Valley merchants, until September, 1878, and then went
to Cooke County, Texas, with the intention of attending
school, but changed his plans and went out to Hall
County, Texas, with a bunch of 3,500 head of cattle,
he and his mother and brother owning ninety-six head of
that lot. There he was engaged in the care and raising
of the cattle until 1883, when he sold out for $6,500,
giving his mother a third of the proceeds.

His next location was at Fort Arbuckle, where he was
employed for wages in the winter of 1883. In the
spring of 1884 he and his brother went to Hall County,
where they obtained thirteen saddle horses, and at Ganes-
ville bought 337 head of yearlings, which they drove to
the Grant and Beeler ’s .Ranch, where Chickasha, Okla-
homa, is now located. In this venture they were in
partnership with their brother, W. F. Robberson. After
holding the cattle until they were three years old they
sold but realized no profit on the investment. Jesse
Robberson was afterward^ employed by Ed Huntley in
the cattle business until the succeeding fall, when they
went to Belcher, Texas, and purchased 350 two-year-old
steers, driving them to the Polk Ranch on Mud Creek,
owned by Florence Hall. The next July the cattle were
sold at a profit for $1,500. Mr. Robberson then took a
trip on horseback to Belcher, Henrietta and to Stephens
County on a cattle-buying expedition. After returning
home they went to Quanah, Texas, and bought 251 head
of three- and four-year-old steers, rounded them up and
had them driven to Hamilton, that state. Jesse M.
Robberson took charge of a cattle drove to Mud Creek,
where he sold 177 head to MeCaughey Brothers for
“feeders,” and eighty to his brothers, A. G. and B. W.,
and including the remainder, which he sold the following
June, he realized a profit of $1,500.

In the spring of 1899 he dissolved partnership with
his brother and went to Gainesville, Texas, where he
purchased 350 head of yearlings, which he drove to Mud
Creek, continuing in the cattle business at that place
until the fall of 1900, when he sold out for $25,000. On
January 13, 1891, with his brother, A. GV| he engaged in
the mercantile business at Dixie, Oklahoma, under the
name of J. M. Robberson, and they continued this as a
successful enterprise until selling out on January 13,
1908. In 1893 Mr. Robberson also opened a store at
Loco, which he sold to his brother, A. G., in February,
1912. In 1897, in connection with A. S. Hathaway, he
erected the cotton gin in Loco, and sold his interest in
that enterprise in 1909. For many years he has been
extensively interested in raising mules, horses and hogs.

Mr. Robberson is" the largest individual taxpayer in
Stephens County. He owns 2,500 acres in Stephens,
Jefferson, Carter, Grady and Garvin counties, Oklahoma,
and also in Texas. He is a stockholder and director in
the Oklahoma National Life Insurance Company of Okla-
homa City and is president of the First State Bank of
Ringling, having organized that bank in April, 1914,
and opening it for business on May 11, 1914. He is also
president of the State Bank of Loco. This was estab-
lished as a private bank by Mr. Robberson in 1903,
M. M. Bowman being bookkeeper. It became a state
bank in 1907, Mr. Bowman resigning at that time. The
present officers of this bank at Loco are: J. M. Rob-

berson, who has been president since its organization;
J. F. Stotts of Ringling, vice president; Percy W. New-
ton, cashier; Miss Lulu Cain, assistant cashier. The
bank has capital stock of $10,000 dollars, and its present
surplus amounts to $2,500.

Mr. Robberson is a democrat and for a number of
years during territorial days served as a member of the
school board of Loco. He is affiliated with the Masonic
and Odd Fellows orders. On March 21, 1898, he married

at Grand View, Texas, Miss Nora Conner, daughter of
Dr. L. H. Conner, of that place. Their first child, Jesse,
was born June 30, 1900, and died October 12th of the
same year. They now have a daughter, Graeie Jurhee,
who was born February 5, 1902, and is a student in the
seventh grade of the public schools at Loco.

Allen G. Robberson. A young brother of Jesse M.
Robberson, whose career as a business man and whose
family history has been detailed in preceding paragraphs,
Allen Green Robberson was for a number of years asso-
ciated with his brother in their business undertakings
and is one of the leading merchants, farmers and citizens
of Stephens County.

He was born in Polk County, Missouri, July 16, 1866,
a son of Richard A. and Maria H. (Mitchell) Robberson,
concerning whom information is given above. In 1874
the family removed to the Chickasha Nation, locating at
Paul’s Valley, and Allen G. Robberson completed his
education in Cooke County, Texas, in private schools.
At the age of fifteen he left school and went to the
cattle range of the Texas Tanhandle and spent six years
in the exciting and arduous experience of cowboy" In
1887 he located on Beef Creek, near the Washita River
in Indian Territory, and was for three years engaged in
general farming. During 1890 he was for three months
a clerk under his brother, W. F. Robberson, at Robberson
near Honey Creek in Indian Territory. On January 13,
1891, he and his brother, Jesse M., bought out a general
store at Dixie, and he was actively identified with the
management of that successful concern for seventeen
years, until January 13, 1908, when the business was
closed out. He then removed to Loco, and after four
years spent in trading and collection, in 1912 bought the
large general store which had been established many
years before by his brother, Jesse, and is now the proprie-
tor of this establishment, which, though located in one
of the small towns of Southern Oklahoma, has an immense
volume of trade, drawn from Stephens, Carter and Jef-
ferson counties. The store occupies 30 by 97 feet of
ground and is located on Main and Broadway streets in
Loco. 'His attention, however, is divided between the
management of this mercantile concern and his extensive
farming and stock interests. He is the owner of 1,100
acres of land situated in the northeast corner of Jefferson
County, six miles north of Ringling. He cultivates 200
acres of this himself, while tenants handle the rest.

For many years Mr. Robberson has been one of the
hard-working, shrewd and intelligent business men and
citizens of the old Chickasaw Nation. He is a democrat,
has helped to- provide good schools for Loco as a member
of the school board and was county representative in the
organization of the state. He is affiliated with Loco
Lodge No. 361 of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows
and Camp No. 682 of the Woodmen of the World at
Loco.

On June 18, 1900, at Bettina, Oklahoma, he married
Miss Pearl Price, daughter of William P. Price, who up
to his death was a farmer and stock man at Bettina. To
their marriage have been born four children: Price A.,

born January 29, 1901, and now a freshman in the Loco
High School; Annabett, born in 1903 and in the sixth
grade of the public school; Lucile, born in 1905 and in
the fifth grade; and Hylagene, born January 28, 1912.

Charles Napoleon Prudom. The fact that one of
the streets of Pawhuska is named Prudom is a small
but lasting tribute to the services of an Osage citizen
who has lived in that community since early boyhood
and who has identified himself public spiritedly with
nearly everything of importance that has been "a part

2100

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

of the general progress and upbuilding of this section
of Oklahoma.

A casual acquaintance with Mr. Prudom does not
reveal the depths of his character and the great sources
of his ability. He has that quiet efficiency which ac-
complishes a great deal with very little noise and no
confusion. He has a mind which comprehends large
things, and his energy makes every plan a definite
result. He is truly a self made man, and has not only
pulled his own weight in the world, but has borne
heavy responsibilities for others.

His has been an interesting as well as a fruitful
career. Born near Topeka, Kansas, January 8, 1856,
he takes justifiable pride in his ancestry and the blood
that flows in his veins. His father, Peter Prudom, was
born in Missouri and was a Frenchman with a quarter
blood of the New York Indian stock that was part of
the seven great tribes around the Great Lakes. His
mother, Mary B. Revlett, also a native of Missouri, was
of French ancestry, and a one-eighth blood Osage
Indian. Peter Prudom, who was a farmer and cattle
man, died in 1870 a few months after he ' and his
family had settled in the Osage Nation. Among the
seven children in the family Charles Napoleon was the
oldest, and after his father’s death the care of the
household and outside affairs devolved largely upon
his youthful shoulders. It is said that he practically
reared all the other members of the family, four of
whom reached maturity. Most of hjs early schooling
came from the old Mission School in Neosho Copnty,
Kansas.

Coming to the Osage Nation when a boy of fourteen
and losing his father a few months later and his mother
in March, 1875, Mr. Prudom showed an unusual respon-
siveness to those duties which early became his lot.
He started life with a meager education. Poor, with
industry as his chief asset, he became one of the
pioneer farmers and cattle raisers along the Caney
River just south of the Kansas line in the Osage
Nation. With those operations he was identified until
1883.

If any man can say that he has seen Pawliuska rise
from the wilderness into a thriving city it is Mr. Pru-
dom. His first visit to the town was in 1872, when he
was a boy of sixteen. At that time the only structure
of importance on the site was a little building used for
the Indian Agency, whose quarters were in one end,
while the other end was a shoe shop. Since 1883
Mr. Prudom has been continuously identified with the
town, which then however was only a small Indian
village. In that year he bought a ranch just below
Pawhuska and engaged extensively in the cattle and
horse business until about three years ago, when he sold
his stock and most of his land and retired to a town
home in Pawhuska.

In these thirty or more, years Mr. Prudom ’s means
and enterprise have gone liberally to the upbuilding
of his home locality. Those who are in a position to
know say that he has done as much if not more to
promote the material interests of the city as any other
man. He still owns several brick blocks that he built,
besides residences and other pieces of property, and has
handled and developed much real estate in the city.
His capital has been used almost wholesale in the
development of the town, and on every hand might be
pointed out some conspicuous building which was
erected directly by him or with his financial supoort.

On retiring from his country home he bought a
beautiful place on a hill overlooking the city and com-
manding an extensive view of the surrounding land-
scape for manv miles. There he erected a home de-
signed to satisfy all the cultured tastes of the family

and provide every modern comfort. It is a large and
ample mansion, complete even down to the smallest
detail, including sleeping porches.

His name has been associated with every public
enterprise of importance at Pawhuska. He assisted in
organizing and establishing nearly every church, gave
financial assistance to building their edifices, and has
been a factor in various fraternity organizations. Ho
is a Knight Templar Mason, is a charter member of the
Lodge at Pawhuska, and also a charter member of the
Knights of Pythias.

Ever since Bryan came out for free silver he has
voted the republican ticket. During territorial days
he was a member of the Osage council six or seven
times, was a member of the committee called to allot
the land of the Osages, and performed several mis-
sions for his people in Washington. In fact during the
last generation every affair of importance concerning
the Osage Indians has been impressed with the advice
and ability of Mr. Prudom. '

He was one of the first men to find? gas in Osage
County and is a stockholder in the Pawhuska Oil and
Gas Company. He is a director and stockholder in
the First National Bank, an old and stable institution
that is the outgrowth of a little bank started in pioneer
times. Mr. Prudom was one of those who bought and
reorganized the bank as the First National. He is
also president and the largest stockholder of the Prue
State Bank and is a stockholder in the Midland Conti-
nental Life Insurance Company.

Through all these years since he reached his ma-
jority he has enjoyed a happy home life. He is properly
proud of his family, and his children and grandchildren
give him the affection and respect paid to the patriarchs
of old. To his wife he gives credit for a loyal and
faithful co-operation with him through adversity and
success. She has never failed him and her influence
has been a factor in his material prosperity as well as
in the successful training of their children. On March
28, 1875, he married Anna Eliza Norbury. Mrs. Prudom,
who was born in Iowa, is of German and English
descent. Of the ten children of their marriage six
died in infancy. The four still living are daughters.
Three of these are married and Mr. Prudom finds
great satisfaction in his sons-in-law, who are capable
business men in and around Pawhuska, and Mr. Pru-
dom has been associated with them in varied enter-
prises. The daughter Lula married Thomas Mosier,
of the well known family mentioned on other pages
of this publication. Maud is the wife of Henry Prue,
a large rancher near Pawhuska. Norine lives at home
with her parents. Nettie is Mrs. A. W. Lohmann,
whose husband is a rancher near Pawhuska.
Mrs. Prudom is an active member of the Catholic
Church, which Mr. Prudom generously supports, and
she reared her children in the same faith. Mr. and
Mrs. Prudom have a number of grandchildren and as
they take great pride in these members of the younger
generation, and as some of them are now working for
Mr. Prudom, it is but proper that their names should
be appended to this article. The names of the grand-
children are: Chas. Prudom Mosier, Thomas Mosier, Jr.,
Edwin Mosier, Christina Mosier, Luther Mosier,
•Tarfies Mosier. Hattie M. Prue, Charles Franklin Prue,
Everett H. Prue, Floyd B. Prue, Annabell Prue,
Annetta Lohmann, and August W. Lohmann.

The Elk City Library. The definite need for a
Carnegie library in Elk City, the metropolis of Beckham
County, had for many years been a matter of discussion
on the part of individual citizens and civic organizations,
but to achieve the desired end no distinctive movement

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2101

' was made until the 24th of February, 1912, when a

! committee of six ladies from the Presbyterian Church

called a meeting of the ladies of Elk City to consider
the possibility of establishing a public library. As a
11 matter of historic record it should be noted that the six
1 women comprising this original and public-spirited com-
■> mittee from the Presbyterian Church of Elk City were
• Mesdames S. L. Neely, George Dramer, Samuel Orr, W.

E. Allen, O. H. Young and Mrs. Florence Brown.

1P By the 1st of March, 1912, permanent organization
had been made, and constitution and by-laws were
15 adopted by which all executive power was vested in a
fs board of twelve members. The ladies elected to the
L board at that time — with the exception of those who
« have removed from Elk City — have since served faith-

is- fully and effectively, the personnel of the sterling corps

lie who have thus labored so earnestly for the achievement
y of a noble public service being as here noted : Mesdames

ice S. L. Neely, Fried Mayer, A. G. Low, George F. Sisson,
D. A. Mayer, E. C. Willison, O. H. Cafky, W. E. Allen,
ige Jodie Burnett, Charles Durie and John G. Scott. Those
mi who have been added to fill vacancies are Mesdames Guy
in McClung, H. C. Powell, John Forsythe, John Maupin
ion and W. A. Wright.

cei The library was started with 250 volumes, which were
>U'i donated by townspeople, and from this nucleus has been
i is ' evolved a collection that at the close of the year 1915
’rue includes 850 volumes. The business men of the town
nti-j , were solicited for monthly subscription to defray run-
■ ning expenses, such as rent for the room occupied and
«• the paying of the salary of the librarian. Many other
eily methods were used to obtain funds with which to pur-
irea chase books.

rets On the 22d of February, 1914, at a “Colonial Ban-
mi] quet, ’’ the Elk City Library Association asked the Com-
aad mereial Club to assist in securing for the library a
cnee Carnegie building. It was through the co-operation
‘Has thus effected that lots were purchased and final arrange-
iaich ments made for the building, which was completed in
Join,' the autumn of 1915, its dedication having been made,
;lish with most consistent ceremony and other observances,
e six in October of that year.

iters] The board appointed by the city council to direct the
finds; affairs of the Carnegie Library of Elk City has the
pable following personnel : Judge R. E. Echols, W. C. Thomas,

Pm] 0. F. Tesmar, John G. Scott, Mrs. 0. H. Cafky, Mrs.
enter-; W. E. Allen and Mrs. John G. Scott.

[osier]

pages

hnska.

R. B. Butler. The Tribune Press, publishing the
Evening and Weekly Tribune, at Blackwell, of which
R. B. Butler is editor and proprietor, is one of the most
enterprising younger journals of Northern Oklahoma.

I Established three years ago, it has already forged to
the front among the county papers and has fulfilled the
essential purposes of a new organ in publishing the
news in an attractive manner, in furnishing an excellent
medium for business and advertising, and in advocating
through its columns every movement for righteousness,
clean-mindedness, wholesome civic standards, temperance,
education and religion. It practices the precepts of home
first and world afterwards. The Tribune has a large
support both in the city and county and goes regularly
to subscribers living in every state in the Union. It is
published from a strictly modern plant, equipped with a
Mergenthaler linotype and with all the facilities for
high class printing and press work. The office also makes
a specialty of high grade job and book printing. The
paper was established in Blackwell in the fall of 1912
and Mr. Butler has shown a rare degree of enterprise
and success in bringing it so quickly to favor and
influence.

PH*.

R. B. Butler was born at Huntingdon, Tennessee, Nov-
ember 26, 1882, and for a young man still under thirty-
five has accomplished a great deal of excellent work in
the world, both as a newspaper man and as a minister
of the gospel. He comes of an old Tennessee family,
whose ancestors were hardy pioneers and noted for the
courage of their convictions. Mr. Butler’s father, Gar-
vin B. Butler, is a native Tennesseean and is one of the
leading stock breeders of the west half of the state.
The mother’s maiden name was Mary E. 'Chambers.
Both parents are members of the Baptist Church and the
father is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd
Fellows. There are five children and both the sons,
R. B. and A. C., are connected with the Tribune Press
at Blackwell.

Mr. Butler grew up on a farm in Tennessee where he
learned the meaning of honest toil. His early education
was received in the public schools, after which he at-
tended Union University at Jackson, Tennessee, and
finally graduated from Hall-Moody Baptist College at
Martin, Tennessee. He was ordained to the ministry in
1906, the year after graduation, since which time he has
been actively engaged in that work. He held several
pastorates in Oklahoma prior to entering into the news-
paper business and is still active in church work, preach-
ing regularly. He is a member of the Independent
Order of Odd Fellows and served two years as a member
of the Tennessee State Militia.

On July 14, 1906, Mr. Butler was married to Miss
Maude White, daughter of A. B. White of Enid, Okla-
homa. To their union have been born two daughters:
Mary Virginia and Marguritte. He is a republican in
politics and with his wife holds membership in the
Baptist Church. *

Clarence B. Leedy. The first county attorney of
Ellis County after its organization and statehood was
Clarence B. Leedy. His father some year before had
been the first postmaster of one of the new towns in
Dewey County, and the town was named in his honor,
Leedey, with only a slight modification of the name.
These two facts indicate that members of the Leedy
family have been exceptionally active in that section
of Oklahoma, and they have been a fine type of those
worthy characters who in future years will be credited
as empire builders. Clarence B. Leedy is one of the
most successful lawyers of Ellis County, lives at Arnett,
and has been quite a man of affairs for a number of
years.

Though he is still on the lee side of middle age, he
came into close touch with pioneer conditions at his
birth, since his birthplace was a log house on a farm
in Fulton County, Indiana. There he first saw the light
of day September 9, 1875. His parents were Amos and
Sarah C. (Hunter) Leedy. Amos Leedy was born June
6, 1850, near Akron, Ohio, a son of Abraham A. and
Elizabeth E. (Leedy) Leedy, both of whom were natives
of Pennsylvania. Abraham was born in 1819 and died
in 1901, and his wife was born March 25, 1826, and
is now living at Tiosa, Indiana.

In 1859 Amos Leedy moved to Fulton County, Indiana,
and in 1882 took his family to Illinois, and from there
came on to Oklahoma in 1898. While not one of the
earliest pioneers of the original Oklahoma, he was one
of the most active of the early settlers in Dewey County,
where he established his home on Government land. A
part of that land has since been covered by the thriving
Town of Leedey and his name was fitly accepted as the
name of the incipient village. As already stated, he
was the first postmaster when the office was established
in 1899 and held that position until 1902. He is now

2102

31 STORY OF OKLAHOMA

living quietly retired at Leedey and the major part of
his activities as a business man have been performed
as a farmer. In 1873 Amos Leedy married Miss Sarah
C. Hunter, daughter of Jacob Hunter, who was a native
of New York. She was born March 20, 1854, in Marshall
County, Indiana, and died in Piatt County, Illinois, Octo-
ber 20, 1895. She was a very religious woman, an active
member of the German Baptist Church, and divided hei
time and interests between her home and family and her
church duties. She became the mother of ten children,
five sons and five daughters, namely : Clarence B. ; Tempy
Ann; Ira, deceased; Harley G. ; Aaron A.; Charles A.;
Dora; Hassie; Elizabeth E.; and a daughter, the fifth
in age, who died in infancy. On January 20, 1905, at
Independence, Kansas, Amos Leedy married his present
wife. She was born in Kansas. In 1883 Mr. Amos
Leedy was regularly ordained a minister of the German
Baptist Church, and for a great many years has per-
formed the part of a leader in church work.

Clarence B. Leedy was about seven years old when the
family moved to Illinois, and he acquired his early
education in Piatt County of that state. He attended
college at the Central Normal College in Danville, Indi-
ana, where he took a course in law and graduated in
1898. On May 12, 1898, Mr. Leedy enlisted in Company
A of the Sixteenth United States Infantry for service
in the Spanish- American war, which had broken out
only a few weeks previous. He was sent to Cuba and
took part in the noted battle of San Juan Hill on July
1, 1898. In that historic engagement he was wounded
though not seriously. He was discharged with a record
of ‘ ‘ excellent ’ ’ in character and conduct.

During the years 1899-1900 Mr. Leedy was a traveling
representative for the Chicago Journal and Herald. In
June, 1900, he joined his family in Oklahoma, and his
first venture here was to locate a claim near Leedey in
old Day County. He served as deputy county attorney
of Day County one term. In 1904 he was appointed
assistant county attorney of old Day County, and located
for private practice at Grand.

In September, 1907, Mr. Leedy was elected county
attorney of Ellis County on the republican ticket. The
county had been created by the constitutional convention,
and he was the first to fill that important office in the
local civil government. He filled it for 3% years and
since his term of office as county attorney has expired
he has refused to accept any office, and has enjoyed the'
largest law practice of any attorney in Western Okla-
homa. Mr. Leedy is said to have the largest law library
in Ellis County, and is a thoroughly informed and skillful
attorney. He is active as a republican, and has been a
member of the central and state committees since 1901.
Fraternally he is identified with the Independent Order
of Odd Fellows and has passed all the chairs in his home
lodge.

On February 2, 1902, at Leedey, he married Miss
Mabel Ann Foster, daughter of Alexander W. and Clara
(Sharp) Foster. Her parents were both born in Cass
County, Missouri, and that was also her birthplace on
July 4, 1882. Mr. and Mrs. Leedy have a fine family
of eight children, five sons and three daughters, namely:
Mabel Ethel, born March 16, 1903, and died January 4,
1905; Charles B., born November 24, 1904; Eva, born
July 16, 1906; Raymond, born February 18, 1908; Dar-
win, born February 16, 1910; Clara, born September 30,
1912; Frank, born June 12, 1914; and Eldon Leedy,
born February 26, 1916.

William David Atkins. While he is one of the more
recent recruits to the field of commercial endeavor, the
success which has already attended the efforts of William

David Atkins gives promise of his becoming one of the )
leading merchants of Garfield County, as he is now the ]
proprietor of the principal store at Kremlin. Mr. Atkins
is pre-eminently an excellent example of the self-made j
man, having worked his own way through college, and J
prior to entering mercantile lines taught school, his capi- j|
tal for his business having been saved from his earnings |
as an educator.

Mr. Atkins is a product of the agricultural community i j |
of Lyon County, Kansas, where he was born on his
father’s farm, July 27, 1883, a son of Albert W. and
Margaret Jane (Wyrick) Atkins. The family is of
English origin, and was founded in the United States
by the grandparents of William D. Atkins, William and
Anna Atkins, natives of the mother country, who emi-
grated here in 1831 and passed the remaining years of
their lives in Will County, Illinois. Albert W. Atkins |
was born at Joliet, Illinois, February 10, 1852, was
reared amid agricultural surroundings, adopted the voca-
tion of a farmer when he reached years of maturity, and
has passed the entire period of his active life in pastoral
pursuits. He was educated in the public schools of
Illinois, but when eighteen years of age went to Kansas
and purchased land in Lyon CouDty, continuing to carry
on his operations there until 1899. At this time there ,
came the only break in his agricultural career, when he
became the proprietor of a meat market at Drummond, .
but after one year’s experience in this line he disposed
of his interests therein and in 1900 located on a claim-
in Woods County. In 1913 he removed to Kremlin, and
is now retired from active pursuits. He has a successful
career in a material way, and in the evening of life is
able to enjoy the fruits of his years of labor. Mr. At-
kins was married at Emporia, Kansas, March 15, 1879,
to Miss Margaret Jane Wyrick, a daughter of David I
and Jemima (Brown) Wyrick, who were natives of
Indiana. She was born December 14, 1862, in Marion
County, Indiana, and became the mother of three daugh-
ters and seven sons, as follows: Anna Elizabeth, born

December 15, 1881, who is now a teacher in the public
schools of Oklahoma; William David, of this review;
Albert Pearl, born December 6, 1884; Nellie and Nettie,
twins, born December 24, 1886; Lawrence LeRoy, born
December 29, 1888; James Oliver, born April 22, 1890;
Walter, who died in infancy; Orlando, born July 9, 1899;
and Ivan Guy, born May 20, 1904, who died May 20,
1906.

William David Atkins was sixteen years of age when
he accompanied his parents to Oklahoma. He had se-
cured a common school education in Lyon County, Kan-
sas, but was ambitious for a better and more advanced*
training, and accordingly resolved to work his own
way through school. Enrolling as a student at the
Oklahoma Northwestern Normal School, he solicited such*
honorable employment as might be found about the insti-
tution, to which he devoted himself during the hours he
was not engaged in study, and thus, through industry
and the strictest economy, he was enabled to work his
way through and to graduate with the class that left
the Alva institution in 1907. In 1909, 1910, 1911 and
1912, with this equipment, Mr. Atkins was superintendent
of city schools of Cleo, Oklahoma, and in 1912 came to
Kremlin in the same capacity. During the two years
that he acted as superintendent of schools he became
widely and favorably known among the people of this
locality, and when the opportunity presented itself he
decided to enter business affairs, and accordingly em-
barked in mercantile lines. It is illustrative of his
ability to state that he doffed the cap and gown of the
educator and donned the apron of the merchant withoul
trouble, and that in his new field of endeavor he is making]

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2103

prodigious strides toward success. He carries a general
stock, selected after a careful study of the needs and
wants of the community, well arranged, moderately priced
and attractively displayed. His establishment has taken
its place as the leading store at Kremlin.

Mr. Atkins was married at Alva, Oklahoma, June 2,
1909, to Miss Mary Elizabeth Else, who was born at
Weeping Water, Nebraska, November 22, 1886, a daugh-
ter of John and Mary (Evans) Else, the former a native
of England and the latter of Illinois. Mrs. Atkins is a
graduate of Oklahoma Northwestern Normal School, class
of 1907, having been president of her class during her
senior year. After her graduation she began to teach
school, was married to Mr. Atkins two years later, and
continued to teach for two years more. She now devotes
herself to the duties of her household, and to her chil-
dren, of whom there are four: Leah May, born March

11, 1910; George William, born October 1, 1911; Bessie,
born November 23, 1913; and John Ivan, born August
20, 1915. Mr. Atkins is a member of the Masonic fra-
ternity, in which, as elsewhere, he has numerous friends.
With his family he belongs to the Baptist Church.

Robert Drakeley Rood, M. D., D. S. One must
occupy a very high elevation to observe and follow
with any degree of sanity the intricate meshes of state,
national and international life. Especially is this true
in these days when strong men move with difficulty
through subtle threatening entanglements induced by
the great labor problems and the European war.

Perhaps the newer states in our Union offer the
most pronounced example of these intricate conditions
with their admixture of material from the oldest fam-
ilies, financiers, adventurers, foreign and native ele-
ment. To trace a pathway through such, requires
deliberate judgment, persistent individualism, tact to
live against and to respect multitudinous views of
so-called right standards. Such a course is an inter-
pretation of character, strong to meet mutation, adjust-
ment and emergency with alertness and a demonstra-
tion of the best scholarship in life, which knows and
searches for the heart of man, finds and holds it whilst
hewing definitely to a finale of results. Some men
appear to be especially gifted in these qualities which
make for the successes in life. As a representative of
this class, he whose name heads this sketch is most
worthy of honorable mention.

The subject of this biography, Robert Drakeley
Rood, was born October 20, 1863, at Stevens Point,
Wisconsin. He is the second son of Galen Gear Rood,
M. D., and Nancy Jane Sylvester.

The early ancestors were of the Puritans of New
England and belonged to the oldest families in the
United States. Charles Sumner, the great statesman;
Caroline Hazard, former president of Wellesley Col-
lege; Senator Gear of Iowa, Ogden N. Rood, one of the
founders of Columbia, are familiar names in the family
record.

His father, a much loved man, is still living at the
age of eighty-seven year's. He was graduated from the
Ohio Medical College at Cincinnati, Ohio, in the spring
of 1856. The same season he opened an office at
Stevens Point, Wisconsin, which has never been closed.
His mother, who shared equally the love of the com-
munity in which they lived, was an extraction of the
French through the Gerard family of Paris. She
passed away in 1906 at the age of seventy-two, much
mourned by her family and all who knew her. She
was a most consistent Christian and worker in the
Presbyterian Church. All phases of her energy seemed
tireless in direct effort for all that was uplifting. The
other members of Dr. Robert Rood’s family were two

brothers, Myron Galen Rood, M. D.; Price Walton
Rood, D. S., and a sister, Katharine Abagail Rood, who
after graduation from the University of Wisconsin
chose music as a profession.

Dr. Robert Rood ’s boyhood was not unusual in its
educational advantages of city graded and high school
courses. The summer times of camping, fishing and
athletic sports with some business ventures and adven-
tures introduced at times, were arrow points showing
the trend of the man. Few have found and enjoyed
more varied and adventurous experiments. His fail-
ures were not met with the best good nature, and his
successes, always shared with his friends, were many
times due not to luck but to the vim that comes of
well weathered experience. Later he was given every
opportunity to find his own bearings through the
higher educational institutions of Lake Forest and
the Northwestern universities, and to choose either the
professional or business career, both of which were
elements in his mental inheritance. After an elective
course of two years, he decided to matriculate at the
Ohio College of Dental Surgery, from which he was
graduated with the class of 1887. The following year
he entered Rush Medical College, Chicago. He success-
fully practiced his profession in his home town for
some years, during which time he was married, Decem-
ber LI, 1895, to Ethel Kirwan, also a native of Stevens
Point, Wisconsin.

At this time he was appointed by Governor LaFol-
lette of Wisconsin secretary of the World’s Fair Com-
mission for the State of Wisconsin. Though a profes-
sional man he was keenly alive to the trend of business
thought, and was quick to sense a possible advantage
in the opening of the mid-continent oil fields. In the
fall of 1903 he moved with his family to Bartlesville,
Oklahoma, and in a phenomenally short time proved
himself one of the energetic factors which made, what
was then the old Indian Territory, the national center
of oil activity.

Doctor Rood brought in the first large well in
Indian Territory. In his business he has been asso-
ciated with the Indian Territory Illuminating Oil
Company, the Stevens Point Oil Company, Waukesha
Oil Company, Plover Drilling Company, etc. He is
orthodox in his religion, a member of the Masonic
order, being a Thirty-second Degree Mason, a generous
citizen interested in all civic betterment, and in close
sympathy always with a progressive city and state.

Three children — Esther, a graduate from the Emma
Willard School at Troy, New York; Katharine Abagail,
and Robert Drakeley, Jr. — make a very happy home.
Mrs. Rood is the eldest daughter of Frank Grahame
Kirwan and Elizabeth Wadleigh Kirwan, representa-
tive Maryland and New England families whose
ancestors include the Fletchers, Pooles, Evans, Har-
veys, Pierces, Travers and Smallwoods. Mrs. Rood
has been identified with the early growth and develop-
ment of her adopted home city and state in all that
pertains to the highest welfare of its citizens. A
graduate of the best schools and instructors, Mrs. Rood
has won professionally, both in her native state, Wis-
consin and Oklahoma, innumerable laurels in vocal art,
and has done a great deal to stimulate and promote
music and art by organizing the Musical Research
Society. Mrs. Rood has been secretary of the library
board since its inception; officer and member of
Musical a»d Women’s State and National Federated
clubs, and of other organizations both state and
national, and has effectively co-operated with the
State Dental Board in promoting oral hygiene in the
public schools. Throughout this pioneer period of
Oklahoma, Mrs. Rood has kept abreast of the times

2104

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

and her interests by frequent studies in Chicago, Balti-
more and Kansas City. Mrs. Rood holds a court of
the choicest social life around a hearth second to none
in its delightful hospitality.

Written September 6, 1916.

Charles Robinson Hume, M. D. During his twenty-
five years of residence in Oklahoma Doctor Hume has
acquired many interesting associations and useful rela-
tions with the state. His home throughout that period
has been on practically the same section of land. For
eleven years he served as physician to the United States
Indian Agency of Anadarko, and for the past fourteen
years has been engaged in general practice as a physi-
cian and surgeon in the City of Anadarko. Both the old
Indian agency and the present city are identical so far
as location is concerned, and the modern city is the
outgrowth of the old agency headquarters.

The oldest child of his parents, Charles Robinson Hume
was born October 21, 1847, at Riga, Monroe County,
New York. Both he and his father were born on the
same farm. His parents were Roderick R. and Ruth
Ami (Payne) Hume. The farm in New York on which
his father was born was settled by Moses Hume, who
emigrated from Massachusetts in 1811.

Doctor Hume’s ancestors have all been in America
for more than two hundred years, and were identified
with the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut. He
is fifth in descent from Nicholas Hume, who was mar-
ried in Boston in 1714 and probably was from the
Wedderburn Humes of Scotland. All four of Doctor
Hume’s great-grandfathers had a record of service in
the Revolutionary war, and another distant ancestor
whose record is of special interest was Capt. John Gallup,
who fought in the first naval battle of the American
colonies during the Pequot Indian war of 1636. By
virtue of these several ancestors who were patriots dur-
ing the war for independence, Doctor Hume is a mem-
ber of the Sons of the American Revolution. His
mother, Ruth Ann Payne, was born and reared in the
same locality of New York state as her husband, and
her parents had come from Berkshire County, Massa-
chusetts.

In 1854 the Hume family, including Charles R., who
was then seven years old, moved out to Medina in
Lenawee County, Michigan. The farm which the father
bought there was the family homestead for a period of
forty years. It was in that region of Southern Mich-
igan that Doctor Hume grew to manhood. He attended
the common schools and also acquired an academic course
in the Oak Grove Academy ^n Medina, where he finished
in 1870. He continued his education in the University
of Michigan, where he was graduated M. D. in 1874.

Thus more than forty years have passed since he
began to render service to humanity in the capacity of
physician and surgeon. In earlier years before taking
up active practice he followed farming and teaching
and paid the expenses of his university course through
his own earnings. Reared on a farm, and a practical
farmer before he became a physician, Doctor Hume has
always kept up his interest in agricultural affairs and
has owned farms in connection with his professional
business. However, he has allowed nothing to interfere
with the studious and active devotion to his real calling.

In 1874 after leaving the University of Mich-
igan he began practice at Perrysburg in Wood County,
Ohio. Later he was at Tontogany in the 'same Ohio
county, and from there went out in 1881 to Caldwell
in Sumner County, Kansas. He was one of the early
physicians in that then sparsely settled district of Kan-
sas, and remained there, growing up with the country
and enjoying a large practice for ten years.

In 1890 Doctor Hume came to the Indian Agency of
Anadarko as agency physician. He continued in the
United States Indian service from December 1, 1890, to
February 28, 1902, as resident physician for the Kiowa
and Comanche Agency, and performed all the services
connected with that office until after the opening to
white settlement of the Kiowa and Comanche country.
He then opened an office for general practice, and is
now the dean of the medical fraternity of Anadarko.
For years the demands upon his professional time and
energy have been all that he could satisfy.

For the past seventeen years Doctor Hume has been
local surgeon for the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific
Railway Company; from 1901 to 1914 was president of
the Board of Pension Examiners of Caddo County; was
superintendent of public health of Caddo County from
1901 to 1907, was district councillor of the State Medi-
cal Society five years; was vice president of the State
Medical Society in 1914; and in May, 1916, was elected
president of the State Medical Society. While living in
Kansas he became a director of the Citizens Bank of
Caldwell in 1887. In politics he is a republican and is a
member of the Presbyterian Church.

At Perrysburg in Wood County, Ohio, December 27,
1876, Doctor Hume married Annette Ross. She was
born in Perrysburg on March 8, 1858, daughter of James
White and Catherine (Darling) Ross. Her father was a
prominent factor in local affairs in Wood County, Ohio.
Mrs. Hume has been a home maker and a social leader,
has served as president and secretary of the Woman’s
Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church in Okla-
homa and recently retired from the office of president
of the Oklahoma State Federation of Women’s Clubs
To their marriage were born five children, three of whom
died in infancy. C. Ross Hume, one of the surviving
sons, married Verne Gossard, and has a family of one
son and two daughters ; Raymond R. Hume, the other
son, is unmarried. The older son is an attorney, has
served for four years as county judge of Caddo County
while the other is a practicing physician and is located
at Minco, Oklahoma. Both sons are graduates of the
Oklahoma State University and took their professional
degrees in the University of Kansas and the University
Medical School of Kansas City, respectively.

pilm

Osman A. Gilbert. Perhaps no family in Pawnee
County, Oklahoma, has a more historic ancestry than has
the family represented by Osman A. Gilbert, successful
druggist and former postmaster of Cleveland. They
are in the direct line of descent from Sir Humphrey
Gilbert, well known in English history, and Sir Walter
Raleigh, equally prominent in history and literature. On
the mother’s side there is known relationship to General
Grant, whose tomb on Riverside Drive is one of the most
interesting objects in New York City. The family came
to New York in Colonial days, and Rev. Joseph O.
Gilbert, grandsire of the subject, was a well known
circuit rider of the Methodist Church in his day.

Osman A. Gilbert is one of nine children born to his
parents, Osman A. and Fannie E. Gilbert. The father
was born in Italy, New York, and died on January 6
1899, near Geneseo, Illinois, at the age of seventy. His
widow survived until 1905, and died near Geneseo, Illi
nois, when she was sixty-three years old. The senioi
Gilbert came to Michigan with his parents when he
was two years old, and later when he was sixteen, they
moved to Illinois. They were farming people practically
all of their lives and the father owned the farm or
which he died for a period of fifty-two years. He wai
a prominent citizen in his part of Illinois, and was activ<
politically, though he never cared to hold office. He wa;
twice married, and the subject of this review was th

‘

year:

Jim

iiatca
lie Oc

petal

Mato:

lineal

tail

speai

papers

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2105

oldest child of the second marriage. Until he was
twenty-three years old Osman A. Gilbert, Jr., lived at
home with his parents and assisted his father as he
grew to manhood in his extensive farming interests and
cheese manufactory, which his father established at
Cleveland, Illinois.

He secured a very good education, following his high-
school training with two years at a normal school, and
when he was twenty-three years old he came to Oklahoma
April 22, 1889. He first settled on a government
claim near Edmond, which he held for two and a half
years and then sold, and went to work in the drug store
of Moore and Howard at Edmond. He was with that
firm for eight months, when he entered into a partner-
ship with them and purchased a drug store at Stillwater.
He continued there for a year and a half, sold out his
interest in the business and came to Cleveland on April
4, 1894, just five years after coming to the state. He
opened his present establishment, which he has contin-
uously operated since that time, with commendable suc-
cess.

Mr. Gilbert is vice president and a director of the
First National Bank since it was nationalized in 1900,
and is interested in a. number of oil projects in the
county, as well as extensive farming interests. He was
one of a company of three who organized the Cleveland
telephone exchange, which the organizing company later
sold to the Pioneer Telephone Company. For eight years
Mr. Gilbert was postmaster during the McKinley and
Roosevelt administrations, and has twice served as mayor
of Cleveland. He is a member of and one of the official
board of the Christian Church at Cleveland, and is fra-
ternally associated with the Knights of Pythias and
the Masons. •

On June 29, 1893, Mr. Gilbert was married to Miss
Evie A. Powell at Edmond, Oklahoma. She was born
other at Vandalia, Michigan, and is the only daughter of
Jason A. and Barbara A. Powell. She is of Welsh-
English and German descent. On the paternal side she
ocated is directly descended from John Hart, one of the signers
of the of the Declaration of Independence. Her husband smiles
ssional and says she is a consistent relative of her ancestor,
venitj Her father’s people moved to Michigan in an early day
from the State of New York and the relatives there claim
Revolutionary fame. On the maternal side her grand-
Pa« nother came from Germany when she was thirteen years
tumhai fid. Her parents afterward lived in Kansas, where
cessfiil she was educated, and in 1889 she came with her parents
The} ;o Edmond, Oklahoma. Her father was for many years
ngaged in the market and stock business. In 1900 her
Waits jarents moved to Cleveland to be near their daughter
lie. 0j md purchased property in that town and vicinity. Jason
Geneia jA Powell died in Cleveland in 1910 at sixty-seven years
tie moll >f age. His wife still survives him.

ilycamt Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert have no children. For fourteen
apt 0. ^ears she assisted her husband in his store, was his as-
11 taowi istant pharmacist and was his assistant postmistress
f, uring his incumbency of the postoffiee. During the past
m to hi ew years Mrs. Gilbert has been a leader in Maecabee
he iatlfl .ffairs in Oklahoma, and has served on state and national
anuary 6 elegations. The Ladies Review, the official paper of
nty, Hlhe Maecabee order, published at Port Huron, Michigan,
ieseo, the October, 1913, number says: “Mrs. Gilbert is

He sertyot only an excellent Officer but upon many occasions
fllen t- f Maecabee Rallies has shown herself a brilliant and
sea, the ble orator. ’ ’ In addition to the standing she has in
piaeticall he Maecabee order she holds an official position in the
, farm m Irand Temple of the Order of Pythian Sisters in Okla-
oma, and has received commendatory mention as a
uent speaker and a thoughtful woman, in the leading
wspapers of the state.

i. Hew
was aetii
e. Hem
«as tl

She is at present grand chief of the Pythian Sisters
of the Grand Jurisdiction of Oklahoma; and had the
honor of delivering the state address for that order at
the joint public convocation of the lodges of that order
at Convention Hall, Tulsa, Oklahoma, May, 1916.

Mrs. Gilbert is a member of the Christian Church, and
has been an active worker in her home city, having
been a teacher of a young ladies’ class for several years,
and for a number of years had charge of the choir, being
an accomplished musician. During the last few years
other duties which took her often from home have
caused her to give up much of the local work.

Together with her father she did much to secure the
building of the first church erected in Cleveland, and
was a charter member of the board of trustees and the
first clerk of the church. Mrs. Gilbert is the possessor
of a one hundred and Sixty acre farm located three
miles from Cleveland, purchased with her own earnings,
and says she is prouder of this than of any other achieve-
ment. Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert are pioneers in the State
of Oklahoma and have been-en rapport with the activities
of the state from the beginning.

Mr. Gilbert who was present at the famous opening
of the “strip’’ in 1893, tells many interesting stories
of the rush at that time and of the early days of
Oklahoma. He was one of sixty who made the race from
Stillwater to the location of the present Town of Pawnee,
a distance of thirteen miles, and of that company only
eight arrived, he being one of them. This distance was
covered in thirty-nine minutes.

Edward Andrew Rowland, M. D. Two members of
the Rowland family have gained a secure place in medi-
cal circles in Oklahoma, and both for a time were located
at Shawnee. Dr. Edward A. Rowland is now the lead-
ing physician and surgeon at Maud, and his older
brother still resides and enjoys a large practice at
Shawnee.

The Rowlands are a Mississippi family. The great-
grandfather of Doctor Rowland immigrated from Wales
and settled in Georgia shortly after the Revolutionary
war. He became a farmer and planter. There were
two brothers who came with him from Liverpool and
one of them settled in New York State and one subse-
quently went to Illinois. Dr. Edward Andrew Rowland
was born at Falkner, Mississippi, January 5, 1884.

His father, A. J. Rowland, was born in Mississippi
in 1846 and now resides at Mobile, Alabama. He was
reared and married in his native state and during the
last year of the Civil war served on the Union side.
Following the war he removed to Falkner, Mississippi,
engaged in merchandising, and in 1888 went to Pon-
totoc, Mississippi, and became identified with the rail-
way postal service. In 1907 he removed to Mobile and
is now transfer clerk in the railway mail service. In
politics he is republican and at one time served as tax
assessor of Tippah County, Mississippi. He is a mem-
ber of the Christian Church and the Masonic fraternity.
A. J. Rowland married Martha Annie Northcross, who
was born in Mississippi in 1847. Their children are
Dr. T. D. Rowland of Shawnee; C. W. Rowland, a
farmer at Haskell, Texas; R. E. Rowland, who con-
ducts a cotton compress and ice factory at New Albany,
Mississippi; and Dr. Edward A.

Dr. Taswell D. Rowland, the oldest of the brothers,
was born at Ripley, Tippah County, Mississippi, Novem-
ber 3, 1870. He attended public schools in his native
locality, graduated from high school at Salisbury,
Tennessee, in 1889, and for two years was a teacher in
Tippah County. He then entered the railway mail
service, the same line which his father has followed

2106

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

for so many years, and continued in that work for ten
years. In the meantime he had been looking ahead
and planning upon a professional career. In 1899
having left the railway postal service, he entered the
Medical College at Memphis, Tennessee, and was grad-
uated M. D. with the class of 1903. He subsequently
took post-graduate work in the same college in 1906
and 1910, and did post-graduate work at Tulane
University, New Orleans, in 1907 and 1913. In May,
1903, lie located at Shawnee, Oklahoma, and since then
has enjoyed a large and profitable general medical and
surgical practice, his offices being in the Mammoth
Building. He is a deacon in the Christian Church, is
affiliated with the Knights of Pythias and the Knights
of the Maccabees, and has served as president of the
Pottawatomie Medical Society and is a member of the
State Society and the American Medical Association.
He has been a vigorous citizen at Shawnee, and his
name is usually found associated with any movement
for the public welfare. In politics he is a republican.

At Jackson, Tennessee, Dr. T. D. Rowland married
Miss Hattie Barnett, a daughter of the late Sam B.
Barnett, who was court clerk of Madison County, Ten-
nessee, for many years. Doctor Rowland and wife have
four children : Barnett, who graduated from the

Shawnee High School in 1913 and is now taking special
courses in commercial art in Chicago; Annie, who
graduated from the Shawnee High School in 1914, is a
freshman in the State University at Norman; Eliza-
beth, who is in the fourth grade of the public schools;
and Louise, who has not yet reached school age.

Edward Andrew Rowland, whose successful work as a
physician is being done at Maud in Pottawatomie
County, received his early education in the public schools
of Pontotoc, Mississippi, and graduated from high school
there in 1902. For a time he was employed in the super-
intendent ’s office of the M. J. & K. T. Railroad at New
Albany, Mississippi, and was from there transferred to
Mobile, Alabama, in the employ of the same railroad.
That was his line of work up to 1907 at which time he
invested his savings in a professional education, -entering
the Medical Department of the University of Aabama,
from which he was graduated M. D. with the class
of 1910. He is an alert student, and has accepted every
opportunity to fit himself for proficient and skillful
work. From January to May, 1915, he took post-
graduate * work at Tulane University in New Orleans
and also at the University of Alabama at Mobile. He
is a member of the Phi Beta Pi College Fraternity.

In 1910 Doctor Rowland located at Shawnee, where his
brother had been established in practice for a number of
years, but after one year he returned to Mobile, Alabama,
remained there a short time, practiced a year at Creola,
Alabama, and in April, 1913, established himself per-
manently at Maud, Oklahoma, where he now has a
promising medical and surgical practice, with offices in
the Tribbey Drug Store Building. In politics Doctor
Rowland is a republican, is a member of the Christian
Church, and is a member of the county and state medical
societies. The only fraternity to which he belongs is
the Modern Woodmen of America.

Chief Charles Journeycake. In the annals of the
Delaware tribe of Indians there is no name more con-
spicuous than that of Chief Journeycake. He was not
only a political leader of his people but also one of their
spiritual pastors, and some years ago when the Federal
Government published one of its important reports on the
five civilized tribes in Indian Territory the portrait of
Rev. Charles Journeycake, chief of the Delawares, was

given an appropriate place of honor in that portion of
the bulletin devoted to the Delaware people.

Chief Journeycake was the first person baptized in
what is now the State of Kansas, where he lived with !
his people for many years, the Delawares moving into
Indian Territory after 1868. His life of splendid integ- j
rity and Christian virtue gained him the highest respect |
of all who came in contact with him, and his memory is
reverenced by all his people. He was their guide as well ,
as their pastor, and was chiefly instrumental in convert-
ing the Delawares to the Christian religion. He was a
master of the various Indian dialects, including the I
Shawnee, Wyandotte, Seneca, Ottawa as well as the
Delaware dialect. It is said that during the Civil war I
when 80 per cent of his men had enlisted, it was his
statesmanship that held the tribe together. He led the
Delawares from Kansas into Indian Territory, and I
throughout he was the master spirit of his people. As
an ordained Baptist clergyman he did missionary work;
all over Indian Territory, but never accepted one cent fori
his services, making his own living by farming.

Chief Journeycake died in 1894, and his wife, Jane'
(Sancia) Journeycake, passed away in 1893. A brief!
record of their children is as follows: Mary E., de-fl

ceased, who married Charles H. Armstrong; Rachel, the|
deceased wife of N. J. Tanner; Nannie M., widow of then
late Col. Jacob H. Bartles of Bartlesville; Lucy Jane,
deceased, who married Henry Armstrong; Baron Stowe, II
who died when three years old; Emeline, wife of J. E.ll
Campbell of Nowata; Adeline, deceased wife of Samuel H
Love; Anna, who also married Henry Armstrong and is|
now deceased; Cora Lee, who died after her marriage tofl
William Carey; and one that died in infancy.

•

David Ratner. Ten years ago David Ratner camejl
to Cleveland, Oklahoma, and established a mereantikjj
business in which he has since continued successfully II
He has carried his activities into the adjacent Towijl
of Yale in recent years, and since 1914 has operated i
general store there with the same success he has en
joyed in Cleveland.

Mr. Ratner was born in Russia in 1863, Septembe:
11th being the day of his birth. He is a son of Mosei
and Esther (Ullman) Ratner, who came to America
in 1884, bringing their family with them and settlinj
in Kansas. For about four years these people live;
on a farm and then moved to the Town of Wichita
which move was followed no longer by their remova
to Oklahoma about the time the famous “strip” wa
opened in 1893. They had their home at Blackwel
Moses Ratner died in Wichita when he was in th
sixty-third year of his life, and his widow survive
him until 1912, when she died in Cleveland, Oklahomf
aged seventy years. They were the parents of thre
sons and four daughters, all of whom are living at thi
time. They all lived under the paternal roof until th
passing of the father, and the mother was living wit
her son, David, when she passed away.

David Ratner was the first to leave Wichita and g
to the new territory when it was opened in 1893. H
father and others of the family joined him there soc
after and they launched a small mercantile busines
continuing therein for two years, when the fath»
retired and returned to Wichita, Kansas. David Ra
ner went then to Blackwell, Oklahoma, and there toe
charge of a store which he operated for a year ar
then disposed of. His next venture was on his ov
responsibility, and the business he established the
he continued to run for about two years, when he soj
out and came to Cleveland in 1905. Since then he h
conducted a general store here with good success, ai1

CHARLES JOURNEYCAKE

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2107

in 1914, in the month of October, he opened a general
store in Yale. He has prospered in both these ventures,
and in addition to his mercantile activities, has become
the owner of a section of land in Jackson County.

Mr. Ratner, who is a democrat, was a presidential
elector for his district in 1912, and has served on many
important political committees in the years of his resi-
dence here. He is a Mason of high degree, a member
of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and the
Knights of Pythias. He is unmarried, and has his
home with his sisters in Cleveland. His brothers are
Sam and Harry, the former a resident of Kansas City,
and Harry a traveling salesman. Anna, the eldest sister
of the subject, is a widow and makes her home with him.
Rosa married Frank Stephens of Wichita, Kansas. Eliza-
beth lives with her brother David.

S. Weldon Morrison. In September, 1915, Mr.
Morrison began his duties as superintendent of
schools at Byars. With that work he entered upon
his eleventh consecutive year as an Oklahoma educator.
He has been connected with a number of schools in
different parts of the state and the record of his
efficient service has been impressed upon a number of
communities where the people regard him with especial
esteem.

Professor Morrison is still a young man. He was
born at Hazlehurst, Mississippi, April 17, 1884. His
Seoteh-Irish ancestors came to South Carolina during
colonial times. His father, R. S. Morrison, who was
born in Alabama in 1857, and when a young man went
to Hazlehurst, Mississipipi, where he married; even-
tually became a pioneer in North Texas, locating at
Vernon in the Red River Valley in 1888. By profes-
sion he is an attorney, and has practiced in several of
the large circuits in North and Northwest Texas. In
1898 he located at Warren, Oklahoma, but in 1907 re-
turned to Texas and established his home and profession
at Archer City, where he now resides. He is now
serving as county attorney of Archer County. In poli-
tics he is a democrat, is an active member and deacon
of the Baptist Church, and is affiliated with the Masonic
fraternity and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.
He also belongs to County, State and American Bar
Associations. R. S. Morrison married Miss Nettie
Wheeler who was born in Mississippi in 1867. Their
children are: Professor Morrison; Mary Bell, who

died at the age of five years; a daughter who died in
infancy; Rubie, wife of Dave Anders, a farmer at
Hobart, Oklahoma; Thomas, in 'the railroad service at
Archer City, Texas; John, a railroad man at Orth,
Texas; Ethel, who is living at home and employed in
one of the stores at Archer City; Emma Joda, a junior
in the high school at Archer City; Claud, Hazel, Percy
and Maggie, all of them attending public school at
Archer City.

S. Weldon Morrison completed the eighth grade of
the public schools at Vernon, Texas, in 1901. During
1902 he attended the Agricultural and Mechanical Col-
lege at Stillwater, Oklahoma, and the years 1903, 1904
and 1905 were spent as a farmer in Kiowa County of
this state. He was just twenty-one when he began his
career as an Oklahoma educator. His first school year
1905-06, was spent as principial of schools at Duke in
Jackson County. His successive locations and terms
if service have been: 1906-07, principal of schools at

lottage Hill, Jackson County; 1907-09, principial at
South Greer, Oklahoma; 1909-11, principal of Center-
dew School; 1911-14, principal at Tipton, three years;
L914-15, principal of the Washington schools in McClain
Jounty; and in the fall of 1915 he became superin-

tendent of schools at Byars. During all these years
Mr. Morrison has been attending the Central State
Normal School at Edmond during the summer sessions
and also for two fall terms and for two spring terms.
He is now a member of the senior class in that insti-
tution.

He has also identified himself with the work and
interests of the County and State Teachers' Association.
In politics he is a democrat, is a member of the Chris-
tian Church, and is affiliated with Tipton Lodge No.
417, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons. At Warren,
Oklahoma, in 1905, Mr. Morrison married Miss Ethel
Byrd. Her father, Thomas Byrd, who now lives at
Edmond, Oklahoma, is a mechanic in the employ of the
Santa Fe Railroad. Three children were born to their
union: Orion and Harold, both in school; and Waldo.

Edward Karl Allis, M. D. Oklahoma has bene-
fited by the coming to this state of many young and
highly trained professional men. One of these is Dr.
Edward K. Allis, who after acquiring all the advantages
of northern and eastern schools and a general prelimi-
nary experience as a physician and surgeon, came to
Wanette about six years ago, and has since made his
service of great value to that community. That it has
been appreciated is shown in the fact that he now
enjoys a large practice, and is the owner of consider-
able property and has varied interests in the community.

A native of Indiana, Edward Karl Allis was born at
Arcadia in that state May 1, 1881. The Allis family
came originally from England, and Doctor Allis'
great-grandfather after crossing the ocean established
a home in Illinois, became a manufacturer there, and
died in that state. The grandfather, W. B. Allis, was
born in Switzerland County, Indiana, in 1817, and
died at Sheridan, Indiana, in 1887. He too was a
physician and surgeon. /

W. D. Allis, father of Doctor Allis, was born in
Switzerland County, Indiana, in 1850, and is still living
at Arcadia in that state. His home has been in Indiana
practically all his life, and his business has been that
of contractor and builder. He also owns a fruit farm
near Hanford, California. He is affiliated with the
Independent Order of Odd Fellows and is a member
and deacon in the Christian Church. W. D. Allis mar-
ried Julia Teal, a native of Indiana. Dr. Allis is the
older of their two sons, and the younger is Harlan
Isaac, who now has charge of his father’s fruit farm
near Hanford, California.

As a boy Doctor Allis attended the public schools in
Arcadia, graduated from high school in 1900, and he
soon afterward entered the Hahnemann Medical Col-
lege in Chicago, where he was graduated M. D. with
the class of 1905. In choosing a location for practice
he began at Hanford, West Virginia, where he remained
during two years, 1905-07. During 1908 he took post-
graduate courses in medicine at the University of
Indiana Medical Department.

Thus with a liberal equipment for the duties of his
profession he arrived in Wanette, Oklahoma, in March,
1909. • His offices are in the First National Bank
Building. Doctor Allis owns a farm of sixty acres just
west of Wanette and owns his residence in the northern
part of the village. He is also a director in the Lone
Tree Oil Company. His professional relations are with
the County and State Medical societies and the Amer-
ican Medical Association. Fraternally he is identified
with Wanette Lodge No. 171, Ancient Free and Accepted
Masons, and with Shawnee Lodge No. 657, Benevolent
and Protective Order of Elks. He is a member of the
Christian Church and in politics is a democrat.

2108

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

At Wanette in 1911 Doctor Allis married Miss Stella
Kidd. Her father was the later N. A. Kidd, a farmer
and stockman. To their marriage have been born two
children: Wilber Karl, born July 18, 1913; and Rita

Lorine, born September 30, 1914.

George Wilson. Due largely to the individual efforts
and enthusiasm of George Wilson, head of the Depart-
ment of Agriculture for Schools in the State Agricultural
and Mechanical College at Stillwater, agriculture as a
subject of instruction has advanced during the last
two years to much higher standing in school and college
curriculums in Oklahoma. The state schools of agricul-
ture have been creditably efficient but prior to 1914 there
was little serious effort to have agriculture taught in
the high schools. Indeed, until that time the state
normal school curriculum provided for the teaching of
agriculture during only one term, or part of a year, as
a prescribed portion of the course leading to graduation.
It was discovered that the graduate teachers turned
out of the state normals took home with them the
notion that the state did not consider the teaching of
agriculture very important. It was to overcome this
condition and build up agricultural education in the
public schools that the department of agriculture for
schools was created in the Oklahoma Agricultural and
Mechanical College. Mr. Wilson had taught in district
and city schools, state normal schools and the Agricul-
tural and Mechanical College and the board of agricul-
ture found him especially qualified for the work. His
duties required that he visit high schools and normal
schools and establish departments of agriculture, deliver
addresses on the work of the department, and assist
in making the practical and scientific study of agriculture
an important feature of the school curriculum.

Born in Grayson County, Kentucky, in 1870, George
Wilson is a son of James F. and Ellen (Craig) Wilson,
who are now living a retired life at Hennessey, Okla-
homa. John Craig, his mother’s father, was for forty
years one of the best known public school teachers of
Kentucky. Mr. Wilson has three brothers and two
sisters: Cord Wilson, a farmer at Cashion, Oklahoma;
Clyde Wilson, a teacher in Oregon; Roy Wilson, living
with his parents at Hennessey; Mrs. Nannie Cross, wife
of a farmer at Glencoe, Oklahoma; Mrs. Donna Campbell,
whose husband is a farmer at LeGrande, Oregon.

Work in the tobacco fields and illness interfered
with the early education of Mr. Wilson in Kentucky, and
it was not until after he reached manhood that he
was able to satisfy his ambition for a thorough, prac-
tical, well rounded schooling, and he still retained the
fire of youth when, after a few years of well directed
study, he completed the highest course in the Central
State Normal School of Oklahoma, which is recognized
as one of the leading normal schools of the cojintry.
When he was still a boy his father had removed to
Western Kansas in 1884. The country was new and
sparsely settled, and educational advantages were meager.
It was three years before the son was able to continue
his primary training. Then in two years, with a few
months of school each year and home study, he prepared
himself for teaching in the common schools, and there-
after for two years taught in Kansas. In 1891, at the
age of twenty-one, he came into the original Oklahoma
Territory and in Kingfisher County continued his pro-
fessional work and from every possible source sought a
more complete education for himself. During 1903-04
he was a teacher in Comanche County, and from there
entered the Central State Normal School, where after
three years he completed a course and received his
diploma in 1907. The following year he was elected su-

perintendent of schools at Guymon, one of the leading
towns of the Oklahoma Panhandle. In 1908 he was
elected assistant teacher in the history department of the
Northwestern State Normal School at Alva, and re-
mained in that position until the history department was
discontinued because of lack of appropriation. The
year of 1908-09 he spent as a teacher in the Agricultural
and Mechanical College at Stillwater, and the following
year he returned to the Northwestern State Normal as
head of the history department. The next year he was
superintendent of city schools at Okemah, and the fol-
lowing year was elected by the state board of agriculture
as head of the extension department of the Agricultural
and Mechanical College. In 1914 he was promoted by
the board to the head of the department of agriculture
for schools.

This department under Mr. Wilson’s management
has become vastly more important than formerly. He
raised the standards to such an extent that the Legis-
lature of 1915, on advice and counsel of himself and
Robert H. Wilson, state superintendent of public instrue
tion, enacted a law providing that there shall be one
year of agricultural work in every high school curricn
lum of the state. Mr. Wilson is emphasizing the prac
tical side of agriculture, and he believes that in many
instances the subject should take precedence over classical
studies in the high schools and normal schools. His the
ory is that the high school is a community-serving instl
tution and should develop the minds of pupils in the
channels toward which they are bent.

In 1898 at Kingfisher Mr. Wilson married Miss Ella
Brown, who died March 2, 1900. In 1908 Miss Mary
Reece became his wife. Mrs. Wilson is a graduate of the
fine old college of Tehuacana, Texas. They are the
parents of two children: Wilbur, aged five, and Eugenia,
now one year of age. Mr. Wilson is a prominent mem-
ber of the Oklahoma Educational Association, and for
years has been a participant in county and district
teachers’ associations. Throughout the state he is ree
ognized as a practical and thorough educator, ranking
high in the profession. He claims both Oklahoma City
and Stillwater as his home, though his regular office and'
headquarters for mail are at Stillwater.

Carl E. Mohrbacher. One of the rising young at-
torneys of Shawnee, Carl E. Mohrbacher who is a
graduate of the law department of the state university;
is already established in a successful practice and has
shown such ability that his future high rank in legal
circles is practically assured. His office is in the Elks
Building at Shawnee.

Born at Scott City, Kansas, March 24, 1888, he is a
son of Fred W. and Louisa (Rouse) Mohrbacher. His
father was born in Wisconsin, a son of German parents
who were farmers in that state and died there during
the ’80s. Fred W. Mohrbacher moved out to Kansas in
1883 and in 1890 went to Nebraska, where he was sue
cessfully engaged in the grocery and real estate and loan
business up to 1904. Since then for more than ter
years he has lived at Shawnee, and from 1906 to 19lJ.|
was city treasurer, serving three times in that office
He is now substantially identified with the banking inter
ests of the city.

Carl E. Mohrbacher acquired his early schooling in
Nebraska, and in 1909 graduated from the Shawnel
High School. In September, 1909, he entered the lav
department of the University of Oklahoma, being thi
first to enroll in the law school for the three year course
He was graduated LL. B. in June, 1912. There oceurreo
an incident of his college career which should be men1
tioned. In the early part of 1912 he was formally ac

Hi.

wl as a

P1J7!

k tea

fhfa

S b

ft the K

I iss«(i

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2109

til

Til

til

-
. •

1 fc!-

lira

. Ii

: d

eused of connection with an anonymous letter sent to
members of the Legislature with reference to the state
university building. He was tried before the State bar
commission, his attorney being Moman Pruitt, and was
completely exonerated of the charge and thus relieved of
what might have been a serious handicap to his career at
the outset.

Immediately after graduation and admission to the
bar he began practice with Hon. William N. Maben in
Shawnee, and has been associated with that attorney ever
since. While engaged in a general practice he makes a
specialty of personal injury cases, and has shown some-
what remarkable ability in handling this class of liti-
gation. Mr. Mohrbacher is unmarried and resides at
644 North Louisa Street in Shawnee. He is a member of
the county and state bar associations, belongs to the
Alpha Psi Omega fraternity, is affiliated with the Fra-
ternal Order of Eagles and belongs to the Presbyterian
Church.

James B. Scott. One of the staunch and ably con-
ducted financial institutions of Blaine County is the
First State Bank of Hitchcock, and as the chief prac-
tical executive of this bank Mr. Scott has served from
the time of its organization, its inception having, in
fact, been due to his efforts, and he having efficiently
directed its affairs, in the capacity of cashier, since 1901.
He established his residence at Hitchcock in that year
and has been prominent and influential in business
activities and also in the civic affairs of the community,
as a progressive and public-spirited citizen whose pop-
ularity is of unequivocal order.

James Bryant Scott was born in the City of Emporia,
Kansas, on the 12th of August, 1875, and is a scion of
sterling Scotch ancestry, his grandfather, James Scott,
having been born near the City of Edinburgh, Scotland,
in 1802, and having come to the United States with his
wife and children when he was still comparatively a
young man. He established his home in New York City,
where he continued to be identified with business activi-
ties for many years, and he was a resident of the State
of Kansas at the time of his death, which occurred in
1890, so that he had attained to the patriarchal age of
nearly ninety years. He achieved success in connection
with his business activities after coming to America and
was a man of steadfast rectitude and strong mental
powers.

He whose name introduces this article is a son of
'ip’jW. W. and Annie (Bryant) Scott, the former of whom
tV Eft was born in Scotland, in 1842, and the latter of whom
'was born at Bridgewater, Massachusetts, in 1849, a
j jj representative of a prominent colonial family of New
f England. In 1843, the year succeeding that of his birth,
"W. W. Scott was brought by his parents to the United
larii! States, an(j he was rearejj to adult age in New York
Ie j City, where he received the best of educational advan-
311 tages. He was finally graduated in what is now the
>luj law department of historic old Columbia University,
: 311 and as a young man he removed to Minnesota, becoming
,jl one of the pioneer members of the bar of that state
n|8 and there continuing in the practice of his profession
"until 1873, when he removed to Emporia, Kansas, where

■» El
• Man

-ii

and id

nniiii

aiikiii

fice

be became one of the leading lawyers of that section

, j Df the Sunflower State and where he continued in active
!'T'A practice until virtually the time of his death, which
e ja occurred in 1890. He achieved specially high reputa-
- . 3 H tion as a versatile trial lawyer and was identified with
1 eu; rS nany important litigations in the various courts of
'aIt ( Kansas, besides which he was prominently identified
otl vith the Kansas State Bar Association and the American
ii “e ™Bar Association. He was a republican in his political

proclivities and was affiliated with the Masonic fra-
ternity. His venerable widow still survives him and now
maintains her home in the City of Topeka, Kansas. Of
the children the first-born is Helen, who is the wife of
Prof. William H. Johnson, a member of the faculty of
the University of Kansas, at Lawrence; Mabel is the
wife of William L. Gardner, of Topeka, Kansas, where
Mr. Johnson is state agent for the National Fire In-
surance Company; James B., of this review, was the
next in order of birth and is the youngest of the chil-
dren.

In the_ public schools of his native city of Emporia,
Kansas, James B. Scott acquired his early educational
discipline, and he was about fifteen years of age at the
time of the death of his honored father. During the
years 1893 and 1894 his widowed mother maintained the
family home at Lawrence, Kansas, and there James con-
tinued his studies in the high school. He soon after-
ward returned to Emporia, where he completed a two
years’ course in the Kansas State Normal School. Upon
leaving this institution, in’ 1895, Mr. Scott assumed the
position of collector for the First National Bank of
Emporia, and shortly afterward won promotion to the
post of bookkeeper. He continued his association with
this institution until 1898, and thereafter served as
bookkeeper for the Citizens National Bank of Emporia
until 1900.

In the year last mentioned Mr. Scott came to Okla-
homa Territory and became identified with the Bank of
Kiel, at Kiel, Kingfisher County. He served as cashier
of this new institution for one year, and in August, 1901 ,
he removed to the newly founded town of Hitchcock, in
the adjoining County of Blaine, where he effected the
organization of the First Bank of Hitchcock, of which
he has since served as cashier and the affairs of which
he has directed with the utmost circumspection and
efficiency. The bank has been an important factor in
facilitating general business activities in the town and
surrounding country and has also aided in the further-
ance of the civic and material development and progress
of Hitchcock, the while its cashier has become one of
the representative business man and loyal and valued
citizens of the community. The bank building is
eligibly located at the corner of Main Street and
Broadway, and the officers of the institution are as here
noted: B. Cronkhite, president; J. A. Overstreet, vice
president; James B. Scott, cashier; and Van Bee Higby,
assistant cashier. The bank bases its operations on a
capital stock of $10,000 and has a surplus fund of
$5,000.

Mr. Scott accords staunch allegiance to the republican
party, is a member of the Oklahoma State Bankers’
Association, is a valued member of the board of educa-
tion of Hitchcock, and both he and his wife hold mem-
bership in the Christian Church in their home village,
where also they take leading part in the representative
social activities of the community. At the county seat
Mr. Scott is affiliated with Watonga Lodge, No. 176,
Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and he has received

the thirty-second degree in the Ancient Accepted

Scottish Rite of Masonry, in which connection he is
affiliated with Consistory No. 1, Valley of Guthrie,

besides which he holds membership in India Temple,
Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic

Shrine, in Oklahoma City. In his home village he holds
membership in the lodge of the Independent Order of
Odd Fellows and the camp of the Modern Woodmen of
America.

At Emporia, Kansas, in the year 1902, was solemnized
the marriage of Mr. Scott to Miss Mary I. Wiley, who,

2110

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

iike himself, was born ami reared in the Sunflower State.
They have two children, Helen and James Bryant, Jr.

James Widener, retired farmer and Civil war veteran,
has been a resident of Cleveland and its neighborhood
since the autumn of 1893, when he1 came into possession
of 160 acres of land on the opening of the strip. In
1910 he withdrew from ranch life and settled in the
City of Cleveland, where he is now living, in the seventy-
second year of his life. Mr. Widener has had a varied
career. The pioneer instinct was ever strong within
him, and many a new and virgin territory has he
entered, subdued to civilization and wholly conquered.

Born in Sandusky, Ohio, on March 10, 1843, James
Widener is the son of Samuel and Jane (McGown)
Widener, both natives of Ohio. Jane McGown’s father
was of Irish birth and ancestry and her mother was of
a German family. Michael Widener, grandsire of the
subject, was a native of the State of Virginia, and a
pioneer to Ohio in young manhood. He spent many
years among the native Indians of the state, and was
well known to them as their faithful friend through
many years. After Samuel Widener ’s marriage to Jane
McGown, and when their son, James, of this review,
was about two years old, they, in company with Michael
Widener, James’ grandsire, moved from Ohio to Indi-
ana and located in Noble County. The white settlers
were widely scattered, and the Indians were friendly
for the most part, though they gave some trouble to the
straggling white families. James Widener tells today
with pride of the time when a famous Indian chief came
to visit them and spent a week as their guest. There
ever existed between them and the Indians a warm and
true friendship, and they learned from their red broth-
ers of the forest many of their secrets, such as the
treatment of snake bite, etc. The grandfather died in
Indiana, and after his second marriage, the son, Samuel,
moved to Genesee County, Michigan, in the autumn of
Buchanan’s election to the presidency. Later1 they
moved into Illinois, and still later to Missouri, James
being a boy of sixteen at that time. While there, the
father and sons worked for the railroad company, and
young Widener helped to haul material for a bridge
across the Sheridan River on the Hannibal and St. Joe
Railroad. He spent three years in the construction
department of this road in Indiana, Illinois and Mis-
souri.

The next location of the family was at Brunswick,
Missouri, where they spent a short time and moved
on to Iowa and settling near Millersburg. The father
died in Illinois about the year 1899. He had been three
times married, and there were children of each union.
James Widener was the eldest of the three children born
to his mother, and she died when he was seven years old.
The others were Michael and John. The former enlisted
in Company C, Twenty-eighth Iowa Infantry, in
1862, and served until the close of the war. John also
served as a member of the Thirty-seventh Illinois Regi-
ment, enlisting in 1862 for the remainder of the war.
He died in Granola, Kansas, in 1894.

Like his brothers, James Widener gave service to the
Union during the war. He enlisted in 1861 at the first
call. He was for three years a member of Company F,
Tenth Iowa Infantry, and served three years and twenty-
one days. He participated in many of the hottest en-
gagements of the war in that time, including Farming
ton, Corinth, the siege of Vicksburg, being in both
famous charges on the 22d day of May, as well as
Missionary Ridge, and many minor engagements. He
was never off duty except for a few weeks’ illness as a
victim of pneumonia.

After the war Mr. Widener returned to Iowa and
worked vat the carpenter’s trade, in which he had been
trained while in service with the construction crew of
the Hannibal and St. Joe. He kept at that work for a
while, then turned his attention to farm life. He re-
mained in Iowa County, Iowa, theri went to Kansas and
settled in Shawnee County, and from there to Sumner
County, Kansas. He came to Oklahoma before the
opening of the Cherokee Strip in the fall of 1893, and in
the race for land secured a quarter section located five
miles south of the present Town of Cleveland. He
farmed there until 1910, when he gave up active life and
moved into town, where he has sinee lived.

On September 10, 1866, Mr. Widener was first mar-
ried to Miss Wealtly. Ann Kiine, born in Seneca
County, Ohio, in 1848, became his wife, and she bore him
seven children. She died in Cleveland on April 10, 1909.
Rosanna, the first born, is the widow of P. J. Gallagher,
of this city. John is a resident of Cleveland. Amanda
is the wife of C. B. Lewis, a farmer in the community.
Lettie married Paul Wheeler, of Pawhuska. James B.
lives in Oilton, Oklahoma. Ethel is the wife of W. S.
Estep of Cleveland. Clarence also lives in Cleveland.

On February 2, 1914, Mr. Widener married Mrs.
Minnie B. Green. They have no children.

Mr. Widener may be regarded as one of the independ-
ently wealthy men of the town, for he has on his farm
fourteen producing oil wells, with much unexplored terri-
tory. At one time he ran a harness shop in town, but
has no interests of that nature to look after now. He
owns two business buildings in the city.

Mr. Widener is a republican, a member of the Presby-
terian Church, a thirty-second degree Mason and a mem-
ber of the Grand Army of the Republic. His wife was
born in Pennsylvania, though she was reared for the
most part in Illinois and Missouri: She was married

first in Missouri to James A. Green, a Civil war veteran,
who died in 1900, near Springfield, Missouri. She came
to Cleveland in 1902. She had four children by her first
marriage. Roy; Mabel, the wife of Clarence Barnes of
Pawnee; Okie Enid and Una Waive. All have had excel-
lent educations. Mrs. Widener is a member of the Wo-
men ’s Relief Corps, and active in its worthy work. She
was a Methodist for thirty-two years, and sinee her mar-
riage to Mr. Widener has become a member of the
Presbyterian Church.

Hays Hamilton is one of the pioneer citizens who
has done much to further the civic and material develop-
ment and upbuilding of Payne County and its judicial
center, the thriving little City of Stillwater, where he is
vice president of the Sater Abstract Company, which has
assembled and has control of the only complete record of
real estate titles in this county.

Mr. Hamilton was born at San Jose, California, on the
30th of September, 1863, and is a son of James G. and
Cornelia (Bernard) Hamilton, both natives of Augusta
County, Virginia, of which Staunton is the county seat,,
the father having been born about the year 1816 and the
mother about 1820. Both were young at the time of the
removal of the respective families to Callaway County,
Missouri, in 1833, where they were reared to maturity
under the conditions of the pioneer days and where their
marriage was solemnized in 1844. Soon afterward,
they removed to Westport, Missouri, the village that was;
the nucleus of the present metropolis of Kansas City,
and there James G. Hamilton engaged in the merchandise
and shipping business, with which lines of enterprise lie
continued to be identified during the remainder of his
active career, though in the meanwhile the family home
was maintained for a short time in the State of Cali

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2111

fornia. He died in 1869, and his widow survived him by
nearly half a century, she having been in her ninety-
first year at the time of her death, in February, 1913,
and having passed the closing period of her life in the
home of one of her daughters in Colorado.

Hays Hamilton was reared to adult age in Kansas
City, Missouri, and in 1882 he came to the Osage Indian
Agency 'of Indian Territory. For four years he was
employed by his elder brother, John B., who was an
Indian trader and who maintained headquarters at
Pawliuska, the present judicial center of Osage County,
Oklahoma. Within this period of frontier experience
Mr. Hamilton learned to speak the Osage language with
considerable fluency, and at the expiration of the period
noted he returned to Kansas City, where he continued
his residence until 1889, when Oklahoma Territory was
thrown open to settlement. He was among the sturdy
pioneers who here established a residence at that time
and he made Stillwater his abiding place at that early
period in the history of Oklahoma. Here he has main-
tained his home during the intervening period of nearly
thirty years, and the only other citizens of Payne County
who came at the same time and who still reside here are
Eobert A. Lowery, William A. and Ambrose Swiles, and
John Barnes.

Soon after thus becoming a pioneer settler at Still-
water Mr. Hamilton engaged in the grocery and general
feed-supply business, and with this line of enterprise he
continued to be actively identified a, number of years.
geI He was prominently concerned in the development of
grape propagation and wine manufacturing in this
section of the state, and for a number of years raised
grapes and manufactured wine upon a somewhat exten-
sive scale, his efforts at all times having been zealously
directed to the advancement of measures and enter-
prises that have tended to foster the social and indus-
trial development of the territory and state of his
adoption.

As one of the interested principals and vice presi-
dent of the Sater Abstract Company, Mr. Hamilton gives
much of his attention to its business, and the abstracts
owned by the company are the only complete records
of titles in the county, as the public records were
destroyed by fire in 1894. Mr. Hamilton is progressive
0j th'i as a citizen and his political allegiance is given to the
"democratic party.

Mr. Hamilton first passed through Payne County at
the time when Captain Hatch, U. S. A., was making his
effort to drive out the professional ‘ ‘ Boomers, ’ ’ led by
Captain Couch, and missed seeing the final expulsion
of the boomers from the Stillwater Valley by only a few
minutes, after having been attracted to this locality
i Jl principally by a curiosity to witness the generally ex-
ret0Ii# pected battle between the contending forces. He was
concerned with the better element of citizenship in the
establishing of the general democracy which hpre held
■■■"■ sway until the laws for proper government could be
i August fornmiated and brought into force, and he has viewed
:,at- f|, with satisfaction the effective popular activity and cpn-
11 1111 ! trolling interest in governmental affairs in Payne
time or t ( Q01inty, all citizens of standing having worked together
jy 1 0"".j with unity of interest to further the well-being of the
i:’ lK®n county in general.

steie <• Mr. Hamilton has taken the deepest interest in the
history of Oklahoma and has personally taken the pains
-■ E p"! to gather a large amount of interesting and valuable
iuMS J, historical data. He had completed a. most valuable
I record of Payne County history, and after this valuable
'■ ''"A nanuscript was destroyed by fire he renewed his efforts
J md has to a large extent made good the data, his
’aeilities for gathering historical material having been
late 111 U; Vol. v— 23

na, on t

advanced through his connection with the abstract busi-
ness. His civic pride and loyalty have been shown
through his earnest work for the advancement of his
home city and making it an attractive and desirable
place of residence. He was one of those specially in-
fluential in securing to Stillwater the Oklahoma Agricul-
tural and Mechanical College, and he aided in raising the
fund through which a representative citizen was sent
to Washington to appear before the members of Con-
gress and make possible the enlarging of Payne County
by the addition of a portion of the Cherokee Strip when
the latter was thrown open to settlement.

Mr. Hamilton is a devotee of hunting and fishing and
has found in this section of the state opportunities for
proving his prowess in both of these lines of outdoor
sport. He is a member of the Stillwater Country Club,
which has provided a fine artificial lake and stocked the
same with the best varieties of fish. He is a mem-
ber also of the Eedlands Club and the Stillwater Com-
mercial Club, of which latter he is a director. He has
taken much interest in the advancement of the stand-
ards of agricultural and horticultural industry in this
section, and is the owner of two well improved farms in
Payne County, one of the same being in close proximity
to Stillwater and the other being several miles distant.

In the year 1891 Mr. Hamilton wedded Miss Margaret
J. Harper, who was born in the State of Kentucky, and
their only child, Fern, was graduated in the Oklahoma
Agricultural and Mechanical College, as a member of
the class of 1913, she being a popular figure in the
representative social activities of her home community.

E. L. Gat. The pioneer newspaper enterprise at
Pawhuska was the establishment of the Osage Journal
of .which E. L. Gay became editor in 1904, when Paw-
huska had very little claim to the business activities and
improvements of a town or city. Not only in the
newspaper field but in other affairs Mr. Gay’s life has
been one of varied and interesting experience. He is
one of the original Oklahomans, and in fact can claim
membership in that goodly company of enterprising men
who were denominated as “sooners. ” He and his
family had many interesting associations with frontier
life in the Southwest, and there are few who possess in
their memory a greater fund of information concerning
Oklahoma history than this Pawhuska editor.

Born in Hillsdale County, Michigan, October 12, 1862,
E. L. Gay is one of a family of six sons and two
daughters, all of whom grew up and* are all living
except one. He was the fifth in order of age. His
parents were Charles H. and Catherine (Fulton) Gay.
His grandfather was William H. Gay, who was born in
Scotland and was brought to America when a child.
About 1830 he settled in Michigan, and in 1852 was
appointed United States Indian agent for the Wyandotte
tribe at the Wyandotte Agency located near where Kan-
sas City, Kansas, now stands. He held that post until
1856. In that year he and his son James were making
a trip from the Indian agency to Fort Leavenworth.
While going up the river they were halted by a band of
horsemen, and were questioned as to their attitude to-
ward the then critical question of whether Kansas
should be admitted as a slave or free state. William
H. Gay, it should be remembered, was a Scotchman,
and possessed all the courage of his convictions. He
expressed himself decisively in favor of making a free
state of Kansas, and the words were hardly out of his
mouth when he was shot down and killed, while his son
was severely wounded. William H. Gay was a real
frontier character, and in the early days had made a
couple of trips to Texas in the interests of the govern-

2112

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

meat, and while there formed a great friendship with
Governor Houston. Charles H. Gay, who was born m
New York State in 1825, was one of three children, two
sons and a daughter, his brother being James H. Gay,
already mentioned as the companion of their father at
the time of the latter’s death. Charles H. Gay spent
most of his active career in Southern Michigan and
Northern Ohio. He was a millwright by trade in early
life but in later years took up the profession of law
and became one of the noted young jurists of that sec-
tion. He- married Catherine Fulton, who was of the
same family as the noted inventor, Robert Fulton. She
died at Pioneer, Ohio, in 1884. At their home in the
same place and in the same house Charles H. Gay
passed away in 1903. .

The early life of E. L. Gay brought him into close
touch with the actualities of existence, and he had a
hard struggle to gain the education which his ambition
craved. He lost his mother in the spring of 1884,
when he was twenty-two years of age, and up to that
time he had kept quite close to the old homestead. He
attended high school at Pioneer, Ohio, and for one year
was a student in the Valparaiso Normal School in
Indiana. In order to pay his way through school he
taught, beginning when he was seventeen years of age,
and continued alternately as a teacher and student for
five years. His practice was to teach the short winter
terms and attend school himself the rest of the year.
In 1884, after the death of his mother Mr. Gay went
to Kansas City, Kansas, and taught in the Wyandotte
County public schools one year, but from there went to
Western Kansas and identified himself with the exciting
incidents of the frontier. He was also in Texas and
for a time was in that region described in the old
geographies as "No Man’s Land” of Indian Terri-
tory. In the spring of 1887 he was in the Panhandle
of Texas, looking after a herd of cattle. From there
he returned to No Man’s Land and in 1889 began the
publication of the Tribune at Beaver City. Mr.. Gay
was closely identified with that movement which is an
important chapter in any history of Oklahoma for the
erection of a local government in the Panhandle of
Oklahoma, and was a member of the first provisional
council that adopted a plan of government for "pro-
visional territory of Cimarron.” He was also elected
to one of the proposed territorial officers as district at-
torney. Mr. Gay published the Tribune at Beaver City
for about a year. In the meantime he had received an
appointment as chief clerk in the first Territorial Legis-
lature of Oklahoma, and spent five months at Guthrie,
the capital, during that session. After leaving Beaver
City he moved to El Reno and bought the Oklahoma
Democrat in that city, which had just been started.
He conducted this journal as a partnership for two or
three years, and in the meantime had participated in
the opening of the Cheyenne and Arapaho lands. Sub-
sequently for one year Mr. Gay conducted the Even-
ing News at Shawnee, and during the boom times that
followed railroad construction identified himself with
Holdenville. He also lived at Tulsa for a time, and
in 1904 came to Pawhuska for the definite purpose of
establishing a paper. He was one of the organizers of
the Osage Journal Company, and has edited this prom-
inent and influential weekly democratic paper ever
since. When Mr. Gay first came to Pawhuska there was
not a foot of sidewalk in the town, and not a single
brick building. He has used the influence of his paper
and has worked as an individual citizen for everything
tending to the betterment of, his town and has been
one of the real factors in its advancement.

In polities he has been a lifelong democrat. He

was not only clerk in the first but also in the second
Territorial Legislature of Oklahoma. In the early days
and while a resident of No Man’s Land he held a com-
mission as Deputy United States Marshal under J. J.
Dickerson when the federal court of the second Texas
District was supposed to have jurisdiction over that coun-
try. As such officer he was instrumental in banging to
trial the participants in the Wild Horse Lake massacre
which occurred in the central part of that country.

Fraternally he is affiliated with the Benevolent and
Protective Order of Elks, the Ancient Order of United
Workmen, the Homesteaders and the Independent Order
of Odd Fellows.

While engaged in the newspaper business at El Reno
he was married to Alice Crawmer at Wichita, Kansas, on
November 26, 1891. Four children have been born to
their union, one of them, Eugene Fenton, dying in in-
fancy. Those living are: Leah Frances, Elgin Crawmer
and Allen G. Thurman.

William H. Edmisten. A resident of Indian Terri-
tory since 1886, William H. Edmisten has been an eye-
witness of the growth and development of this wonder-
ful country from the days when it was almost entirely in-
habited by the red man to the present era of business
and agricultural prosperity and advanced civilization.
During this period he has been engaged principally in
pursuits connected with farming and the raising of
stock, but at present is living a retired life at Cleveland,
although he has some valuable holdings, particularly on
Turkey Island, on which one oil well has been drilled.

Mr. Edmisten was born at Neosho, Newton County,
Missouri, February 20, 1857, and is a son of Richard and
Eliza C. (Rhodes) Edmisten. His father, a native of
either Kentucky or Tennessee, came to the West with
his parents in 1830 and settled in Newton County, Mis-
souri, where he passed the remaining years of his life
as a farmer and stock-raiser. The mother, also a native
of the South, located in Missouri about the same time;
as her husband and now makes her home at Goodman
in that state. They were the parents of eleven chil-

Id!
I sta:
„

dren, as follows: Daniel, who is deceased; William H,
Mary Ellen, of Seattle, Washington, the wife of Lewii
D. Stone; John D., a resident of Missouri; Florence]
who is the wife of Charles Barnes, of Missouri; Rosa,
Lee, who is the wife of John Stites, of Missouri; Rich
ard and Eliza, twins, both of whom died young; Maggie
the wife of William Foster, of Joplin, Missouri; Matti
cashier of the Goodman State Bank of Goodman, Mis

souri; and Theo, who is the wife of William Cornelison

of Kansas,

William H. Edmisten was educated in the schools o:
Newton County, Missouri, and grew up as a farmer am
stock-raiser. Feeling that he could better his fortune]

follows

further to the West, in 1886 he came to Indian Terri

tory and for about fifteen or sixteen years was
gaged in the stock business, a line in which he won we!

■Illie
*
- CL,

peratii

merited success. In the winter of 1901 he came
Pawnee County, settling on a farm on the Arkansa
River, six miles southeast of Cleveland, a tract of 16
acres, which he still owns and Which consists of goo>
bottom land. There he continued to make his home unt
January 1, 1914, at which time he came to Clevelam
Mr. Edmisten ’s farm is a part of Turkey Island, and l
the present time this property is in litigation, in regal
to riparian rights. If Mr. Edminsten wins his suit 1
will have 275 acres, but it is not the quantity of Ian
that makes this case an important one, but the oil thi,
has been discovered there. There have been a mffi
ber of wells drilled on his land, shallow sand wells, yiell
ing from twenty to sixty barrels,

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2113

Mr. Edmisten has had many and varied experiences
since coming to the West, many of which center around
the Indians. At one period in his career he was farm-
ing 1,100 acres, twelve miles east of Yinita, at the
head of Duck and Shawnee creeks, where he operated
four farms, worked twenty mules, and kept two jacks
in his stud. He bought and shipped much stock during
that time and did much dealing with the Indians, with
whom he managed to keep on friendly terms.

As an incident showing the turn that fortune may
take at some time and that a man’s judgment and fore-
sight cannot always be infallible, the following may be
related: On September 16, 1893, Mr. Edmisten was

standing at the elbow of the man who fired the gun an-
nouncing the opening of the Cherokee Strip, at Still-
water. It was noon, and he was off with the shot,
mounted on a good horse which took him over twenty
miles to Pawnee in one and one-half hours, and there he
secured several lots which now form the property on
which the high school stands. Mr. Edmisten, however,
figured that this was an undesirable part of the coun-
try, that it would likely never amount to anything, and
accordingly gave his lots away and rode to another
locality. A sight which impressed itself upon his mind
on that same day occurred at Stillwater. It was hot
itioi and dusty, water was at a premium, and the anxious
ly i homeseekers were gathered in hordes. Some enterpris-
es ) ing citizen started selling water melons, soon others
ilai followed suit, and before all had registered the water
ly o melon rinds lay two feet deep on the ground for . a
si space covering nearly a half a mile! While Mr. Edmis-
wt ten has been a permanent resident of Cleveland for only
las a eomparativey short time, he may be said to have been
its i one of the town ’s eariest arrivals, having come here
t flit before the place was started, and buying groceries for
r, I himself and feed for his horses three days after the
us lii town opened. He has always been a progressive promoter
nati of beneficial movements, lending encouragement and sup-
ie tin port to any enterprise that has promised to make for
loik the betterment of his locality or its people. As a busi-
n chi ness man, he has built up a substantial reputation for
ami integrity and honorable dealing, while his good citizen-
f Le» ship has never been doubted.

iorew Mr. Edmisten was married in 1876 to Miss Samantha
i; Bo C. Stark, who was born in Washington County, Indiana,
i; Eii January 16, 1856, and brought to Missouri when twelve
Magg years of age by her parents, Vinyard and Susan (Kester)
i; Ma Stark, natives of Indiana, the former of whom, a farm-
ail, 11 er, died in Missouri, and the latter in Kansas. Eleven
imelia children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Edmisten, as
follows: Harlington Lafayette, who spent a number of
cliools years in Idaho and Montana but is now engaged in
™en operating one of his father’s farms; Ada Belle, who is
the wife of Andrew McCaffrey, of Afton, Oklahoma;

™ Jack E., of Goldboro, Washington; Daniel Horace, of
MS Cleveland, an oil man connected with the Prairie Oil
*e and Gas Company; Alta Lee, the wife of F. C. Larabee,
^.,lE of Los Vegas, New Mexico; Walter W., of Cleveland,
engaged in oil production; Orville Harrison, who for six
, 0{ years has been connected with the relay office of the
MlMii Santa Fe Railroad, at Topeka, Kansas; Myrtle, who is
(jevelai the wife of J. O. Martin, of Waxahachie, Texas; Lillian,
m3, aud who resides with her parents; Richard, an oil man of
u in reg Cleveland; and Goldie, who resides at home. Mr. and
his suit Mrs. Edmisten have never lost a child and have sixteen
ity of 1 living grandchildren. Their first seven children were
the oil t born in Missouri and the rest in this state, and all have
so a 11 been well educated and trained admirably for the posi-
tions in life to which they have been called.

Albert D. Brown. Until he became proprietor and
editor of the Observer at McLoud in Pottawatomie
County, Albert D. Brown had been for a number of
years identified with educational work in Oklahoma.
Mr. Brown comes from a family of educators and church-
men, and he is himself an ordained minister of the
Baptist Church and has preached in several localities
in this state. His father before him was a minister and
also his grandfather.

In August, 1915, Mr. Brown came to McLoud and
bought the Observer from B. McGlathey. The Observer
was established in 1902 as a democratic paper and is
now independent in politics. The plant is well equipped
and the office is situated on the main street of the
village. It is a paper with much influence and has
a circulation over Pottawatomie County and Oklahoma*
County and also goes in considerable numbers outside
the state.

Albert D. Brown was born in Henry County, Mis-
souri, August 23, 1877. The Brown family came from
- Scotland originally, and were pioneers in Kentucky. The
grandfather was a minister of the Presbyterian Church
in Kentucky and moved from that state about 1837, to
Missouri where he was one of the early settlers in Henry
County. Elder Peter Brown, father of Albert D., was
born in Washington County, Kentucky, in 1825, and was
thirteen years of age when the family moved to Missouri,
where he grew to manhood. He was largely self educated,
and in younger years practiced medicine for a time. At
the age of twenty-one he began active work as a
Baptist preacher, and in spite of the early handicaps
in the way of an education he was for a number of years
considered the best Greek Bible-scholar in the state.
His life work as a Baptist minister was confined to
Missouri, though his influence and activities were in
various other spheres as well. As a democrat he was
once nominated for the State Legislature. During the
Civil war he was on the Confederate side as a soldier.
He was a member of the Masonic fraternity. Elder
Peter Brown married Elizabeth Shanks who was born
in Pettis County, Missouri, in 1835. She now lives at
Hatfield, Arkansas. Elder Peter Brown died a few
years ago in the Baptist Sanitarium at St. Louis. Their
children were: Catherine, wife of Ellis Tuttle, a brick

manufacturer in Butler, Missouri ; Peter, who is an
architect at Hatfield, Arkansas; George, a farmer in
Roger Mills County, Oklahoma; Benjamin Franklin, a
farmer at Hatfield, Arkansas ; Lucy, wife of U. G.
Roberts, a farmer in Wyandotte, Oklahoma; Stephen, a
farmer and stock raiser in Missouri; and Albert D.

The youngest in this large family, Albert D. Brown
was eight years of age when his parents moved in 1885
to St. Clair County, Missouri. He attended the public
school there, and afterwards attended the Wiliam Jewell
College at Liberty, Missouri, where he took two years
of academic work and two years in the regular colle-
giate department. He finished the Sophomore course in
1906. While in college he was a member of the Philo-
mathic Literary Society, and took first prize in com-
petition for an essay and tied for honor in oratory. He
also won several honors in prose and poetry contests.

On leaving college Mr. Brown came into Oklahoma in
1906 and began teaching school in Roger Mills County.
He was principal of schools in that county until 1914 and
then for a year taught at Harrah in this state. As an
ordained minister of the Baptist Church Mr. Brown' also
filled pulpits in several parishes in Roger Mills County
and elsewhere, but several years ago lost his voice and
had to retire from the ministry. In polities he is a
democrat, and is affiliated with the Independent Order
of Odd Fellows and the Woodmen of the World.

2114

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

In 1909 in Navarro County, Texas, he married Miss
Minnie Meredith. Her father was the late Doctor Mere-
dith, a physician and surgeon at Navarro County. Two
children were born to this union. Mattie Ellen, born
October 14, 1911, and Byron Addison, born April 30,
1914.

Mr. Brown has gained no little distinction as a writer
of poetry. He rarely edits an edition of his paper with-
out featuring some poetry of his own composition. He
possesses a rare knowledge of rhythm and verse and his
poetry is as scholarly and correct in technic as it is
elevated in sentiment and feeling. As an example of his
style and diction there is quoted herewith a poem which
he dedicated to his mother and which Mr. Brown him-
self considers his best composition.

TO MY MOTHER
(By A. D. Brown)

The world’s at the morning in sweet mother’s love
Like sweet roses sparkle with dew from above
My mother directs me and watches my way
And keeps me from evil wherever I stray.

Ofttimes I remember when temptations arise
The precepts which mother brought down from the skies.
And when in my strength all my vows I fulfill
My sweet mother, smiling, approves of me still.

I see her dear face wheresoever I roam.

It strengthens the ties and affections of home.

Purest, sweet mother ! A shrine I will make
And worship thine image, and never forsake
Thy faithful instruction. Thy tears I will heed,

Regard all thy prayers, for when I’m in need
Of strong resolution, and determined will,

I need to remember what thou didst instill.

I can’t compensate thee for what thou hast done,

But please take this tribute from thy grateful son.

For what thou hast suffered, what thou underwent
For thy watching o’er me, the wakeful nights spent,
The pains and the pangs and the griefs that thou bore
I don’t understand, but I reverence the more.

Thou gavest thy strength and thy blood and thy bone.
Thou gavest thy life for me, thou, thou alone.

Tliou’st done this and more for me, Mother, and now
A halo of glory I place on thy brow.

The times that I worried thee, disobeyed thee,

For when I was truant thou tried to save me
When I was ungrateful and cruel and bad
And mean and deceitful, it makes my heart sad
To think for thy goodness,. I rendered thee woe.

For when I went places thou begged me not go,

I lied to thee sometimes regarding my ways.

Forgive me sweet Mother, accept of my praise.

For all thy instruction, thy good moral laws
Thy discipline sweet, and thy life without flaws,

Thy love and compassion, thy pity in shame,

Sometimes thou approved me when I was to blame.

I cannot undo what’s been done to my shame
I always shall love thee and honor thy name.

Thy life and thy love, like a book, has been read,

And shall be remembered long after thou’rt dead
I know of thy purity, piety, truth,

Thou art my sweet angel, my guardian in youth,

My ideal in manhood, my idol in age,

My most sober worship, my best thoughts engage.

And when thou art glorified, raised upon high,

I know I shall see thee, for souls cannot die,

The Christ that thou lovest will also love me
Forgive all my failings and take me to thee.

George Brentnall. Among the men who have as-
sisted in the agricultural and commercial development of
Pawnee County during the past two decades, one who
is well and widely known is George Brentnall, of Cleve-
land, the owner of a seventy-eight-acre farm in the
county, who during the past seven years has also car-
ried on a hardware and furniture business in the city.
He was born at Pomeroy, Meigs County, Ohio, December
12, 1861, and is a son of George and Elizabeth (Ed-
wards) Brentnall, the former a native of England and
the latter of Wales.

In his native land the father of Mr. Brentnall was
employed as a laborer in the coal mines, and on emi-
grating to the United States, in his youth, found em-
ployment in the coal fields of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
He was married in England and after the birth of one
child they came to America. In 1848 he removed to
Kittanning, Pennsylvania, where he spent one year. He
next moved to Meigs County, Ohio, locating at Pomeroy,
and while there, during the Civil war, was one of the
men who turned the Southern raider Morgan, although
Mr. Brentnall was at that time too old for active service
at the front. In April, 1866, he moved with his family
to Macon County, Missouri, where he invested his life’s
savings in a farm, and continued to pass the remaining
years of his life there, dying December 25, 1880. Mrs.
Brentnall passed away in March, 1894, the mother of
seven children, namely: Samuel, of Topeka, Kansas;

Robert, of Ness City, Kansas; Margaret Ellen Daven-
port, who died in Missouri, in 1898; Susan, the wife of

the wife of Wesley Cher'ington and resides near the old
home, in Jackson County, Ohio; George; and Elizabeth,
who is the wife of A1 Robinette, of Mountain Grove,
Missouri.

George Brentnall was reared on the home farm and
received his education in the public schools. He re-
mained under the parental roof until reaching the age of
twenty-seven years, or until the time of his marriage,
having taken care of his aged mother after his father’s
death. On December 2, 1887, he was married to Miss
Zora Bodenhammer, a native of Iowa, and in 1888 they
took a trip to Australia to join Mr. Brentnall ’s uncle,
Samuel Brentnall, a cattleman there. Mrs. Brentnall
died in that country in 1890, leaving one child, Grace,
who is now the wife of Lucius Peck, of Vinita, Oklahoma.
Mr. Brentnall was in Australia at the time of his uncle’s
death in 1893, when he returned to Missouri, but in the
following year came to Pawnee County, Oklahoma, taking
up a homestead nine miles southeast of Cleveland. This
he improved and cultivated until his children grew old
enough to need better educational advantages than the
country afforded, when he changed his residence to
Cleveland. He still owns seventy-eight acres of good
land, improved with large and substantial buildings, ad-
joining Cleveland, and there carries on operations on an
extensive scale, being engaged in both general farming
and in the raising of stock and meeting with success in
both departments. On his homestead nine miles southeast

loved

of Cleveland are located nine producing oil wells, which ! . j p
contribute materially to his income. Mr. Brentnall j '

bears an excellent reputation in commercial circles, and II ' 11

as a citizen has gained and maintained a position of
standing. He is a republican, but while he takes an
interest in the success of his party is not what is gen-
erally known as a politician. With his family, he be-
longs to the Christian Church.

Mr. Brentnall was married the second time, October 18,
1896, to Miss Ida Sharp, of Kansas, born September 21,
1874, and they are the parents of five chidren, all residing
at home: Mabel, Blanche, Opal, Robert and Gerald.

HISTORY OP OKLAHOMA

2115

O. B. Kizer. The life of O. B. Kizer, a well known
resident of Jennings, is an illustration of the possible
control over early limitations and of the wise utilization
of ordinary opportunities. His career has been identified
with Oklahoma since the opening of the Cherokee Strip,
in 1893, and the substantial property which allows him
to live in comfortable retirement at Jennings has been
accumulated through wise investment in farming land
and other real estate and careful management of his
large interests.

Born November 28, 1858, in Edgar County, Illinois,
Mr. Kizer is a son of Sebastian and Mary Elizabeth
(Aye) Kizer. His father, a native of Pennsylvania,
ventured into Illinois as a young man and was there
married and engaged in agricultural pursuits for some
years, but in 1864 again turned his face to the West
and journeyed to Kansas, where he also followed farm-
ing and stock raising. In his later life, after spending
a few years in Colorado, he came to Jennings, Oklahoma,
and here died at the home of his son, O. B., in 1906,
when eighty-four years of age. He was a hard and
industrious worker and was content to pass his life in
the peaceful pursuits of the soil, not caring for public
office or the doubtful honors of political life. By his
first wife he had two children, and after her death he
was married to Mary Elizabeth Aye, who was born in
Illinois and whose death occurred in Kansas in 1874.
They were the parents of seven children, while by a
third marriage Mr. Kizer became the father of three
children.

. O. B. Kizer was first sent to the -district schools of
0jj -Edgar County, Illinois, but when eight years of age
,ii accompanied his parents to Kansas and there his edu-
cation was completed. He remained at home until
1 twenty-four years of age, dividing his time between
. assisting his father and working out among the neigh-
“ boring farmers, but at the time of his marriage, in 1883,
! K decided to embark upon a career of his own. For two
P years he resided at Chautauqua Springs, Kansas, where
‘5?' he was variously employed, and at the end of that time
came to the Osage Nation. He had resided here for five
““ years when the announcement was made of the proposed
opening of the Cherokee Strip, and Mr. Kizer went to
Arkansas City, Kansas, from whence he made the run,
““ September 16, 1893. He was unsuccessful, however, in
JtaK obtaining a homestead and settled instead at Jennings,
1® where for twelve years he was commercially occupied.
* Business conditions there at the end of that time caused
“>!1 him to leave the city and move to a leased property in
®jjj Creek County, on which he was engaged in farming for a
™ period of eight years, and then rented his land and
® moved to Jennings, where he has continued to live in
1,1 ^ retirement to the present time. He has 160 acres in the
fe ' tract mentioned, as well as another tract of like size
i 8® one-half mile south and one-half mile west of Jennings.
8s! J Both places are oil leased and are yielding Mr. Kizer a
'M* substantial income. In addition to these properties, Mr.
ararn Kizer is the owner of some valuable and desirable
®essI Jennings realty and is engaged in the real estate busi-
ng ness as an occupation to keep his energetic piind satis-
i'*1 tied. Politically he is a democrat, but political life has
rata never appealed to him. He may always be counted upon
It3'31 to support those movements which make for the welfare
itioii 0f community.

ate a Mr. Kizer was married in 1883, while a resident of

is f Kansas, to Miss Mary Potter, who was born in Ken-

, i tucky, September 15, 1861. As a small child she was

taken to Illinois, and in 1871, when ten years old was

■otal removed with her parents to Kansas, where she was
aiber! reared and educated and where she met and married
res# Mr. Kizer. Eight children have been born to Mr. and
raid.

Mrs. Kizer, namely: Claude, who is a resident and

farmer of Pawnee County, Oklahoma; Pay, who lives
in Kansas; Pearl, who is the wife of E. D. Pudge, of
Creek County, Oklahoma; Bruce, who lives with his
parents; O. B., Jr., also at home; Glenn, who met an
accidental death at the age of twelve years when killed
by a horse; and Irene and Hazel, who reside at home
and are attending school.

George H. Schroeder. As history is reckoned in
Oklahoma thirty years includes the extremes of frontier
life and twentieth century existence. The lure of land
to be obtained for a mere pittance brought men from
all over the country in search of homes where they
might make themselves independent, but it was only
the courageous who came, and to know a pioneer of the
’80s is to know a man possessed of virile and -purposeful
traits of character. Such a man is George H. Schroeder,
who came to Indian Territory in 1885, and who is now
living in comfortable retirement at Jennings. He is not
only the possessor of a large property, gained through
his own efforts and industry, but has also the confidence
of his fellow-citizens, as witnessed by the fact that he
is now serving his second term in the office of county
commissioner of Pawnee County.

Mr. Schroeder was born on a farm in Jersey County,
Illinois, February 16, 1855, and is a son of Joseph B.
and Priscilla C. (Patterson) Schroeder. His father, a
direct descendant of Jane Brown, who came to America
on the Mayflower, was born at Portsmouth, New Hamp-
shire, and was reared in the City of Philadelphia, Penn-
sylvania, where he learned the trade of wagon maker
and carriage trimmer. In 1844 he migrated to the
prairies of Illinois, settling on a farm in Jersey County*
where he passed the remaining years of his life in agri-
cultural pursuits and died in 1892. He married a Jer-
sey County girl, Priscilla C. Patterson, who passed her
life there and died in 1875. They were the parents of
four children: Nellie S., who married L. L. Hereford,

and is now deceased; Gersham F., a resident of Ponca
City, Oklahoma; George H. ; and Mary Kate, who is the
wife of George Miller, of Yinita, Oklahoma.

George H. Schroeder was reared in Jersey County,
where he received the advantages of a district school
education. On attaining his majority he moved to a
farm of his own in the same county and resided there
until July, 1881, when he moved to Vernon, Missouri,
and established himself in the grocery business. This
enterprise occupied his attention and activities until
1885, when he moved to Bartlesville, Indian Territory,
and in April, 1893, went to Guthrie, where he awaited
the opening of the Cherokee Strip, September 16th,
At that time he succeeded in securing a homestead west
of Ponca City, Kay County, and there carried on opera-
tions until May, 1902, when he came to Pawnee County.
In 1812, when his wife died, Mr. Schroeder moved to
Jennings, and here he has just completed a handsome
modern home. Mr. Schroeder is still the owner of two
farms, each comprising a quarter of a section, one located
1% miles south of Jennings, and the other five miles
northwest of this place, on Ranch Creek, and all of this
land, with the exception of forty acres, is under oil lease.
He carried on general farming during his residence in
Oklahoma, and also was interested extensively in the
raising of thoroughbred horses, cattle and hogs, and in
all of his ventures gained a full measure of success by
his strict adherence to honorable business methods and
his close application to his work. His entire life has
been passed in agricultural and stock raising pursuits,
with the exception of three years in the grocery business
at Vernon, Missouri, and nine years in the monument

2116

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

and tombstone business at Bartlesville. He has always
been a supporter of public-spirited movements for the
public welfare and bears an excellent reputation as a
citizen. A democrat in politics, Mr. Sehroeder has sup-
ported his party faithfully, but never held public office
until 1912, when he was elected a county commissioner of
Pawnee County, a position in which he served so capably
and faithfully that he was reelected in 1914. Since his
twenty-first year he has been a member of the A. H. T. A.

On March 30, 1880, Mr. Sehroeder was united in
marriage with Miss Ida J. Brown, who was born in
Jersey County, Illinois, within a mile of her husband’s
birthplace, July 24, 1862. Mr. and Mrs. Sehroeder grew
up together, and during the long years of their married
life she proved him a willing, devoted and faithful help-
meet. Her death, which occurred October 2, 1912, was
not only a? shock to her immediate family and friends,
but to a wide circle of acquaintances who had come to.
know and appreciate her many lovable traits of mind
and heart. She was also a descendant of one of the
passengers of the little ship Mayflower. Five children
were born to Mr. and Mrs. Sehroeder, namely: Neddie,

who died at the age of five years at Bartlesville; Nellie
Pay, who is the wife of Hurley McDaniel of Jennings,
and the mother of one child, Wanda Rose; Ethel C., who
is the wife of L. C. Harper, of Tulsa; Pern, a son, who
died in infancy; and Joseph Brown, named for his
grandfather and great-grandfather, who resides with his
father.

Charley Melchor Foil.. The postmaster of the
thriving: and prosperous little City of Jennings, Charley
Melchor Foil, has been a resident of this place for
fifteen years, during which period he has been connected
with several commercial houses and has won the con-
fidence of his fellow-citizens by a strict adherence to
high ideals of citizenship. In his official capacity he is
proving one of the most efficient and popular post-
masters Jennings has known, and through his earnest
and conscientious efforts is doing much to improve the
service.

Mr. Foil comes of Holland Dutch ancestry, and was
born at Mount Pleasant, Cabarrus County, North Caro-
lina, Julv 17. 1871, a son of Alexander and Amelia
Louise (Meleher) Foil, natives of that state where the
father was born in 1834 and the mother in 1835. Alex-
ander Foil was a merchant at Concord, North Carolina,
where the family moved after the birth of Charley M.,
and was also a well known and influential factor in public
and political life, serving as county commissioner and
sheriff of Cabarrus County and being sent to the State
Legislature. He was a democrat and stood high in the
councils of his party. During the Civil war he saw
service as a soldier, being stationed at Fort Fisher. Mr.
.Foil died at Concord in 1890, the mother surviving him
two years. They were the parents of three children:
Lizzie, who is the wife of W. S. Bingham, of Concord,
North Carolina; Thomas Alexander, a resident of Salis-
bury, North Carolina; and Charley Melchor.

Charley M. Foil was reared at Concord, where he at-
tended the public schools, but felt that there was a
better future awaiting him in the West, and at the
age of nineteen years, in 1890, migrated to Kansas,
where he spent six months. He then came to Indian
Territory and secured work as a farm hand, and in
February, 1893, moved to a farm south of Jennings,
which he worked on a lease. On first coming to Jen-
nings, in 1900, he became bookkeeper for the firm of
Todd & Bishop, general merchants, and continued to be
connected with that concern for a period of ten years,
then entering the employ of the Treese Cotton Company

in the same capacity. Subsequently he was placed in
charge of their cotton gin here, which he has continued
to manage. In August, 1914, after a civil service ex-
amination, Mr. Foil was appointed postmaster at Jen-
nings, which is a first class office. He is alert, ener-
getic and capable in the discharge of his duties, and
his courtesy and geniality have made him decidedly pop-
ular with the public. Mr. Foil is a democrat in politics
and a dependable party worker. He is prominent fra-
ternally, being a member of the Independent Order of
Odd Fellows, the Modern Woodmen of America, the
Knights of the Maccabees and the Masons, and in the
last-named order has reached the thirty-second degree,
belonging to the Blue Lodge at Jennings, the Chapter at
Pawnee, and the Consistory at Guthrie. He belongs like-
wise to the Encampment of Odd Fellows at Yale.

Mr. Foil was married August 8, 1893, to Miss Emma
Pearl Whitehead, a native of Kansas, and daughter of
Edmund and Malinda J. Whitehead. Her father is de-
ceased, while her mother still survives and is a resident
of Jennings. Mr. and Mrs. Foil have no children.

Clyde H. Morris- During a period of five years
Clyde H. Morris has become well and favorably known
to the people of Mooreland, Oklahoma, through his coh-
neetion with the postoffiee. Formerly postmaster and
now assistant, his capable and energetic handling of the
mails and the courteous manner in which he transacts
business with those with whom he comes into contact
have made him one of the most popular public officials
of this part of Woodward . County. Mr. Morris is a
type of the class of which the West is proud, the type ■
that came here without means and here worked out a
success. He is an Indianan by nativity, having been
born at Mace, Montgomery County, April 18, 1874, a
son of John A. and Mary S. (Hale) Morris, both
Hoosiers by birth.

John A. Morris was born at Mace, Indiana, in 1830,
and has never left the state. In his early life he was
engaged in mercantile pursuits for some years, but sub-
sequently turned his attention to farming, and through
a life of industry and well-directed effort has won a
competence, so that he is now living in comfortable retire-
ment. In 1873 he was united in marriage with Miss
Mary S. Hale, who was born in 1852, in Indiana, a
daughter of Nathan and Mary (Noftzger) Hale. She
was a woman of many virtues and Christian character,
who lived her Christianity every day. She died in 1882,
at the early age of thirty years, having been the mother
of only one child, Clyde H., of this review.

Clyde H. Morris was born in a village, but when his
mother died he was sent to live with an uncle, Tillman
Hale, who was the owner of a large Indiana farm.
There the lad worked from his eighth to his sixteenth
year, receiving his education in the district school as well
as the schools of hard work and experience, and when
he reached the latter age he left Indiana for the West.
On his arrival at his destination, in Franklin County,
Kansas, he began working on a farm, and his subsequent
labors carried him to various parts of that state. In
1898 he came to Oklahoma and settled on government
land, two miles east of the present side of Mooreland,
where he proved up after five years and continued to
carry on operations until coming to the town. From
the time of attaining his majority, he had be§n an
active and enthusiastic republican, and, after taking
some active part in the success of his party in Wood-
ward County, he was, in 1910, appointed postmaster of
Mooreland by President Taft. He discharged the duties
of this office in a creditable and satisfactory manner,
but with the change of the national administration came

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2117

a- ;
er I
id

Dp-

ies

the

rat

ike'

una

■of

de-

lent

tar-

f'M

COB-

and

the

tiete

itar!

:ial'
i; a
type
'tit a
teen
1,
hot!;

S3U
ra
ta! ■
''■ottri

vtiie-
hi!"
BO, a
SI,
a,-;.
i«;.
o'he

i'ii hi*

i'Jaffi
farm,
aeentii
e weli
when
W.
mty.

a'iset!

v. It
'

ivland
ted t
Froii

faldii:

Food

:ati';
i.ormt"
« fiW(

a change in postmasters. When Mr. Morris was suc-
ceeded as postmaster by Omer Schnoebelen, a democrat,
in 1914, he was retained as assistant postmaster, and
as such is in practical charge of the postoffice affairs.
He is a member of the Knights of Pythias, in which,
as in other avenues of activity, he has numerous friends.
He is one of the men who may be accredited with the
growth and development of Mooreland, for its industries
and institutions have ever received his unqualified and
unswerving support.

Mr. Morris was married November 3, 1905, in Wood-
ward County, Oklahoma, to Miss Nellye C. Eenfrow, who
was born in 1883 in Comanche County, Kansas, daughter
of Edward and Amy (Bay) Eenfrow, natives of Kansas
and pioneer settlers of Woodward County. Mr. Een-
frow, who throughout his life was engaged in agricul-
tural pursuits, died in 1899, while his widow still sur-
vives and makes her home in this county. Mr. and Mrs.
Morris are the parents of two sons and one daughter:
Arthur Newell, born May 20, 1907 ; Hilma Inez, born in
May, 1909: and Homer Lewis, born May 20, 1911. Mr.
and Mrs. Morris are members of the Methodist Episcopal
Church and have been active in its work.

Eobert T. Wray has had a life of varied experience
and accomplishment. He has been a merchant, a manu-
facturer, inventor and founder and builder of towns, and
his career has been closely identified with Oklahoma since
he came at the opening of the Cherokee Strip twenty-
three years ago. His name is closely associated with the
history of several thriving towns, and he is now in the
real estate business and as a loan and insurance broker
at Tyrone, in Texas County.

His birth occurred in a log house on a farm in Arm-
strong County, Pennsylvania, May 4, 1853. His parents
were John M. and Anna Margaret (Townsend) Wray,
his father being a native Pennsylvania of Seotch-Irish
stock. He was a farmer and merchant all his life and
died in Pennsylvania in 1902. His wife was also a native
of the same state and of German and English stock. She
died in 1905. Their eight children, two sons and si*
daughters, were: Harriet M., deceased; Clara E.; Abi-

gail, deceased; Hiram H. ; Anna Margaret; Eobert T.;
Emma, deceased; and Mary A.

Beared in Armstrong County, with the advantages of
the public schools, Eobert T. Wray also attended the
academy at Eldridge Eidge. He spent the first twenty-
five years of his life on the old home farm. Then came
business experience in mercantile lines at Parker City,
Pennsylvania. For several years he was in the coal and
coke business at Dunbar, Pennsylvania.

In 1884 Mr. Wray came West and located at Kansas
City, Missouri. There he began the manufacture of
composition roofing, a material which was then just being
introduced to popular use. Mr. Wray was himself the
patentee of a machine for making this new style of roof-
ing and his original genius has been exercised in a num-
ber of other important devices which he has patented.
For eleven years he lived in Kansas City engaged in
manufacturing and other lines.

Then in 1893 came the opening of the Cherokee Strip.
He was a participant, and locating at Ponca City he dug
the first well on the townsite, erected a hotel, and was
also proprietor of one of the first stores. He was active
in the early life of the town, serving as a member of
the first town board.

In 1898 he became one of the founders of the town of
Bliss, where he opened the first store and was the first
postmaster, an office he filled for three years. In 1904
came another change of scene and activity. In that year
he homesteaded a claim in Texas County five miles from

Tyrone, and remained on the same five years in order to
prove up. In 1915 Mr. Wray erected the first brick mer-
cantile building in Tyrone, and since then has been very
closely identified with both the public and commercial
life of the little town. He is serving as a justice of the
peace. Mr. Wray belongs to the Presbyterian Church.

On April 20,- 1898, Mr. Wray married Miss Ida Beg-
nier who was born at Coffeyville, Kansas. They are the
parents of four children, two sons and two daughters :
Emma E., born January 1, 1900; John M., born May 20,
1902; George E., born May 20, 1904; and Adaline, born
May 20, 1906.

Oran J. Logan. One of the pioneers in the south-
western quarter of Oklahoma, a resident of Hobart since
1901, Oran J. Logan is a lawyer by profession and
acquired his first political experience and did his first
legal practice in the State of Texas. He has been a
factor in local affairs in Kiowa County since its organ-
ization, and is now a member of the State Senate from
the Sixth Senatorial District.

Oran J. Logan was born at Morganton, Fannin
County, Georgia, March 19, 1870. His father, John Cal-
houn Logan, was a Confederate soldier, and a native of
Tennessee, representing one of the pioneer families of
that state. Senator Logan, like many successful men,
had an early environment of comparative poverty. His
parents were too poor to send him to college, and his
education while a boy was acquired in the common
schools. In 1883 his parents removed to Erath County,
Texas, locating on a farm. That part of Texas was then
almost on the western frontier, and Oran J. Logan has
seen much of the rough and active life of the old range
country and his mind and character are impressed with
the freedom and movement of the western prairies. He
worked as a farmer in Erath County until 1887, and then
found a position with the Texas Express Company, which
operated over the Santa Fe lines. After one year he left
the railroad and went to work on a ranch in west Texas.
This experience was gained chiefly in Fisher County, far
out on the western plains, and he became a typical cow-
boy possessing the vigilance and the hardy qualities so
often associated with plainsmen, and acquired some note
as a “ broncho buster. ’ ’ For three years beginning in
1889 Mr. Logan was employed at Alvarado, Texas, by
D. T. Lyon Lumber Company, and afterward was with
the Alvarado Cotton Company.

In 18,94 he was selected as deputy county clerk of
Johnson County, serving under Samuel P. Eamsey, of
the prominent Eamsey family of Texas. While living at
Cleburne, he was elected justice of the peace in ' 1896,
and having in the meantime taken up the study of law
was admitted to the Texas bar in 1898. After several
years in practice in Texas Mr. Logan was drawn to Okla-
homa by one of those several historic events known as
‘ ‘ openings, ’ ’ and thus was on the ground at Hobart when
the Kiowa and Comanche Indian Eeservation was opened
to settlement in 1901.

On November 17, 1901, Senator Logan married Mar-
garet Falkenburg, of Cleburne, Texas. They have one
child, Oran Beulah, now twelve years of age. Mr. Logan
is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church South,
and has affiliations with the Masonic, the Modern Wood-
men and the Ancient Order of United Workmen lodges.
In his own career he has exhibited some of the hardy
qualities for which his ancestors were noted. The Logans
in the early days were merchantmen and traders who
traveled over the hills of the Carolinas with their freight
wagons and long teams, years before the introduction of
railroads and other modern methods of transportation.

His first actual experience in politics was in Texas in

2118

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

1892, when he espoused the cause of James S. Hogg for
governor during the famous Hogg-Clark campaign. After
coming to Oklahoma he was the first chairman of the
Democratic County Central Committee of Kiowa County,
aftei- the organization of that county. In 1904 he
acquired his first legislative experience as a member of
the Territorial Legislature, representing Kiowa County.
In 1910 he was elected a member of third State Legis-
lature, and in 1914 was elected to the Senate from
the Sixth Senatorial District, which includes several
counties in the southwestern part of the state. During
the extraordinary session of the third Legislature he was
chairman of a committee on eapitol location, and as a
lesult of the labors of that committee and of the Legis-
lature the eapitol was removed from Guthrie to Okla-
homa City. Senator Logan’s legislative record also

whicW aUt,TShlp °! a law during the third session
which brought an end to the apparently much abused

Sena1tegM0f f^*7 f™01' Since taldng his seat in the
Senate Mr. Logan has been chairman of the committees

on °"iTeree- and labor and a member of the committee
on code revision, revenue and taxation, public service

ofFan?1^’ f°r1S aDi highwa-vs> education, insurance,
1^1 Pi’ Tfdian affairs> and d™gs and pure foods,
it should also be recalled that Senator Logan was a con-

Ee°Tn S ^ the n°ied fight in the Territorial Legis-
lature m 1905, during the consideration of the proposed
fellow servant law. Two members of the committee of
the House that were favorable to the bill were sent to
thp fOQU?iP-KaS ™Tbcrs of a committee to investigate
the fnrt fll7 °f-the ternt?ry takinS buildings at
fort for an insane asylum. During their absence
lobbyists against the bill thought to kill it. The ulan
aad h°Pe of ^ lobbyists was that in the absence of
these two members it would be possible to muster a

bearJ°nf 7+hV wagains\the ProPositioa- Logan, as a mem-
theHouse, who was favorable to the bill and
sensed what was going on, took the floor in debate on

sinV^fr and \eW/ 14 f°r four hours- At the conclu-
°* h“ sPeech supporters of the bill had enough
strmigth to postpone a vote until the two committee
members could return from Fort Supply.

Senator Logan’s father, James Calhoun Logan, was
born m Rutherford County, North Carolina, August Tl'
1828, a son of J J and Mary (Withrow) Logan. The
18 of ®cetch origin, and was established in
fX nf Q 7 generations ago. The great-great-grand-
Sjjg tn Seaat05 Logan, a native of South Carolina,
adnthr0Ugh°Ut- the War of tudependence, and after-
ward became a pioneer in Butherford County of North
Carolina.. James Logan, the great-grandfather of Sena-

Stead fnnWnVtu nquivtly acti7e eareer oa the old home-
T r t , North Carolina and at that place was born
J. J. Logan. Mary Ann Withrow, who married J. J
also b°rn in N0rth Carolina, a daughter of
John Withrow whose father, Capt. James Withrow,
won his title by service in the Eevolutionary army and
afterward represented his home county in the State Leg-
islature for thirty successive years. J. J. Logan, Senator
Logan s grandfather, was a farmer and lived in Bufher-
ford County, North Carolina, until 1832. He then took
his family to the Cherokee Nation in Northern Georgia.
Ia 4884 he went still further west, becoming a resident
County, Tennessee, where his first wife died in
1840. She was the mother of six children, and four of
the sons reached a good old age. J. J. Logan married
again and had five children. He died at the age of
ninety years in 1893: 8

James C. Logan was reared on a frontier farm, and
had very limited opportunities to gain an education. He
lived with his father until he was twenty-two, and in

1851 he married Nancy E. King, whose father was a
citizen of Cherokee County, North Carolina. Soon after-
ward Mr. and Mrs. Logan left North Carolina and
started for California, making the journey by way of
the Isthmus of Panama and spending eighty-eight days
en route. After trying the mines in California he went
north to the Klamath Eiver, and for six years was a
miner and prospector in that region. He then returned
to his native county, followed farming and the business
of tailning until his removal to Texas. In 1883 James
C. Logan brought his family out to Erath County, Texas,
and he purchased a tract of wild land at Morgan Mill.
He developed a farm, but in 1889 he sold out and estab-
lished a drug store at Morgan Mill, and thenceforward
was one of the leading merchants and most influential
citizens of that locality. His affiliations are those of a
democrat, a Mason and member of the Methodist Epis-
copal Church South.

In the summer of 1862 James C. Logan enlisted in
the Confederate army as a member of Company B,
Georgia Cavalry, under Col. John E. Hart. The com-
mand went to Tennessee and accompanied Kirby Smith
into Kentucky and afterward was with Bragg at Chicka-
mauga, and with J. E. Johnston at Atlanta and with
Hood in Tennessee, where he participated in the battles
of Franklin and Nashville. Mr. Logan surrendered with
his company to General Sherman at Greensboro, North
Carolina, April 25, 1865, being then a part of General
Johnston’s army.

The ten children of James C. Logan and wife were
named as follows: J. D., who became a minister of the

Methodist Episcopal Church; Jennie, who married
Mr. Davidson, who is now deceased; Josa, wife of W. S.
Dobbs of Georgia; Emma, who married A. J. Davis;
Della, widow of J. M. Taylor; Dr. M. H. ; Dr. W. H. ;
Mark, who took up the law as his profession; Oran J. ;
and John M. The mother of these children died in 1882
at the age of fifty-two. She was survived by her husband
and ten children, and her death was the first' in the fam-
ily in a period of forty-five years.

L. C. Headley. The editor of the Ponca City Courier,
L. C. Headley is now dean of Oklahoma journalism and
has been identified with Ponca City since the famous
rush of September, 1893. He is a newspaper man of
broad and varied experience, both in Kansas and Okla-
homa, and through the daily and weekly issues of the
Courier has a valuable influence throughout Kay County
and Northeastern Oklahoma. The Ponca City Courier
was first published and edited by Mr. Hoyt of Lyons,
Kansas, and Mr. Headley bought out the plant in 1901.
He and his sons now look after the general editorial
and business management of the Courier. It is a repub-
lican paper and has always stood strong in support of
original republican principles. Mr. L. C. Headley has
been identified more or less actively with newspaper busi-
ness for fifty years. He is a practical printer of the
old school and wields a trenchant pen as an editor. The
circulation of the Courier has reached 3,000. The paper i
advocates every material improvement, and stands not!
only for business progress, but for a better diffusion i
of prosperity, means of intelligence, and general enlight-
enment throughout Kay County.

Mr. L. C. Headley was born at Columbus, Ohio, June]
25, 1848. His father, David Headley, was a memberii
of the same family of the noted historian Headley, author
of Headley’s History of the Civil war. Davis Headley!
was born in New Jersey, and saw service as a ‘soldier!
during the war with Mexico. Two of his sons were!
soldiers in the Civil war. Edward G. Headley was ini
the Third Iowa Battery until his death, while Alfred!

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2119

of'

ned j

tail1,
ltiall
of a|
-Pis- 1

-1 in
r B,

Hill!-

dnitil
j'ka- j
with
attlesj
with
N’ortk
ueral

wersj
of the
arried

W.S.
Dam;:|
f. H.;
an J.;|
a 18S2-
asband';
io tarn-

jonriel

sman®

Headley was killed in the battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas.
Davis Headley married Sally Williams, wlio was born
in New Jersey, daughter of William Williams and of
Welsh ancestors. Davis Headley and wife moved out to
Mitchell County, Kansas, locating on a homestead near
Beloit. He died there at the age of sixty-nine, while
his wife passed away in Smith County, Kansas, at the
age of eighty. In politics he was first a whig and later
a stanch republican, and the church affiliation of the
family is Methodist.

L. C. Headley was educated in the public schools and
acquired his better education as an early apprentice
and worker in a printing shop. He also took up a
homestead in Mitchell County, Kansas, near Beloit, and
for a time was employed on the Beloit Democrat, when
that paper was first established. Later he went to
Gaylord, Kansas, and was a publisher and editor there
for twenty-five years. He next came to Ponca City,
Oklahoma, and he and his sons have since brought the
Courier to a condition of splendid prosperity.

Mr. Headley was married at the age of twenty-three
in Waterloo, Iowa, to Eliza W. Davis, who was born
and reared and educated in Illinois, afterwards going to
Iowa with her father, Joshua Davis, who was one of the
early settlers and one of the business leaders in Water-
loo. To Mr. and Mrs. Headley have been born the
following childrens Edward, a member of the firm oi
Headley & Sons, proprietors of the Ponca City Courier;
Henry, who for three and a half years was postmaster
at Ponca, and also was one of the leading members of
the House of Representatives; William, another mem-
ber of the firm of publishers; Bert, who edits the Smith
.County Pioneer at Smith Center, Kansas; one daughter
is now deceased, leaving a son Paul, a bright boy of
four years who lives at home with his grandparents at
Ponca; another daughter, whose home is in Bucklin,
Kansas ; and Mildred, a graduate trained nurse at Kansas
City, who has practiced her profession in all the lead-
ing hospitals and in many of the towns and larger cities
of the Southwest. Mr. Headley and family are mem-
bers of the Methodist Church, and his fraternal affilia-
tions are with the Masons, the Knights of Pythias, and
the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

d Okla-i
of thl
Com
Courier!
Ljonffl
in 1901,
editorial’
a repot-
-.port of
lley '
per bnsi
r of the'
:or. The
lie papa
ands not
diffusion
1 enlighf

hio, Junf
membef
it, author
• Eeadlej
a 'soldier
eons were

l Alfrl

D. A. Miller. In the practice of medicine and
surgery one of the best known firms in Oklahoma is
Dr. D. A. Miller and his wife, who is also a capable
physician. They located at Blackwell, April 11, 1901,
and their practice is now one not circumscribed by terri-
tory, but extending pretty well over all Northern Okla-
homa. Dr. D. A. Miller is a specialist in diseases of
the eye and ear. He is a graduate from the Hahnemann
College of Medicine with the class of 1901, and during
1904 was a post-graduate student in the medical depart-
ment of the College of New York, one of the oldest
medical schools in the country. He also took special
work in the Philadelphia Medical and Surgical College,
where he was associated with the well known surgeon,
Doctor Knapp. Doctor Miller is one of the few medical
men of Oklahoma who have been honored by election to
;he American College of Surgeons, an honor bestowed only
for special merit in the field of surgery, and thus giving
i special distinction apart from the possession of the
isual degree Doctor of Medicine. Doctor Miller and
wife have a fine suite of offices in Blackwell and. one of
the best medical libraries to be found in the state. He
also has an office at Ponca City, where he has a large
lientage.

Doctor Miller first became acquainted with Northern
Jlclahoma during the rush for homes in September, 1893.
— rode into the state on the opening day, looking for

a homestead, and though failing to secure one, he spent
a week or more in touring about the country, and was
so pleased with the soil, climate and future possibilities
that he then and there gained a definite direction as to
his future home.

Dr. D. A. Miller was born in Brown County, Kansas,
on the old homestead of his father, a few miles south-
east of Hiawatha, on April 23, 1867. The Miller family
is numbered among the prominent pioneers in the settle-
ment of Northeastern Kansas. His father was Charles
Miller, Jr., who was born in Germany, and was brought
to the United States when a child. Charles Miller, Sr.,
was a pioneer settler in Wisconsin, later in Illinois, and
eventually took up a homestead in Northeastern Kansas,
where subsequently about 2,000 acres were under the
ownership of this one family. Charles Miller, Jr., was
born in Germany in 1838, and died in 1909. He came
of a Lutheran family. The wife of Charles Miller is
still living, and has her home at Blackwell. Charles
Miller, Jr., was a prosperous farmer and stockman, and
in the early days did a great amount of freighting across
the plains, much of the time in the employ of the United
States Government, engaged in carrying supplies to the
Government forts. He made a number of trips through
the West to Salt Lake and Denver and other points.
In his business relations he was noted for his honesty
and upright character, and in every way was a man
above reproach. Charles Miller, Jr., married Sarah
Miller, of the same name, but not related. Her father
was Dan Miller. Charles and Sarah Miller were the
parents of five sons and one daughter.

Dr. D. A. Miller spent his early life on a farm, and
there developed the physical constitution which has stood
him in such good stead during the strain of a profes-
sional career. He attended public schools and was also
a pupil of the Pardee Institute under Professor Reid,
the famous educator, whose daughter he subsequently
married. For eight years# Doctor Miller was a teacher,
and five years of this time had charge of the school in
his home district in Brown County. Doctor Miller ’s
father had two brothers who were soldiers during the
Civil war. One of them was William Miller, in the Con-
federate army, while Fred Miller was on the opposite
side of the conflict. Doctor Miller has an interesting
ancestor on his maternal side, a young woman of sixteen
who risked her life to carry dispatches to one of the
American leaders during the Revolutionary war.

Doctor Miller was married January 1, 1902, at Eureka,
Kansas, to Miss Ethel Reid. Mrs. Miller is one of
the best known women physicians in Northern Okla-
homa, and comes of a family noted for its attainments
in intellectual and professional life. Her father was
Prof. John M. Reid, A. M. and M. D., of Eureka, Kansas.
An interesting fact about the marriage of Doctor Miller
is that the minister who performed the ceremony was
Rev. C. E. Hastings, of Effingham, Kansas, a son-in-
law of Rev. Pardee Butler, the famous abolitionist and
early pioneer of Kansas, who was associated with John
Brown in the memorable contest during the free state
movement following the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854.
John M. Reid was born in Kenton, Ohio, November 4,
1847, and grew up in Columbiana County of that state.
His father, Isaiah Reid, was born July 20, 1820, a son
of Manly Reid, who served as a soldier in the War
of 1812, and was in turn a son of Capt. John Reid, a
minute-man of the Revolution. The Reids were one of
the best families of Ohio, where they were settled in
the early days. The mother of Prof. John M. Reid
was Eliza Houser, a daughter of John H. and Barbara
Houser, who had settled in Hardin County, Ohio, as
early as 1828. Professor Reid was educated in Ohio,

2120

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

iind began teaching school at the age of seventeen.
He had a long and varied experience as an educator,
and in 1876 took charge of the Pardee Seminary in
Kansas. Practically his entire life was given to the
training of young men and women. He was honored
by the attainments of his pupils, all of whom regarded
him with special affection and credited his influence
as being one of the most powerful factors in their
lives. Many men successful in the professions might
be mentioned, several of them prominent in Oklahoma,
who were at one time students under Professor Eeid.
Professor Eeid was also a graduate physician, from the
Hahnemann College, and several others of the family
were likewise physicians, including Mrs. Miller. Her
brother is Dr. John L. Eeid, a successful physician at
Portales, New Mexico. Mrs. Miller began the study
of medicine under the direction of her father when she
was only sixteen years of age. She graduated from the
Kansas City Homeopathic College with the degree M. D.
on March 28, 1901, and previously her classical studies
had brought her the degree A. B.

Doctor Miller and wife are .prominent in the Christian
Church. He is superintendent of the Bible school class,
and both have devoted their time so far as professional
engagements would allow to the cause of church and
practical charity. Doctor Miller has risen high in the
Masonic order, belongs to the Lodge, Chapter and Knight
Templar Commandery at Blackwell, has served hs
eminent commander of the Knights Templar and als«
belongs to- the Tulsa Temple of the Mystic Shrine. He
and his wife have had much of the examination work
in connection with several fraternal orders.

J. C. Cox, D. V. S. Am important service has been
rendered by Doctor Cox to the farming and stock raising
community around Tonkawa in the capacity of veterinary
surgeon and as proprietor of the Cox Veterinary Hos-
pital at Tonkawa. Doctor Cox located in Tonkawa in
1913 in the month of May. ' He brought with him a
thorough skill as a practitioner, and that ability quickly
brought him a reputation and practice, and he has done
much to extend it through his frank and genial manner,
his undoubted qualifications, and his readiness to work
alongside and shoulder to shoulder with other citizens
in promoting the local welfare.

He is a graduate of one of the best veterinary schools
in the Southwest, the Kansas City Veterinary College,
and in the class of 1912 with which he graduated stood
among the first in the class. Doctor Cox is about thirty-
six years of age. He was born near Carthage in Jasper
County, Missouri, and his father was a well known
farmer and stock raiser there, J. C. Cox, who is now
deceased. The father was born at Ashland, Ohio, and
during the Civil war served in the Second Ohio Cavalry,
and made an excellent war record. He died in Kansas
City, Missouri, at the age of seventy-seven, and his
wife passed away in the same city, aged seventy-five.
Doctor Cox was one of three children, and his two sisters
are Mrs. E. Wait of Kansas City, and Mrs. Ober of
Haleyville, Oklahoma.

Like the other children, Doctor Cox received a sub-
stantial education during his youth. When he was
a child his parents removed to Champaign, Illinois, and
when he was six years of age they took up their home
on a farm in Wilson County, Kansas. It was on that
farm that he grew up, was taught the value of honesty
and industry, and developed a. physique that has fur-
nished him strength for the varied occupations to which
he has turned his attention. On leaving the farm
Doctor Cox went to Kansas City, Missouri, and for
several years was an employee in the Kansas City post-

office, and for ten years was a fireman on the Kansas
City and Fort Scott Eailroad. He made good in both
occupations,” was diligent and faithful to duty, but
finally turned his attention to the study of veterinary
surgery and now has a permanent profession.

At Neodesha, Kansas, Doctor Cox married Everlo
Ditto, who was born in Iowa, a daughter of John Ditto,
who also made a soldier’s record in the Union army
and is now deceased. Doctor Cox and wife have two
children: Agnes and Curtiss.

In politics Doctor Cox is a republican. He is a
thirty-second degree Scottish Eite Mason. Physically
he stands six feet high, has an excellent physique, a
strong mind, and is a man of broad and progressive
views. He makes and retains friends, and bein
thoroughly versed in his profession, is already one of
the successful citizens of Tonkawa.

He si

fcU:

iithii

Inti

Harry Walker, M. D. It is doubtful if any one
family has contributed more distinguished services to
the medical profession of Oklahoma than that of Walker
Dr. Harry Walker of Pawhuska is a son of the late
Delos Walker, who from the opening of the original
Oklahoma Territory in April, 1889, until his death
in 1910, was one of the ablest physicians and most
public spirited citizens of Oklahoma City. Eepresenta
tives of three successive generations o-f this family have
practiced medicine and surgery, in Oklahoma, since only
a year or two elapsed after the death of Dr. Delos Walker
before his grandson, a son of Doctor Harry, began his
work as a surgeon in Pawhuska.

Dr. Delos Walker, who deserves a foremost place in
any record of Oklahoma physicians, was born October
19, 1837. At that time his parents, William and Sally
(Fisher) Walker, were living in Crawford County, Penn-
sylvania. William Walker was a native of Washington
County, Pennsylvania, and William Walker’s father was
born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and saw service
in the early Indian wars under General St. Clair. In-
1866 the parents of Dr. Delos Walker moved to Ander-
son County, Kansas, where they located at a time when-
that section was on the frontier.

Eeared on a farm, Delos Walker gained his educa-
tion in local schools and at Conneautville Academy, and
in 1858 began the study of medicine at that village with
Dr. James L. Dunn. He had not yet completed his
studies when, on April 22, 1861, a few days after the ^
firing on Fort Sumter, he enlisted as orderly sergeant ^ j
in Company B of McLean ’s Eegiment at Conneautville,1 | j
After his first term he was mustered out in 1862, and ^
then entered the medical department of the University
of Michigan. Again he left his studies and as cap-
tain of Company B of the One Hundred and Thirty-
seventh Pennsylvania Volunteers, was in the battles of
South Mountain, Antietam, Chaneellorsville and other,
engagements of the campaign through Maryland anc |
Virginia. He rose to rank of major in his regiment ir j,
1863, but soon afterward returned to the University oi
Michigan, where he was graduated M. D. in 1864. After
a brief private practice, he went back to Pennsylvania ^
to become surgeon for the Twentieth Provost District ^ j
At Harrisburg he co-operated with Adjutant Genera [t,;r
Eussell and organized eight companies, which were
formed as the One Hundred and Third Pennsylvania
Infantry, with which he served as lieutenant colonel dur
ing the spring and early summer of 1865. For a tim
after the close of the war Dr. Delos Walker practieec gjj
at Conneautville, Pennsylvania, and in Union City o
the same state, and at the latter place was surgeoi
for the Philadelphia and Erie Eailroad. In 1867 h
joined his parents in Anderson County, Kansas, and fo

ipers,

presti

Osagi

lor S
' :,r

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2121

' ' the next twenty-two years was surgeon in a successful
u practice at Greeley.

)IJt It was almost a matter of chance and circumstance
■ that Dr. Delos Walker became permanently identified
with the destinies of the young City of Oklahoma at
1 the time of its founding. He took part in the rush into
the district on April 22, 1889, and something in the
1 enthusiasm and excitement and the promise of future
N opportunities caused him to decide to remain as one of
the first citizens of Oklahoma City. His long experience
■ 1 and recognized ability soon brought him distinction as
% one of the first physicians, and he was also prominent
:l in many other activities which were closely related with
' ■ the upbuilding of that community. He helped organize
eiDS the first public schools and became the first president
; * of the school board of Oklahoma City. For five years
he was health superintendent of Oklahoma County and
was the first president of the board of health of Okla-
0118 loma City, holding that office five years. He was also
' ,# an e of the organizers and the first president of the
:!ier’ Oklahoma Medical Society. He also served as president
H )f the pi neer association known as Oklahoma Eighty-
STiners. Dr. Delos Walker was married in Pennsylvania
leitt ;0 Miss Emeret Greenfield. Their only daughter, Maud,
ll'1'1 lied at the age of nineteen. Mrs. Delos Walker was
■rata- 30X11 in 1842 and died in 1905.

Dr. Harry Walker, whose individual attainments have
irought him such distinction that he does not stand in
;he shadow of his father’s eminence, was born at Con-
111 to leautville, Pennsylvania, May 10, 1861. He also attended
he University of Michigan, where he was both a literary
1(e “ and medical student, and in 1884 was graduated M. D.
(tola rom the Bellevue Hospital Medical College of New
Stoj fork City. He also had the benefit during his earlier
P® areer of almost constant association with his father,
n?#l and they were together in practice both at Greeley,
erra Kansas, and at Oklahoma City. In 1900 Dr. Harry
seiria talker accepted appointment as Government surgeon
I? or the Osage Indian Agency at Pawhuska. After ieav-
ng that service he continued in private practice at
eriffl >awhuska, and in point of residence is one of the oldest
hysicians in Osage County, and easily one of the

elnc» blest in this part of the state.

it, am Doctor Walker is a member of the Osage County and
?e flit )klahoma State Medical societies and the American Medi-
ted hi al Association. While devoted to his profession, he has
iter th ]so acquired many interests on the outside and for

ergrai ears has been a student of Indian customs and lore,
antvill [is interesting articles on the romantic features of
62, an 'sage Indian history have appeared in a number of
drersit apers, particularly the Kansas City Star. He has

as cap elped to preserve in permanent form some of the

Thirtj iteresting records in connection with the Boy family
ittles « f Osages and also has written of the famous Chouteau
1 otic sunily of St. Louis regarding its transactions as traders
ml ai ith the Osage tribe.

iment i In polities Doctor Walker is a republican. He has
aisity t (filiations with the Masonic order, the Knights of
1. Aft( ythias, the Modern Woodmen of America and the
lsylvam /hodmen of the World. His wife before her marriage
Distiij as Miss Villa McFadden. She was born in Illinois.
Genes heir three sons are Boseoe, Joseph and Delos, Jr.
cl tfci oetor Boseoe is now associated in practice with his
asvlvani ither at Pawhuska, and is a young surgeon of brilliant
onel dw romise. He was born at Greeley, Kansas, in 1885,
it a til raduated Bachelor of Science from the University of
practice klalioma in 1909, then entered Columbia University at
City i ew York City, where he took his degree of medicine in
; surged )ll, and after two years as surgical interne in the
1867 ost-graduate Hospital of New York, returned to Paw-
and 5 iska to begin practice with his father. The son Joseph,

born at Greeley, Kansas, in 1888, completed his education
in the Oklahoma City High School and is now at home.
The younger son, Delos, born in 1892, attended the
Pawhuska High School, spent three years in the State
University, and is now a newspaper man, being a reporter
on the Denver Express.

C. K. Templeton was born in Magoffin County, Ken-
tucky, May 10, 1877. He was the third son of Dr.
James E. and Julia Q. Templeton. The family con-
sisted of six boys: L. C., who lives in Morgan County,
Kentucky; J. W., of Scott County, Virginia; C. K.,
of Pawhuska, Osage County, Oklahoma; T. O. and

B. C., both of Scott County, Virginia; and O. F., of
Washington, D. C. His father and mother were native
Virginians’, his mother having died when he was eleven
years old. His father was' a Confederate soldier, and
served throughout the Civil war under Lee and Jackson
and when the war ended he returned to his home in
Scott County, Virginia, and resumed the practice of
medicine, which he has continued to the present day.

C. K. attended the public free schools of Kentucky until
sixteen years of age, when he started out as a teacher
in that state, and from there went to Virginia, where
he taught school for several years, and in 1898 graduated
from Shoemaker College at Gate City, Virginia, having
specialized in history and science. He continued to teach
and study law, and in 1901 he entered the University
at Valparaiso, in Indiana, where he was able to work
his way through school, and completed the law class of
nearly seventy, making a general average, for the two
years of a fraction over 98 per cent, and received the
degree of LL. B. He was admitted to the bar in both
Kentucky and Indiana, and went back to Virginia and
taught school and studied law in the office of Hon. W.
S. Cox, then commonwealth attorney, at Gate City. Com-
ing to Oklahoma Territory in April, 1905, he located at
Pawhuska, worked in the ‘ ‘ Old Bed Store, ’ ’ for C. M.
Hirt, until he was able to get acquainted and get into
the practice of his profession. He worked in the store
for about eleven months and has since been engaged in
the practice of law. He was elected prosecuting attorney
in the fall of 1910, on the democratic ticket by a large
majority. His majority in the City of Pawhuska, in
both the primary and general elections, was about seventy
more than that of his opponents in the whole county,
though they all lived in Pawhuska. He lost but few
precincts in the county at either the primary or general
election. He believed in and followed a. strict enforce-
ment of the laws. At the expiration of his term of office
he formed a partnership with John W. Tillman, who was
his assistant, and that partnership continued until Mr.
Tillman was elected to the same office in the fall of
1914, and he is now assistant under Mr. Tillman. He
also has a large civil practice which extends to Kansas,
Missouri, Indiana and Texas, and is local attorney for the
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Bailway Company, and
Wells Fargo & Company Express. He has been a
democratic worker and speaker since the presidential
election of 1906, and is at this time secretary of the
Osage County Democratic Central Committee. He is
'also a member of his local bar, and treasurer of the
Oklahoma State Bar Association and is rated among the
best attorneys of the state.

Mr. Templeton is a great lover of Freemasonry. He
was made a Master Mason when twenty-one years of
age at Fort Blackmore Lodge No. 87, Ancient Free and
Accepted Masons, Fort Blackmore, Virginia, and was
master of that lodge when he left Virginia for his law
course; in September, 1901. He is now a member of
Wah-Shah-She Lodge No. 110, Ancient Free and Accepted

2122

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Masons, Pawhuska, Oklahoma; Gate City Chapter No.
35, Royal Arch Masons, Gate City, Virginia; Palestine
Commandery No. 35, Knights Templar, Pawhuska, Okla-
homa; Oklahoma Consistory No. 1, Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (thirty -second degree),
Guthrie, Oklahoma ; Akdar Temple, Ancient Arabic Order
Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and
Chapter No. 63, Order of the Eastern Star, Pawhuska,
Oklahoma. And he is also a Knight of Pythias, and
member of White Hair Lodge No. 11, at Pawhuska,
Oklahoma, being now (May, 1916) chancellor commander
of that lodge. He married Miss Nellie Roberts, the
daughter of Rush Roberts, then one of the council and
head men of the Pawnee tribe of Indians, at Pawnee,
Oklahoma. Mr. and Mrs. Templeton were married at
Pawnee, Oklahoma, July, 1908. To their marriage have
been born three children: Lena Myrtle; James E. R.,
and C. K., Jr.

James Albert McCollum. Among the men who have
risen to prominence in the law in Oklahoma during recent
years, one of the younger generation whose abilities have
gained him professional success and public honors is
James Albert McCollum, county attorney of Pawnee
County. His achievements have not been the result of
happy chance, but have been fairly earned, for from the
start of his career' Mr. McCollum has depended upon his
own resources and has fitted his talents to his oppor-
tunities.

Mr. McCollum was born in Berry County, Missouri,
October 26, 1883, and is a son of William Wallace and
Mary Ann (Fawver) McCollum. On the paternal side he
belongs to an old family of Scoteh-Irish origin, while
his maternal grandfather wa,s a native of Germany, and
although the latter married a woman of American birth
she was of German lineage. William Wallace McCol-
lum was born in Tennessee, in 1849, and was three years
of age when taken by his parents to Berry County, Mis-
souri, where as a young man he followed school-teaching
as a vocation. There he was married to Mary Ann Faw-
ver, who had been born in Virginia, in 1853, and after
their marriage they settled on a Berry County farm,
where 'the father has since continued to be engaged in
farming and raising stock. He has been active in demo-
cratic politics, and he and Mrs. McCollum have been life-
long members of the Methodist Church. Of their nine
children, two died in infancy, the survivors being :
Emma, who is the wife of G. W. Roller, of Wichita,
Kansas; Etta, who is the wife of Frank Major, of
Wheaton, Missouri; Jenna, who is the wife of E. M.
Peter, of Boulder, Colorado; Augusta, who is the wife
of Elliott Roller, of Rocky Comfort, Missouri; James
Albert; Claude C., a practicing attorney of Pawnee,
Oklahoma; and Earl C., who is in Boulder, Colorado, in
the hardware business.

James Albert McCollum resided on the home farm until
twenty-one years of age, receiving his education in the
country schools and Marionville Collegiate Institute, at
Marionvilie, Missouri, where he spent three profitable
years. After his graduation, in 1905, he went to Western
Kansas, where he remained three years, proving up on a
homestead, and in the meantime taught one term of
school. He had had former experience in the latter line,
as when he was a youth he had taught three terms of
school in order to gain the means with which to com-
plete his studies at the institute. In the fall of 1908
Mr. McCollum returned to Missouri and entered the law
school of the University of Missouri, where he was gradu-
ated in 1911 with the degree of Doctor of Laws, and in
July of that year came to Pawnee and opened an office
for the practice of his profession. Not long afterward,

he formed a law partnership with V. H. Biddison, and
the firm of Biddison & McCollum continued in existence
one year, when the senior member disposed of his inter-
est to Mr. McCollum’s brother, Claude C. McCollum, at
which time the concern of McCollum & McCollum was Si fj;
founded. This subsequently became one of the formid-J «•
able combinations of Pawnee, and continued as such until

the fall of 1914, when James A. McCollum was elected ta

county attorney for Pawnee County. Mr. McCollum
the only republican in his family, and it is worthy of
note that, in a democratic county, he was elected by
majority <f»f 643 votes, thus demonstrating his popularity,
as well as showing that his talents were recognized and
appreciated. He has established an excellent record in
office, has acquitted himself ably and honorably in
number of important cases, and has won and held the
full confidence of the people who elected him to his>
important position. While a student at the University
of Missouri, he was a member of the Athenaeum Society,
organized in 1841, and the oldest student organization
west of the Mississippi River. He also showed himself
a master of debate, taking part in numerous interstate
contests, and won high honors therein, never losing a con
test, a record that has never been equalled in that insti-
tution. In the year 1910 the State Republican Commit-
tee of Missouri employed four university men to stumj
the state during the campaign, of whom Mr. McCollum
was one, and during the thirty days that he was sc
engaged, he made two speeches each day. He is consid
ered one of the ablest orators of Pawnee County, and hi
services are in constant demand during the campaigns ol
his party, of which he is a leader in this part of Okla;
homa. Mr. McCollum is a Mason. With his family, he
belongs to the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Mr. McCollum was married July 23, 1911, to Misn
Lillian McCann, born in Berry County, Missouri, in 1887'
daughter of Frank McCann, and to this union there have
been born two children: Mary and Mildred

d M

gWi

hospital

slaiiei]

Mic

J. L. Hudson. In the First National Bank of Fairfax
which is the oldest and most substantial institution o.
its kind in that flourishing town of Osage County, J. LI
Hudson has filled the office of cashier for the past threij
years. The other officers of the bank are J. C. Stribling
president, and J. H. Ward, vice president, all well know:
business men in that section of Oklahoma. Though Mr
Hudson has been a resident of Fairfax as a town onl;
a few years, he formerly operated as a cattle man an«
rancher over the very site now occupied by Fairfax
A native of Southern Texas, J. L. Hudson was bor
in Fayette County, January 1, 1875, a son of D. W
and Eugenia (Loman) Hudson. His father was bor:
in Tennessee, and at the age of three years was brough
to Texas by his parents, who located at Rutersvilll
one of the old educational centers of Southern Texas
Mr. Hudson’s mother was born in Fayette County i
1854, a daughter of Upton Loman, who had come as
pioneer from Illinois to Texas, and was extensive!
engaged in the cattle industry until his death. M
Hudson’s mother died June 24, 1914, and his father i
now residing at Fairfax, having retired from an activ
career as a cattleman and farmer. For eighteen yeai fa'™
D. W. Hudson lived on one ranch in Llano County, Texa 11
J. L. Hudson is the older of two sons, and his brothe;

W. M. Hudson, has for the past seven or eight yeai
been located at Tampico, Mexico, where he has a larg J".

ranch, and is also engaged in the oil and real estal
business..

Reared in Texas, J. L. Hudson attended the publ jjv
schools there, and in 1896 was graduated from tl

scientific course in the National Normal University f j(

lit ft

Her fa

- v !

: ■>

fljmissii

%yti

not

®l (new

" ' > 1 1

'--Hi,

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2123

Lebanon, Ohio. Thus equipped for life’s duties he took
up teaching-, and spent two years in that vocation in

!- Gonzales County, Texas. Afterwards he worked as book-
keeper and as cashier in the First National Bank at
’ Flatonia, Texas, for two years, and for a similar period
■ was cashier of the First National Bank at Moulton in
that state. In 1901 he transferred his home to the
; Osage Nation of Indian Territory, and was engaged in
the cattle industry and farming in the vicinity now
■;! occupied by the Town of Fairfax. He left this locality
in the spring of 1903, about the time the railroad was
, ! ! constructed and Fairfax was founded, and returned to
- Texas and spent four years in the oil business at
. Beaumont, and for three years combined the rice culti-
vation and the cattle business in Matagorda County.
' For about four or five years he gave his attention
chiefly to the telephone business at Llano, Texas, and
7 then came to the Town of Fairfax in September, 1912,
and has since been identified with' the First National
| Bank. Mr. Hudson has many other interests that make
him one of the leaders in business affairs in Osage
' i County. He owns about 1,000 head of cattle, and has
. ; also built up a successful business in the cattle and
cattle loan business, furnishing the resources to a num-
ber of small cattle men in this part of the state.

" In politics he is a democrat, is affiliated with the
'®‘ Masonic Order in the Lodge, the Boyal Arch Chapter,
El' ;he Council and the Knight Templar Commandery, and
relongs to the Methodist Episcopal Church. On June
50, 1909, he married Miss Louise Fowler, who was born
/“!{ n Llano, Texas, and lived there until her . marriage,
‘j ler father is J. W. Fowler, a prominent cattleman and
:llX ‘armer. To their marriage has been born one son,
jjj SVilson Lane,
in 18!

re 1,31 L. H. Winborn, M. D. When he was seventeen years
>ld Doctor Winborn, now successfully established in
lis profession as physician and surgeon at Tuttle in
r ; . Irady County, was drawn by a vision of opportunities
' ior young men in the Southwest, and leaving his home
n Mississippi sought employment in the Choctaw Nation
[' >f Indian Territory. There, while working for the
fct ' Ihoetaw Coal and Mining Company and for other firms
j™., nd individuals, he developed his ambition for a profes-
- ional career. A young man of earnest purpose and
JiS' nergy usually gets what he wants. With the savings
)'m 01 r om his earnings he matriculated • in the Louisville
Pf1 lospital Medical College at Louisville, Kentucky, and
fftaI' emained there as long as his funds permitted. He then
® " eturned to the Indian country and began the practice
‘ *7 f medicine. Settlements were few and sparse in those
® 1 ays, and the majority of his patients were Indians.
!“°P lospital facilities were practically unknown, and the
jteisvi otlng doctor faced conditions as primitive almost as did
n ^ he missionary doctors who came into the Indian country
hirty years before. Under such conditions his practice
oniea! 'as not lucrative and the outlook for the future was
ot encouraging. He had a surplus of about $150, and
-lj 1 ne day confided to a friend his disappointment at not
fatlet eing able to finish his medical training. This friend
a-'1 'as Robert Brewer, son of Dr. T. F. Brewer, of Wagoner.
®Je Without solicitation Brewer advanced the necessary
ty. Tes ioney, and on July 30, 1908, the young physician left
he Louisville Hospital Medical College carrying a
gMjt iploma which entitled him to the degree Doctor of
i! a I*1 ledieine. He settled at Quinton, Indian Territory, and
eal est ontinued his practice among the Indians. He became
amily physician for Hon. Green McCurtain, principal
the p» hief of the Choctaw Nation, and his practice was among
from ' lany of the old and noted families of the Choctaw Tribe,
verity le lived there until 1911, when he removed to Tuttle,

where he now has a handsome home and enjoys a sub-
stantial and profitable practice.

Doctor Winborn was born in Hernando, Mississippi,
June 25, 1873, a son of Francis Marion and Amorette
(Doyle) Winborn. His father was a graduate of the
medical department of the University of Alabama, and
for thirty-five years did a successful practice in Missis-
sippi and Arkansas, and during the Civil war was a
Confederate soldier. Doctor Winborn ’s grandfather was
a successful planter in Mississippi. Doctor Winborn has
two brothers and a sister: B. L. and Doctor Winborn,

both of whom are farmers and stock men at Farris,
Oklahoma; and Mrs. Ollie Smith, wife of a farmer at
Bristow.

After finishing his education in the public schools of
Mississippi, Doctor Winborn studied mechanical engineer-
ing, a vocation which he followed after coming to Indian
Territory. His first course in medicine enabled him to
pass the federal examination for practice in the Indian
Territory. As already explained he was in very humble
financial circumstances at the outset of his career, and
has made his own way to standing and prosperity in the
profession. While living in the mountains of the old
Choctaw Nation he became a fast friend of some of the
noted men of the tribe. Among them was Bichard
Locke, Sr., father of the present principal chief of the
Choctaw Nation. He was with the elder Locke in a
historic fight that took place at Antlers, the present
county seat of Pushmataha County. The present Cnief
Locke was then a boy in knee trousers.

Doctor Winborn was married October 1, 1901, to Miss
Mary Heck of Denison, Texas. Her father was a pioneer
contractor and builder who helped to found and build
the Town of Colbert, Oklahoma, and also had the dis-
tinction of erecting the first house on the site of Denison,
Texas, when that became the terminus of the Missouri,
Kansas & Texas Bailway during the early ’70s. He was
a man of prominence in the country about Denison and
in the southern part of the Choctaw Nation, where he
had lived prior to the building of the Missouri, Kansas
& Texas, which was the first railroad that traversed the
Indian Territory.

Doctor Winborn is a member of the Christian Church
and has fraternal affiliations with the Masons, the Inde-
pendent Order of Odd Fellows, the Modern Woodmen
of America and the Woodmen of the World. In Masonry
he has attained the thirty-second degree of Scottish Bite,
and his Blue Lodge is at Quinton, and he is a member
of the Consistory at McAlester. He has occupied head
positions in local lodges and at present is consul com-
mander of the Woodmen of the World. He is examining
physician- for fourteen life insurance companies and is
assistant county health officer of Grady County. Pro-
fessionally he is a member of the Grady County Medical
Society, the Oklahoma Medical Society and the Tri-State
Medical Association and the American Medical Associa-
tion. No sketch of Doctor Winborn would be complete
without reference to his civic enthusiasm and leadership.
He is a member of the Tuttle Commercial Club, and has
been one of the leading workers in behalf of a project
for building a section of the proposed state highway
between Oklahoma City and Fort Sill. This project
involves the erection of a bridge over the South Canadian
Biver near Tuttle at a cost of approximately $100,000.
Doctor Winborn is a liberal contributor of time and
money in carrying out all plans for the commercial, indus-
trial, educational and social upbuilding of his locality.

Michael J. Foley. One of the best hotels in a town
of its size in Oklahoma is the Hotel Ponton at Fairfax,
of which Michael J. Foley has been proprietor and

2124

3IST0RY OF OKLAHOMA

manager for the past eight years. Mr. Foley is an old-
timer in the hotel business, having formerly been identi-
fied with the first business enterprise and hotel at
Ralston in Pawnee County. Many years ago, long
before Indian Territory was merged into the State of
Oklahoma, he was identified with the Osage Nation, and
it was a return to old friends and earlier associations
when he sold out his business in Ralston in August, 1907,
and on the 15th of October following moved to Fairfax
in Osage County and bought the Hotel Ponton. This
is the only commercial hotel of the town, and he has
extensively remodeled the building and has brought its
service up to a high standard.

Since early boyhood the career of Michael J. Foley
has been one of varied activities and experiences. He
was born in Ireland, April 29, 1849, and when two years
of age came to America with his parents, Cornelius and
Julia (Lynch) Foley. The family lived in Rochester,
New York, for two or three years, and then settled in
Kalamazoo, Michigan. Cornelius Foley enlisted with the
Seventh Michigan Volunteer Infantry during the Civil
war and served as a soldier from 1863 to 1865. Michael
J. was the fourth in a family of eight children, as fol-
lows: Julia Madigan, deceased; Mary Madigan, of Kala-

mazoo; Ellen, who died at the age of sixteen; Daniel,
who died when four years old; Michael J. ; Cornelius, of
Kalamazoo; Patrick, who died in Kalamazoo in 1913;
and Kate, of Mill City, Oregon.

With only the rudiments of a common school educa-
tion, Michael J. Foley as a boy left home and removed
to Chicago, where he learned the trade of plasterer.
The great fire of 1871 in that city furnished abundant
employment in all branches of the building trade, and
for several months after the fire he was employed by
the city in a relief corps. For two years he was in
the employ of his brother, engaged in the liquor business
on Canal Street in Chicago, and subsequently engaged in
the railroad service, a work to which he gave his time
for a number of years, though not continuously. His first
eighteen months of that work was as brakeman, and then
for three years he was a conductor on one of the eastern
railroads leading out of Chicago. While in charge of
his train he met with an accident, and after returning
to the service was put in charge of a local freight between
Cleveland and Toledo on the Lake Shore and Michigan
Southern. For a year he conducted his father’s farm
near Kalamazoo, after which he returned to railroading
on the Pan Handle route of the Pennsylvania lines in
Ohio, working as a conductor for eighteen months. Re-
turning to Chicago in 1879, Mr. Foley was again employed
by his brother for a year and a half, and then found
work in the construction of the West Side Waterworks
of that city. It is also interesting to note that he
assisted in erecting the old Panorama Building on Wabash
Avenue in Chicago, a place known to many thousands of
Chicago visitors during the decade of the ’90s for the
panorama of the battle of Gettysburg which was exhib-
ited there. The building afterwards had a varied
history of uses, and is still standing. Later Mr. Foley
was employed in the construction of an. addition to
Asylum No. 2 at St. Josenh, Missouri, and continued
the work of his trade in Coffeyville, Kansas, and also
in the locality of the present Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
Thus he became introduced to the Indian country of the
Osage Nation, and was not long in gaining a familiarity
with the language of those Indians, and also won the
good will of several of the influential chiefs. At Paw-
huska he was employed for a time in butchering cattle
allotted to the red men, but in the spring of the following
year made a practical demonstration to the Indians of
the use and wisdom of plastering their houses, and as

this improvement was ' quickly taken up by one after
another he found abundant employment for his skill.

In 1892 Mr. Foley returned to Chicago, and in the
spring of the following year his father died at Kalamazoo. I
The mother had passed away about twelve years before.
Not long afterwards Mr. Foley came again to the Osage
country of Indian Territory, locating at Gray Horse,
and soon afterward prepared to make the race at the
opening of the Cherokee Strip. He did not succeed in j
acquiring a claim, but in March, 1894, removed to Tal-
ston in Pawnee County, and soon afterward laid the ! !
foundation for the first building erected on that town i
site. He bought a lot, put up a small building, and on i
the 4th of July celebrated Independence Day by opening j i
his restaurant, which in time was supplemented by a
large hotel covering three lots. As the pioneer hotel)
man and business man of Ralston he was in successful)
business there until he sold out thirteen years later and i
identified himself with the community of Fairfax.

On March 28, 1893, Mr. Foley married Miss Maggie!
Bennett, a daughter of Mathew and Frances Bennett. I
Mrs. Foley was born in Indiana, but was reared in Kan-i
sas. She died December 27, 1913, at the age of forty-*||
three, leaving three children: Cornelius, Emmett and

Ruth. Mr. Foley is a democrat in polities, and while a
resident of Ralston served as a justice of the peace a
number of years. His church is the Catholic.

Jasper Newton Todd. Among the men who have con-i
tributed to ‘ the commercial upbuilding of the City of
Jennings,, one who established a record for business
acumen and founded an establishment which still bearsi
his name was the late Jasper Newton Todd. Coming!
here in 1896 in moderate circumstances, he embarked in
mercantile affairs and directed his operations so wisely)
and well that at the time of his death, August 17, 1913,
he was not only one of the substantial men of his adopted
community but had established a firm reputation as £
man of the highest business honor. *

Mr. Todd was a native of Missouri, born June 17.
1859, a son of Owen and Elizabeth (Reynolds) Todd.
His parents were born in Kentucky, and went to Mis-
souri, where they settled on a farm and passed the remain-
ing years of their lives in agricultural operations;
There were thirteen children in the family, and Jaspei
N., one of the younger members, was given a country
school education. He had only ordinary advantages ir
his youth, but early showed himself possessed of qua!
ities of industry and energy that augured well for his;
future. He grew up as a farmer in the vicinity oi
Versailles, the county seat of Morgan County, Missouri
where he continued to make his home with his parent!
for a number of years. About 1890 he went to Walk
Walla, in Washington Territory, where he began hit
experience as a merchant, continuing there and at an
other town in the same territory for three or four years
His advent in Oklahoma occurred in May, 1894, wlxei
he located on a leased farm in Creek County, but afte.
two years his health failed and he was compelled to seel
other employment. Disposing of his interests he gath
ered together about $1,700, with which he came b
Jennings, and engaged in business with J. L. Bishop
under the firm name of Todd & Bishop. The partner
were successful in building up an excellent trade in gen
eral merchandise and the association continued satie
factorily until the combination was broken, after seves
years, by the death of Mr. Bishop. Subsequently Mi
Todd’s brother-in-law, C. M. Foil, was admitted t
partnership and the firm of Todd & Foil continued i
business for about two years, when Mr. Todd bough
his partner’s interest and continued the business unde)

JASPER N. TODD

3IST0RY OF OKLAHOMA

2125

his own name until his death. He was a man of excellent
business and executive abilities, sagacious and farsighted,
and by his earnest desire to please his customers and his
courteous treatment and fair dealing secured the liberal
patronage of which he was deserving. Since his death
the business has been continued by his widow and son,
under the style of the J. N. Todd' Estate.' The present
store, a stone structure, 25 by 100 feet, two stories in
height, was erected in 1902 during the life of the firm
of Todd & Bishop, and here is still carried a full line
of first-class general merchandise of all kinds. The
building is located on Main Street, in the heart of the
business district, and trade is attracted not only from
all over Jennings, but from the surrounding country-
side. Mr. Todd was a democrat in his political views
and always gave his party loyal support. As a citizen
the best interests of the community found in him a
stanch friend, and he withheld his co-operation from no
worthy undertaking calculated to promote the general
welfare. He was a devout member of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, and was fraternally connected with
the local lodges of the Independent Order of Odd Fel-
lows and the Knights of the Maccabees in which he had
many sincere friends. Mr. Todd was vice president of
the Jennings State Bank, but the greater part of his
attention was devoted to the business which still stands
as a monument to his industry and business ability.

Mr. Todd was married in Missouri to Miss Anna
Collier, who died in that state, leaving one daughter:
Gorda May, who is the wife of T. O. Ham, of Jennings,
and has two children, Earl and Mabel. In 1892, Mr.
Todd was married in Washington to Miss Alice White-
head, who was born November 27, 1874, at Sedalia,
Missouri, and was reared in that state. They became
i the parents of three children: Edmond Jasper, one of
the enterprising young business men of Jennings, en-
gaged with his mother in conducting the business, who
married Miss Nell McLain, of Tryon, Oklahoma, a former
teacher in the public schools ; and Zoe and Flo, who reside
with their mother. Mrs. Todd is a devout member of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, in the work of which
she has been active, as she is also in the Ladies of the
Maccabees. The late Mr. Todd, when he could leave
the cares of business, enjoyed nothing more than a
hunting trip. He kept several hounds and had some-
thing more than a local reputation as a deer hunter,
seldom returning from a trip without some noble trophy
of the chase.

Carl I. Huffaker. On other pages of this publica-
tion will be found an ample sketch of the prominent
Huffaker family, which for many years has been closely
identified not only with the history of Kansas but also
of Oklahoma. Several active representatives of this
family are now found in Northeastern Oklahoma, and
one of them is Carl I. Huffaker, who until recently was
postmaster of Fairfax in Osage County and has been
more or less closely identified with affairs in that section
for the past ten years.

A son of Hon. Thomas Sears and Eliza A. (Baker)
Huffaker, he was born at Council Grove, Kansas, Janu-
ary 24, 1880. He grew up in the old Kansas town
where his family have helped to make history since ter-
ritorial days, and lived there until 1904. In 1899 he
graduated from the Council Grove High School, and for
the following 3% years was employed in the Council
Grove waterworks and electric light plant. He first
came to Fairfax, Oklahoma, in 1904, where he became
identified with the Santa Fe Railroad Company.. He
was with the Santa Fe five years, a part of that time in
the general offices at Topeka. The rest of the period,
eighteen months, he was connected with the offices of the

Cudahy Packing Company, and during this time he was
transferred from one place to another in Oklahoma,
Colorado, Missouri and Kansas.

In 1910 Mr. Huffaker returned to Fairfax and in the
following year was appointed postmaster. Fairfax has
a third class office and Mr. Huffaker gave^to the service
a most capable and painstaking administration. His
term of office expired in the fall of 1915, and he is
now the owner of the electric light and power plant at
Fairfax, which he began to install before leaving the
postoffice.

In politics Mr. Huffaker has been a republican ever
since casting his first vote. He is a member of the
Metho&ist Church and in the Masonic fraternity is
affiliated with the lodge. Royal Arch Chapter, Knight
Templar Commandery and the Mystic Shrine. He is
unmarried. Mr. Huffaker also owns a half interest in
the Fairfax Drug Company.

Joseph L. Rogers. At the time, in 1889, when the
present State of Oklahoma had the first portion of its
territory thrown open to settlement, just prior to the
formal organization of the territory, Mr. Rogers became
one of the progressive citizens of Chandler, the present
judicial center of Lincoln County, and as1 one of the
pioneers of this commonwealth he has played well his
part in aiding the march of development and progress
along both civic and industrial lines. Like many others
he has met with reverses at certain stages in his career,
but he has not been daunted or discouraged, but has
pressed forward with ambition and determined purpose,
with the result that he now holds place as one of the
substantial representatives of the agricultural interests
of Pawnee County, where his well improved farm is
situated about five miles distant from the Village of
Jennings, his landed estate comprising 320 acres. He is
one of the substantial farmers and vigorous and public-
spirited citizens of Pawnee County, commands secure
place in the confidence and good will of the community
and is fully entitled to recognition in this history of
the state of his adoption.

Mr. Rogers was born at Red Oak, Montgomery County,
Iowa, on the 12th of November, 1852, and is a son of
Richard W. and Salina (Billman) Rogers, the former
of whom was born in Kentucky and the latter in Indiana,
their marriage having been solemnized in Jackson County,
Illinois, The father passed the closing period of his
life in the home of his son, Joseph L., of this review,
and thus his death occurred in Pawnee County, Okla-
homa Territory, where he passed away on the 10th of
March, 1905, at which time he was seventy-five years
and four months old; his widow now resides in the home
of her youngest daughter, at Centralia, Washington.

Richard W. Rogers removed from Illinois and be'came
one of the pioneer settlers in Montgomery County, Iowa.
He assisted in the erection of the first three houses in
that county and there became a substantial farmer and
honored and influential citizen. He represented the
county several terms in the Lower House of the Iowa
Legislature and was called upon to serve also in various
local offices of public trust. His entire active career
was one of close identification with the basic industry
of agriculture, and he reclaimed and improved one of
the excellent farms of Montgomery County, Iowa. This
sterling citizen showed his intrinsic loyalty and patriot-
ism through his valiant service as a soldier in the Mex-
ican war, and he went forth also as a soldier of the Union
in the Civil war, his widow now receiving a pension in
recognition of his services in the Mexican war. He
was a stanch supporter of .the cause of the democratic
party and many years ago both he and his wife became
zealous members of the Missionary Baptist Church, in

2126

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

which he served as a deacon for a very prolonged period
and virtually until the time of his death. Of the eight
children the subject of this sketch was the second in
order of birth, the eldest being William, who maintains
his home in the State of New Mexico; Alice is the wife
of Ves. S. Hibbins, of Lincoln, Illinois; Isaac is a resi-
dent of Prescott, Arizona; May is the wife of Prank
Meadows, of Pawnee County, Oklahoma ; Richard met
an accidental death, having been killed by a fall from
a bridge near the City of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Ke
having been a bridge-builder by occupation at the time;
Ida Belle is the widow of George Piske and resides at
Chandler, Oklahoma; and Artie is the wife of Edward A.
Bacon, of Centralia, Washington.

In his native county Joseph L. Rogers was reared to
the age of fourteen years and there he acquired his early
education in the district schools. At the age noted he
accompanied his parents on their removal to Cherokee
County, Kansas, where his father repeated, his experiences
as a pioneer farmer, the family home being there estab-
lished for many years. He continued to attend school
at such times as his services were not demanded in con-
nection with the work of the home farm, and when twenty
years of age he went to Chautauqua County, Kansas,
where he continued his identification with agricultural
pursuits until 1889, when he became one of the pioneers
in Oklahoma Territory, as previously stated. At
Chandler he engaged in the grocery and feed business,
and there he continued operations until the Cherokee
Strip was thrown open to settlement, in 1893, when he
made the run into this new country and filed claim
to his present homestead, which he has developed into
one of the excellent farms of Pawnee County, the rev-
enues from the same being materially augmented by the
leases which he had made in connection with the oil
development work in this section. There is one produc-
ing oil well on the farm at the present time, and in
addition to his general farm industry Mr. Rogers open
ates each season his two modern threshing outfits, with
which he covers a wide area of country and does a
profitable business. At Cleveland, Pawnee County, Mr.
Rogers operated a cotton gin and corn mill until the
line of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Pe Railroad
was extended through that place, when the railroad com-
pany condemned his property for its use and purchased
the same. Mr. Rogers has devoted one year to railroad
contract work since he established his residence on
his present homestead, which he now gives over largely
to the raising of excellent grades of live stock. He was
associated with the Canfield brothers in the organization
of the Jennings State Bank and was its first president.
This was the first bank in the village and he assisted
materially in its development and upbuilding, though he
has' since disposed of his interest in the same. Mr.
Rogers lias served in various township offices since he
established his residence in Pawnee County, and is one
of the influential representatives of the democratic party
in this county.

On the 25th of December, 1878, Mr. Rogers married
Miss Marian M. Rawlings, who was born in Jackson
County, Illinois, on the 4th of March, 1859, a daughter
of David and Sarah (Carr) Rawlings, both of whom
were born in the State of Tennessee, their marriage hav-
ing been solemnized in Illinois, and the closing period of
their lives having been passed in Ripley County, Mis-
souri. Mr. and Mrs. Rogers became the parents of four
children, of whom only the firstborn is living, William M.,
who resides upon and has practical charge of the home-
stead farm of his father. He wedded Miss Laura Will
and they have six children, Manila, Chelsea, Robert, Iris,
Laura May, and Leon. Bertha, the second child of

Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, died at the age of eighteen months; I
Pollie died at the age of four months ; and Callahan died }
at the age of four years.

W. B. Allen of Bartlesville has practiced law in
Washington bounty for the past fifteen years, though a

part of that time was spent in school work and he is
well known in Northern Oklahoma in educational circles
and still keeps an active interest in that department of
public affairs. His own education was secured only
through hard and constant labor and sacrifice, and it is
probable that his remembrance of his own early struggles
has been the cause of devoting himself so zealously to
higher standards of public school training. He is one
of the prominent and capable members of the Wash-
ington County bar and has handled a very high class
and important practice.

He was born in Pranklin County, Kansas, May 20,
1868, a son of William J. and Charlotte (Stith) Allen,
both of whom are natives of Tennessee, but were mar-
ried at Petersburg, Illinois. In 1862 William J. Allen
enlisted in the One Hundred and Fourteenth Regiment
of Illinois Infantry, took part in the Vicksburg cam-
paign, and in 1864 was in the expedition sent after
General Forrest. At Guntown, Mississippi, he was
wounded, his hip bone being broken, and falling into the.
hands of the enemy he was confined in Cahaba Prison!
until the close of the war, when he returned to Illinois.!
The next year he removed to Kansas, located on a farmi
in Franklin County, went from there in 1872 to Chau-i
tauqua County, and continued farming until his death
in 1895 at the age of sixty-one. His family- were whigs t
in early American polities, and he gave his constant and-
loyal support to the republican organization. His wife,
who was born in 1841, died at the age of fifty years.
Of their six sons and four daughters, three sons and
one daughter are now deceased, and W. B. Allen was
fourth in order of birth.

With an early training on the home farm and in the
district schools of Kansas W. B. Allen at the age of
twenty entered upon his career as teacher. Most of his

fertile

education in the meantime had come from study duringJ|j f,'t|

spare times between farm duties, and when he became
a teacher he entered upon his work with an enthusiasm
and understanding that brought a high appreciation to
his service. He taught for ten years in the country
schools, then for five years was a salesman for a whole-!
sale house on the road, and with the means he had thusi E H|
accumulated he took up the study of law at Fort Scott;®
Kansas, in the office of Judge J. D. Hill. Admitted tc
the bar in 1899, after two years of practice at Fort Scott
Mr. Allen located at Dewey, Oklahoma, in 1901. Dur-
ing 1901-02 he was superintendent of schools at Dewey:
and for the following year taught and served as super
intendent at Pryor. Then came two years in the Town
of Talala, but in 1905 he returned to Dewey
resumed practice. In 1914, in order the better tc
attend to his large clientage, Mr. Allen moved to Bartles
ville. He is a constant student, keeps fully abreast oi
the advancements made in his calling, and holds me
bership in the leading legal organizations.

Politically he was a republican until the campaign
of 1912, when he became a progressive. He is less
party man than a public spirited citizen working for t
best interests of his home county and state. While
Dewey he spent three years as a member of the school
board and was an influential factor in bringing abou:
the erection of a new high school building at a cost o
$40,-000, and when this was destroyed by fire anothe’
structure was erected costing $75,000. The movem
for a new courthouse in Washington County had twifK^

§®i; '

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2127

■ ' •;

s :

All;

suffered defeat when Mr. Allen was made chairman of
the committee. He brought the plan and proposition so
forcibly before the people that at the next election an
overwhelming majority was given for the new court-
house, fully 80 per cent of the votes being in favor
of the measure. As city attorney, an office he filled
several years, Mr. Allen was fought constantly by the
worst element, but stood unflinchingly for a strict
enforcement of the law. His own private life has been
exemplary. He has never touched liquor nor tobacco,
has never gambled, and since early manhood has applied
himself unceasingly to the service and duties which
have been his lot. He finds his greatest pleasure in his
home, and his leisure is usually spent there surrounded
by his books and papers. He is also a man of genial
fellowship, and is a member of the Masonic fraternity.

In 1897 Mr. Allen married Miss Susie Keefer, who
was born at Van Buren, Arkansas, in 1876. Her father,
Louis Keefer, now a resident of Bartlesville, was born
in Alsace, France, and during t'he American Civil war
served in the Third Wisconsin Cavalry. They are the
parents of two children : Ida Grace, born in 1902 ; and
Wendell B., born in 1904.

Stringer W. Fenton. A small, quiet, unassuming
man, with a keen eye, a quick wit, an alert body, muscles
at a glance, is the

of steel and a nerve of iron, such, 0 , „

™°‘ chief of police of Cleveland, Oklahoma, the hero of a
l iam hundred battles with desperate outlaws, the man whom
1 “ his friends claim to be the best detective in the United
■ ™ States, Stringer W. Fenton. The criminal history of
‘ “I Oklahoma is one which is crowded with the deeds and
llt 31 achievements of men of courage and daring, officers of
^ ;he law who have repeatedly taken their lives in their
Jeai lands in their endeavors to rid one of the country’s most
'li JE Fertile, wealthy and beautiful states of its criminal ele-
■d wl nent ; but in the entire record there is found no one
nan whose achievements have overshadowed those of
•“'llhief Fenton.

Born June 15, 1865, near Lexington, Rockbridge
ounty, Virginia, Chief Fenton comes of fighting stock,
lis father, Stephen J. Fenton, having been a lieutenant
":r n the famous “Stonewall Brigade,” under that intrepid
liijiaa louthern leader, Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, during the
atwat war. Lieutenant Fenton was born at Baltimore,

(ounii Maryland, and early in life engaged in contracting and
(uilding, his work taking him to Virginia, where he
vas ma ried to Mary E. Enroe, a native of Rockbridge
bounty. In the early ’70s he took his family to Colum-
da, Boone County, Missouri, where his death occurred
-ft bout 1875, when he was sixty years of age. The mother
urvived until August, 1899, and died at Slater, Saline
D® Jounty, Missouri, aged seventy years. In the family
is snpi here were seven sons and four daughters, as follows :
r T||! ohn, who enlisted with his father in a Virginia regi-
lent and fought in General Jackson’s division, now a
ssident of Howard County, Missouri ; G. S., who served
iree years during the Civil war under General Gordon,
ibsequently became a pioneer farmer of Oklahoma, was
ppointed the first sheriff of Kay County by Governor
enfro, and died at Newkirk, Oklahoma; J. H., holding
n official position at Pawhuska, farmed in Missouri
ntil 1900, when he became a pioneer agriculturist of
klahoma; Mary, who died as the wife of the late Jacob
romwell, of Saline County, Missouri ; Mattie, who is
le wife of D. P. Meng, of Marshall, Saline County,
issouri; William, a resident of Elk, New Mexico, where
3 was a pioneer ; Jennie, who is the wife of William
obson, of Kingman, Kansas; R. T. who for the past
b|II‘ ourteen years has been connected with the United
ell ;"r: tates Enforcement Department of Indian Service ;

) cost

Stringer W., of this notice; S. P., who is engaged in
merchandising at Pawhuska; and Sallie, deceased, who
was the wife of J. H. Jones.

Stringer W. Fenton was a child when taken to Missouri,
and there he grew to young manhood, attending the
district schools and working in a store at Slater during
the winter months and spending his summers in working
on the farm. When eighteen years of age he went to
Kingman, Kansas, where he was subsequently employed
by C. D. Hutchings, George F. Berry & Company and
Gillette & Company. At the age of twenty-one years
he returned to Missouri for a short time, but returned
to Kingman, and remained there, employed as stated,
until thq opening of the Oklahoma country in 1893, when
he decided to try his fortunes in the new commonwealth.
First locating at Newkirk, he subsequently went to
Pawhuska, and after eight years came to Cleveland,
in 1903, this city since having been his home.

On his arrival in Oklahoma Mr. Fenton gave his
attention to farming pursuits, but it was not long before
his courage, strength and alertness attracted attention
and he was drawn into police work. He became a gov-
ernment official in Osage County (then Osage Reserva-
tion) and continued as a deputy United States marshal
until the close of Abernathy’s administration. At the
time of the attainment of statehood, he was appointed
by .Governor Haskell a member of the body of men form-
ing the State Enforcement Officers, and continued to
hold that position for four years, when he became spe-
cial agent for the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad.
He resigned in December, 1912, to go to Mexico, where
he passed the winter in viewing the insurrection, and on
his return to Cleveland was elected chief of police, an
office to which he was reelected in 1915.

During his long and exciting career, Chief Fenton has
passed through many interesting and dangerous ex-
periences, of which but a few can be mentioned in this
article. The Martins and Simons, notorious bank and
train robbers, had his skill and courage to thank for
their capture. One of his notable achievements was the
capture of Henry Starr, the bank robber, a feat which
illustrates the swiftness with which Chief Fenton works,
in that, leaving Bartlesville May 5, 1910, he caught
his man at Bouse, Arizona, took him back to Phoenix,
in the same state, then to Lamar, Colorado, and arrived
in Oklahoma again on the 25th. Another noted capture
was that of C. Henry, wanted for the murder of two
men, who it was said had five murders behind him, and
who, until Chief Fenton got on his trail, had eluded the
officers of the law for two years. He has been par-
ticularly active and successful in running down boot-
leggers and confiscating many carloads of whiskey, an
extremely dangerous and difficult work, entailing de-
tective ability of no small order and clear headed cour-
age to offset the criminal desperation of bad men made
doubly bad by the alcohol which they have freely sampled
while bringing their illegal cargo into the state. It was
this indefatigable western Vidocq who rounded up the
train robbers at South Coffeyville, and who killed the
notorious Elmer MeUrday, who held up the Missouri,
Kansas & Texas train and robbed it at Okesa, Oklahoma.

In the line of his duty, Chief Fenton has been com-
pelled to shoot a number of men, but only in self
defense, for it has always been his aim to capture his
man alive. On three occasions he has been shot from
ambush by criminals who have feared and hated him,
but his worst wound was received while in a battle
with a desperado whom he was compelled to kill. On
December 26, 1914, A1 Crain, criminal and bad man,
was holding up twenty-five men in a pool room and
relieving them of their money and valuables. Word

2128

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

was taken to Chief Fenton, who decided to try to take
him without killing him, but Crain grazed him with three
shots and then sent a bullet through his leg. The chief’s
shot went true, as his shots have a habit of doing, and
Oklahoma was rid of another criminal.

While Chief Fenton is best known for his work as
a police and government official, he has also engaged at
various times in business ventures, having been the
founder of the Cleveland Leader, a weekly newspaper,
his interest in which, however, he has since sold. He
also had holdings in farm land and is engaged in agri-
cultural ventures, but it may be said that his official
work has his sympathy and affection. A democrat in
politics, he was a delegate to the El Eeno convention,
in 1900, from the Osage Reservation, his associates being
William Murdoch, John Palmer and Sylvester Saldina.
He has been a Woodman at Pawhuska for fifteen years,
and is prominent in Masonry, belonging to the Blue
Lodge and Chapter at Cleveland, the Consistory at
Guthrie and the Commandery at Pawnee.

On February 1, 1905, Chief Fenton was married to
Miss Nellie Rice, a native of Missouri, and daughter of
Q. A. Rice. They have an adopted daughter: Edith.

Morris L. Wardell, now principal of the Guymon
High School, has lived in Oklahoma fifteen years, com-
pleted his education in the state schools, and is one of
the young and enthusiastic men who carry into their
work in the schoolroom a wide range of practical knowl-
edge and a capable experience in the agricultural indus-
try which is at the basis of permanent prosperity in
his section of the state.

Mr. Wardell was born on a farm in Lawrence County,
Illinois, June 19, 1889, a son of William and Melissa
(Shinn) Wardell. His father was born in the same
county and state December 12, 1849, a son of Anthony
and Susan (Pinkstaff) Wardell, who were of Scotch
parentage. William Wardell has spent his active career
as a farmer and in 1903 sold out his holdings in Illinois,
and moving to Oklahoma bought land ten miles east of
Alva in what was then Woods County but is now Alfalfa
County. In that locality he has lived for the past
thirteen years and has gone in for the raising of alfalfa
and blooded horses on a large scale. When he was about
forty years of age he became a member of the United
Brethren Church, and has since been very active in its
cause. On September 7, 1871, William Wardell married
Miss Melissa Shinn, who was born in Ohio, November
23, 1851, a daughter of Aaron and Emily (Hughes)
Shinn, the father a native of Virginia and the mother
of Ohio. William Wardell and wife had eight children:
Charles, born August 9, 1874, is now administer of the
United Brethren Church. In 1903 he married Eva Cun-
ningham, and their one child, Gertrude, was born Sep-
tember 22, 1905. Elmer, the second child, born January
20, 1876, died September 15, 1876. An infant girl, born
June 5, 1877, -died the same day. Mary, a twin sister of
Mattie, born August 17, 1878, died March 1, 1879.
Mattie, born August 17, 1878, is unmarried and living
with her parents. Jessie, born February 2, 1881, died
February 8, 1881. Chester, born May 23, 1882, was
married in 1904 to Myrtle Mills, and they live in Colo-
rado Springs, Colorado.

The eighth and youngest of the family, Morris L.
Wardell, spent the first fourteen years of his life on
his father’s farm in Lawrence County, Illinois. While
there he attended the public schools. Coming with the
family to Oklahoma, he continued his education during
1905-06 in the Stella Friends Academy at Ingersoll. In
1906 he entered the Oklahoma Northwestern State Nor-
mal at Alva, where he was graduated with the class of

1912. In the meantime he had taught several tennsill
of school, actually paying a large part of his expenses ID ,
in college. Mr. Wardell gained a reputation in several II '!'
diverse lines of college activities. For two years he was H 1
a member of the state debating team. He was also for jj #t
two years associate and editor of the college paper,!]# ®
The Northwestern. He did much in the Students’ League ID I1'
work and was also one of the athletes of the college. 5ji *“
During 1912-13 Mr. Wardell was principal of the high |
school at Geary, Oklahoma. In 1914-15 he was a teacher 1 *
in the Panhandle Agricultural Institute at Goodwell, I .
Oklahoma. In the meantime he had filed on Government D IB.
land in Texas County, and still owns 480 acres which 1 (!
he is rapidly developing as a farm and ranch. In 1914 II Pj°
he was republican nominee for county superintendent of | ?'r'
public instruction of Texas County, and lost the election II 's
by only thirty-eight votes. Since September 1, 1915, | m
he has been principal of the Guymon High School. Mr. ||
Wardell is a member of the United Brethren Church.

Willtam Lewis • Detwiler is a veteran westerner,
having lived in several of the states beyond the Missis-
sippi for forty years. His early career was that of a
railroad man, and he was in the rairoad service during
the Civil war. He was one of the early settlers and
homesteaders in the Oklahoma Panhandle country and is
now engaged in the real estate and loan business at
Knowles in Beaver County.

His h’rth occurred at Pottstown, Pennsylvania, Octo-
ber 1, 1844. His parents, William H. and Mary (Longa-
baugh) Detwiler, were born in Pennsylvania of German
stock. William L. was the first of their five children.
John Barton is now deceased; Mary Jane is the wife
of Joseph Perkins; Laura is the wife of Rev. John
Gallagher; Josephine is the wife of Fred Clinton.

The early life of W. L. Detwiler was spent in
Wheeling, West Virginia, where he attended the local
schools. That was before West Virginia was a state.*

At the age of seventeen he took up railroading, entering! is to
the service of that pioneer railroad, the Baltimore &j| »' ■
Ohio, and during the Civil war was advanced to the jl »i si
position of a conductor. He followed railroading actively
both in the East and West for twenty years. His homei
has been in the West since 1876, and in that year he>
conducted the first passenger train running west of
Lincoln, Nebraska, over the Burlington Railroad. For
a number of years he also followed prospecting for gold
in the Rocky Mountains.

Mr. Detwiler came to Oklahoma in 1900, locating on
a tract of Government land in Beaver County. That land
is still in his possession and has been greatly improved
from the condition in which he first found it. He has
employed his energies and capital in cattle raising, farm-
ing and also in selling real estate, and his operations at]
a real estate man included participation in the founding
of the Town of Knowles, where he now has his office|

A democrat in polities, he has never been a candidate
for office, though he has done much in the way of loea;
betterment in his home town. Mr. Detwiler is a thirty
second degree Scottish Rite Mason and a Mystic Shriner
and also belongs to the Knights of Pythias.

In 1886, at Linneus, Missouri, he married Miss Martii
A. Dail, a native of Linn County, Missouri. Mr
Mrs. Detwiler have no children of their own, bi
adopted a son, Chester, who was born in 1898.

lefoi

Charles F. Taliaferro, M. D. In states older thai
Oklahoma it has been many years since men travel®
toward a destination in a bee-line direction withoU
having to turn right-angled corners caused by seetion-lin
roads. It has been but ten years in that section

tali to
farj
ns slaii
Its sinci
Ditto
fc pnbl
Wait

It ns a
lit tife,
ttstelli
iea
tlilf SBt

If Talk

itl

Wtation

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2129

Oklahoma that formerly was Indian Territory since an
individual might travel indefinitely in any diagonal
direction with hindrances only of rough banked streams
or wire pasture fences. That he might drive ten miles
northwest without square turns and mile-long stretches
was an interesting thought to a doctor on a dark night
in winter. It was not always interesting, however, to
contemplate swollen streams or dangerous gullies on an
unsurveyed road made public only by common usage.

These general statements give an idea of conditions
in the vicinity of Bennington ten years ago, as well as
of the experiences of Dr. Charles F. Taliaferro as a
pioneer physician of that section. The “northwest”
direction mentioned illustratively is significant, for it
is in that direction that the doctor has traveled for
several years to reach the ranch of John Kirk and the
kennels of the doctor’s blooded hounds kept there by
Mr. Kirk for fox and wolf hunting purposes. The
sporting blood of more than one generation is in Doctor
Taliaferro ’s veins, and it calls him out into the forests
and mountains every fall and winter. The hounds are
of as good blood as Tennessee produces, and he imported
them here for the revival of a sport tAat nearly became
extinct with the passing of the big Indian reservations.
Doctor Taliaferro is a broad and liberal minded man,
enthusiastic for his community’s uplift and progress;
but he has taken a position in the ranks of the social
lit | and municipal activities in order that he may remain
a general in the woods.

There is no name more familiar to the various genera-
tions of national and particularly Southern history than
that of Taliaferro, which has produced soldiers, states-
men, and people famous in all the professions and voca-
tions. Charles F. Taliaferro was born in 1870 in Ten-
nessee, a son of William H. and Martha (Franklin)
Taliaferro. His father, a native of Tennessee, fought
as a member of Company B, First Tennessee Cavalry,
in the Confederate army during the war between the
states. The grandfather also fought for the 'Confederacy,
and after the war declined to vote because of the enfran-
chisement of the negro. Doctor Taliaferro ’s grand-
uncle, Harden Taliaferro, a native of Virginia, became
the founder of the famous female institute at Muskogee,
Alabama, and as a minister of the Baptist faith edited
for several years one of the leading religious papers of
the South, known as the Southwestern Baptist. Doctor
Taliaferro’s mother was descended from a prominent
family of North Carolina which produced Colonel Frank-
lin, a hero of the American Revolution, and Governor
Jesse Franklin of North Carolina. Both Colonel Frank-
lin and Col. Richard Taliaferro, the latter a prominent
. . .fimember in the early generations of the Taliaferros,
aj;0js fought with those gallant North Carolina troops and
jomfl rangers in the war of the revolution. In the bloody
0fi hand to hand fight with the British of Tarleton’s
Cavalry at Guilford Court House, Col. Richard Taliaferro
: 0[ in was slain, was buried at the battlefield, and a monument
las since been erected to his memory.

Doctor Taliaferro ’s early education was acquired in
;he public schools of .Tennessee, and later he took an
icademic course at Mount Airy, North Carolina, where
le was a schoolmate of the girl who subsequently became
ids wife. He was graduated in medicine from the Ten-
nessee Medical College at Knoxville in 1895, and in that
same year became associated with Dr. C. M. Drake,
ihief surgeon for the East Tennessee, Virginia and
jjaTf Georgia Railway Company. Later for twelve years Doc-
^ ;or Taliaferro practiced in James County, Tennessee,
i luring which time he supplemented his early medical
"ducation with post-graduate courses.

On January 3, 1907, he located at Bennington, Okla-

for «i

homa, a town which was a typical non-progressive village
of the Indian country, but destined to grow to a popula-
tion of 1,500 in less than ten years. There were but two
miles of improved highway in the community, and the
country was largely of virgin soil and almost totally
unsettled. The doctor’s practice for a few years was
scattered over a wide area, and he traveled both in a
buggy and on horseback as the occasion demanded.

In January, 1896, Doctor Taliaferro married Miss Ida
Virginia Boleyjack, a daughter of Nat and Victoria
(Bunker) Boleyjack. Her maternal grandfather was
Chang Bunker, who was one of the noted “Siamese
Twins” of Mount Airy, North Carolina. Doctor Talia-
ferro is a member of the Odd Fellows and Masonic
lodges and of the Bryan County Medical Society, the
Oklahoma State Medical Society and the American Medi-
cal Association. He has acquired some of the best farm-
ing lands of that notably fertile region of the east side
of Bryan County and is developing it along modern
lines. Excursions to his farm are nearly always likely
to lead him on to the haunts of the red fox hounds, which,
reminding him of the fox hunting days of his earlier
years in Tennessee, make him one of the stanchest advo-
cates in Oklahoma of the segregation of forest and
mountain regions and the propagation and protection of
wild life.

Marcus L. Lockwood, who for a number of years had
lived at Tulsa, was a conspicuous figure not alone in
Oklahoma but all over the nation as a pioneer oil
operator and for many years as president and one of
the most vigorous fighters in the American Anti-Trust
League. In Oklahoma Mr. Lockwood was perhaps best
known as president of the Sabine Oil and Marketing
Company of Oklahoma, the headquarters of which organi-
zation were in Tulsa.

In every way he proved himself one of the world ’s pro-
ductive workers, and though at the time of his death, he
had passed the psalmist’s span of three sdore and ten, he
had not abated his vital interest in and association with
practical affairs of life. If his biography were written
in complete detail it would present almost a history of the
great American petroleum industry from its pioneer be-
ginnings in Western Pennsylvania until the second decade
of the twentieth century. He began operations in the oil
fields of Pennsylvania and then extended them into many
other states, and was especially concerned in development
work. He was long recognized as an authority on sub-
jects of petroleum production, but he perhaps received
his widest reputation as president of the American Anti-
Trust League, of which he was one of the organizers.
From first to last he was implacable in his opposition to
monopolistic and predatory trust organizations.

A year or so before his death Mr. Lockwood addressed
an appeal to President Woodrow Wilson for a Govern-
ment owned and operated pipe line from the mid-con-
tinent oil fields to the Gulf of Mexico. This letter was
widely published and circulated in countless form, and
one of the newspapers that published it serially said
of the writer: “There lives in Tulsa a man known to

as many of the men prominent in the management of
the affairs of this government as anyone in Oklahoma;
a man who has done as much as almost any man in the
United States to bring about the great reform now
being accomplished at Washington. That man is M. L.
Lockwood, who for many years was president of the
American Anti-Trust League — a man who has made and
spent more than one fortune, and much of this having
been expended in this fight for better government for
the people. ’ ’

2130

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

For many years before his death Mr. Lockwood’s
name was familiarly mentioned in the American press
in connection with his efforts to regulate and curb the
trusts, and naturally enough Oklahoma was proud to
claim him as a citizen.

Marcus L. Lockwood was born in East Hamburg,
Erie County, New York, December 5, 1844, a son of
Philo B. and Polly (Utley) Lockwood, the former a
native of Dutchess County, New York, and the latter
of Vermont. Philo B. Lockwood died at the age of
sixty-two and his widow survived a number of years,
passing away at the age of sixty-three. Of their eight
children the only one now living is George Lockwood
of Buffalo, New York. Philo B. Lockwood was a suc-
cessful farmer in New York, and both he and his wife
were birthright members of the Society of Friends, in
which organization he served as a preacher. The lineage
of the Lockwood family in America goes back to Robert
Lockwood, who came from England in 1630 and settled
at Winthrop, Massachusetts. The paternal grandfather
of Marcus L. Lockwood was a patriot soldier in the
War of the Revolution, and subsequently became a pioneer
in Western New York State.

It was with a common school education that Marcus
L. Lockwood began his early career. He was fourteen
when his father died and that necessarily threw upon
his young shoulders responsibilities beyond his age. He
helped manfully in the cultivation and operation of the
old homestead farm in Erie County, New York, until
1865. At the age of twenty, having gained the consent
of his devoted mother, he went into the oil fields of
Pennsylvania. The petroleum industry was then in its
infancy. His first experience was in dressing the tools
used in the operation of the oil wells in the Cherry
Creek district and near the old Humboldt Oil Refinery.
Later he started out as an independent oil producer,
a member of the firm of Patterson & Lockwood. In 1888
Mr. Lockwood was one of the organizers of the Pure Oil
Company, a Pennsylvania corporation of which he later
became a trustee. He was also one of the organizers of
the Sabine Oil and Marketing Company of Pennsylvania,
and subsequently of the Sabine Oil and Marketing Com-
pany of Oklahoma in 1891. The date of the organization
of the latter company in Oklahoma shows that it was
one of the pioneer concerns for the development of the
oil fields of Oklahoma. In fact, during the next decade
very little oil was produced in the Oklahoma fields.

However, though some of his early ventures were
failures, Mr. Lockwood truly led the way in the develop-
ment of the petroleum interests of the Middle West and
Southwest. In 1887 he put down a well near Ottumwa in
Wapello County, Iowa, and in the following year drove
another well at Ackley, in Hardin County of the same
state. He first came into Indian Territory in 1888, and
' on the opening of Oklahoma to settlement in the following
year he took a claim to the northwest quarter of the
section of land on which Oklahoma City now stands.

He was naturally attracted to Beaumont, Texas, when
the Spindletop gusher brought fame to that hitherto
obscure city. He obtained oil and gas leases on 2,800
acres of land, though development results proved unsatis-
factory. He next bought a producing well in the Spindle-
top field, and provided tanking facilities for the accom-
modation of 750,000 barrels. To fill these tanks required

253.000 feet of lumber. Mr. Lockwood then purchased
forty acres of land six miles distant from Spindletop,
paying $100 an acre. A pipe line was constructed from
his well to the storage tank, and as a contract operator
he arranged for the taking over of 11,700,000 barrels of
crude oil, though his actual receipts did not exceed

400.000 barrels. He contracted for the product at the

rate of 30 cents a barrel, and sold the oil to the Standard
Oil and independent companies for from 50 to 82 cents
a barrel.

After leaving Texas Mr. Lockwood was identified with
development operations and oil production at Independ-
ence and other points in the State of Kansas. In 1905
he established his home at Tulsa, Oklahoma, and was a
resident of that great oil center until his death. He
acquired the ownership of 20,000 acres of land in South-
eastern Oklahoma and was one of the most important
factors in the independent oil production of the state.

In 1897 the late Mr. Lockwood was one of the organ-
izers of the American Anti- Trust League, and later was
elected its president. Thenceforward for fifteen years
or more he labored in season and out for bringing about
the substantial reforms and the ideals which were funda-
mentally proclaimed by this league. The league has
had its headquarters in Washington, and some idea of its
purposes and results might be obtained from the follow-
ing quotation which is found in an address issued by
the executive committee of the league signed by Mr.
Lockwood as president and others: “By virtue of the

action of the Anti-Trust League there assembled in the
city of Chicago, February 12, 1900, a national anti-trust
conference, composed of many hundreds of representative
citizens, from thirty-one states of the Union, one territory
and the District of Columbia. This conference was non-
partisan and was participated in by earnest men and
women affiliated with the different political parties and
by independent citizens who saw the danger to the people
living and those yet to be born, in those rising industrial
combinations commonly known as trusts. It lasted three
days, and after full discussion and deliberation it adopted
a platform and issued an address to the people, and
instituted a systematic and organized warfare upon the
criminal trusts. This warfare has been continuous, wide-
spread and persistent ever since. The people became
aroused, and as they learned more and more of the
criminal character of these combinations and the out-
rageous wrongs inflicted, their indignation was such that
the political parties were compelled to take up the
question, declare their hostility to the trusts and promise
their destruction. ’ ’ Every well informed person knows
what a vastly different attitude is now maintained toward
criminal trust organizations by not only the Government
but by the general public, and in giving credit for this
remarkable change which has occurred in the past fifteen
years mention should be made at the very first of the
Anti-Trust League, of which Mr. Lockwood was president.

Politically Mr. Lockwood was always a true democrat.
From 1876 to 1880 he served as a member of the State
Senate of Pennsylvania. In 1900 he was a democratic
candidate for representative in Congress from one of
the strong republican districts in that state, and by his
strong hold upon the confidence and esteem of the
people he reduced the normal republican majority by
fully 2,000 votes, so that the campaign was a gratifying
tribute to the man and his work for the people. Both
he and his wife were active members of the Presbyterian
Church.

On October 11, 1871, Mr. Lockwood married Miss
Lydia H. Tompkins, only daughter of Robert Tompkins
of East Hamburg, Erie County, New York. After a I
happy companionship of more than forty years Mrs. I
Lockwood passed away February 1, 1914. She and her I
husband were schoolmates as children, and their married I
life was ideal. Of their ten children, three died in I
infancy. The daughter, Clara, is the wife of Howard I
W. Ailing of Jamestown, New York, and they have threel
children; Jennie T. is the wife of Harold Helm, alsol
residents of New York State; Mabel is the wife of Roy ■

l enrol

Ins I
lis r
Me
His 1
1 fell!

I fen,
lbs a
I bllill:
£ bus.'!
I CP of

I *f %

I Oaklnn

I Mtlua

■Since t

HISTORY OP OKLAHOMA

2131

Porter of Guthrie, Oklahoma, and they have one child;
Martha is the wife of Schuyler S. French of Tulsa, and
they have one child; Robert Ralph, who graduated from
Yale University and from the law department of Harvard
University, is now practicing law at Tulsa; Kate is the
wife of Elton Everett of Ottawa, Kansas, and they have
two children; Philo D., who was associated with his
father in business until his tragic death in an auto-
mobile accident in October, 1914, is survived by his widow,
Mrs. Delia (Tyner) Lockwood, and their only daughter.

Andrew J. Lovett. By the high standard of its
equipment and the efficiency of its school work the
public school system of Blackwell can be compared on
terms of favorable equality with any in the State of
Oklahoma. The citizens of Blackwell are not loath to
give credit for this achievement to Prof. Andrew J.
Lovett, who has been superintendent of the public schools
in that city for the past nine years, and has worked
indefatigably as an organizer, director and teacher. He
brought to his position a long and thorough experience
in the schoolroom both as an instructor and as a super-
intendent, and the results obtained by him at Blackwell
are most creditable.

The main feature of the Blackwell school system is
the high school which was constructed in 1910-11 at a
cost of $75,000. It is one of the very modern school
buildings in Oklahoma. It contains twenty-one rooms,
and there are twenty teachers in the building. The prin-
cipal of the high school is Harry Huston. Four of the
teachers are men. The rooms are all well arranged,
equipped with modern, furniture. There is a gymnasium,
a fine laboratory for scientific work, one of the best
libraries in the state and in many ways the school has
became a central feature in the life of Blackwell. The
high school building stands on grounds comprising an
entire block. The high school contains 266 pupils. The
total number in the building is 600. There were forty-
four graduates from the high school in the class of 1916.
In another part of the city is a ward school, containing
eight rooms and a third building of four rooms, besides
these buildings, it has been necessary to construct several
single room buildings in order to take care of the large
number of pupils. The total enrollment of the school at
Blackwell numbers more than 1,200. The schools are
kept up for nine months in the year, and one fact that
indicates the interest in education in the city is that the
enrollment is more than 100 per cent of the school
enumeration.

Mr. Lovett during his nine years as superintendent
has brought these schools up to modern standards, and
his reputation as a school man and organizer has ex-
tended over the entire state. He was born in Kentucky.
His father, Rev. Martin V. Lovett, was a well known
Methodist minister. His mother, Rosanah Vaught, was
of Scotch ancestry. They were the parents of five chil-
dren, two sons and three daughters. Professor Lovett
hgs a brother, William G., who has been one of the
leading members of the Board of Education of Neodesha,
Kansas, for several years. The mother died at the
age of forty-one, but the father is still living at the age
of eighty-one. From Kentucky the family removed to
Oakland City, Indiana, where Professor Lovett received
his common school and high school education. After
graduating from college he came to Kansas in 1884.
Since then he has been identified with the teaching pro-
fession continuously. He spent fourteen years as super-
intendent of schools in Kansas and in 1908 accepted the
superintendency of the schools at Blackwell. Mr. Lovett
has been a member of the National Education Associa-

tion for many years, and attends the annual meetings
of the Department of Superintendence.

On December 26, 1886, he was married to Miss Estella
Brundidge, of Fredonia, Kansas. Mr. and Mrs. Lovett
are the parents of four children, three of whom are
still at home. In politics, Mr. Lovett has always been
a republican, and he and his wife are members of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, and he has been teacher of
the men’s Bible class in that church for several years.
Fraternally his connections are with the Masonic Order
in the Blue Lodge, Chapter and Commandery and with
India Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Oklahoma City.
He is also a member of the Knights of Pythias and the
Modern Woodmen of America.

James J. Quarles. Cashier of the Osage Bank at
Fairfax, James J. Quarles has been identified with that
community since its founding, having moved to the town
with L. A. Wismeyer, who is honored with the distinction
of being the father of Fairfax. Mr. Quarles is a Mis-
sissippi man, gained his- early experience as a merchant
and farmer in his native state, but has been identified
with the Osage’ country of Indian Territory and Okla-
homa for more than twenty years. Outside of his con-
nection with business affairs he is also well known over
the state through his efforts and influence in a public
capacity, and was a member of the Oklahoma Constitu-
tional Convention and has served on several of the im-
portant commissions in the state.

Born in Lafayette County, Mississippi, May 5, 1862,
he is a son of James J. and Sarah E. (Buford) Quarles.
The first American settler of this name was Francis
Quarles, who came from England, and it is claimed that
the Quarles ancestry can be traced back as far in Eng-
lish history as that of any other family. On the
maternal side the Bufords were also English people,
and the name was originally spelled Beaufort. One of
the family in England was Margaret Beaufort, who was
a granddaughter of King Edward III. The members
of the family that came to America subsequently changed
their name to the spelling Buford. Mr. Quarles’ father
was born in South Carolina in 1828, and in early youth
moved to Lafayette County, Mississippi. The seat of
the State University of Mississippi is located at Oxford
in Lafayette County, and the elder James J. Quarles
was one of the honored graduates in the first class in
that institution in 1849. He was married in 1850 to
Miss Buford, who was born in Tennessee in 1833, and
had been brought as a child to Lafayette County. James
J. Quarles, Sr., was a school teacher for a number of
years, and also owned a plantation in Lafayette County.
Early in the war he enlisted in' the Confederate army,
and died in a Confederate Hospital at Atlanta in 1863.
He was survived many "years by his widow, who died
at Oxford, Mississippi, in 1911. There were five chil-
dren: Robert W., who is a dentist at Van Buren, Arkan-
sas; Lillie, widow of Mr. Hurt, living in Lafayette
County; Olivia, who died in infancy; Francis, who died
at the age of twenty-eight; and James J. Jr., who was
only about a year old when his father died. His home
was in Mississippi until 1892, and while there he received
the advantages of the common schools, and grew up
and was trained to farming. He also had several years
of merchandising experience, and since moving to the
Osage Nation in 1892 has been principally identified
with merchandising and banking. Since 1905, two years
after the founding of Fairfax, he has been cashier of
the Osage Bank. The other officers of this bank are
W. T. Carroll, president ; and E. B. Glover, vice president.
Mr. Quarles also has farming and live stock interests in
Osage County, and also founded the Quarles Hardware

2132

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Company, the management of which is now entrusted to
his sons who are partners in the company.

As a Mississippian and a son of a Confederate veteran
Mr. Quarles has naturally been identified with the
democratic party all his active career. He and T. J.
Leahy were the only two delegates from the Fifty-sixth
District in the Constitutional Convention of Oklahoma.
Since statehood he has been quite active in Oklahoma
affairs. During 1910 he was a member of the State
Board of Public Affairs, and was president of the Board
of Regents of the University Preparatory School dur-
ing 1908-09. He was also a member of the commission
for the advancement of the constitutional amendment
for election of United States senators by direct vote of
the people. These various commission offices were all
received under appointment from Governor Haskell.
While a member of these bodies he came into close
relations with a number of the prominent men of the
state, and in addition to the opportunity these places
gave him for rendering public spirited service he naturally
prizes the association by which he was brought into
close touch with the state government and with men
prominent in Oklahoma affairs. He has been a member
of the school board in Osage County a number of
years, and was identified with the management of the
schools before statehood, when all the white schools
were supported by subscription, there being no free
public schools. He is active in the prohibition movement
and in the equal suffrage cause, and is a member of the
Presbyterian Church and the Knights of Pythias Order.

In 1884 Mr. Quarles married Miss Jimmie Orr. She
was born in his native state, and died in 1902. The
four children born to their marriage are: Frank O.
and James J., Jr., both now associated with their father
in the hardware business; Laura Gray, who died at the
age of four years; and Mary Alleen. The son Frank
married Anna Chapman. In 1905 Mr. Quarles married
Ella Todd Gravett, who was born in Iowa. By her
former marriage she has two daughters, Gertrude and
Jean.

J. A. Lopeman. A business institution of Enid which
is notable both for its importance in the material devel-
opment of that part of Oklahoma, and for the personal
and business character of the man behind it is the Enid
Nursery, which is probably the highest grade establish-
ment of its kind in the entire state. This business repre-
sents years of practical experience, the overcoming of
difficulties, and the persistent testing and working out
of plans which would adapt fruit bearing trees to soil,
climate and other local conditions.

J. A. Lopeman was born in Crawford County near
Oil City, Pennsylvania, about sixty years ago. The
farm which his father owned there was sold when Mr.
Lopeman was five years of age, and later oil was dis-
covered upon it which made its subsequent owners mil-
lionaires. From Pennsylvania the family moved to the
vicinity of. Bradford, Iowa, and in 1859, to Pleasant Hill
in Cass County, Missouri. The father of Mr. Lopeman
was a pronounced Union man, and soon found the climate
too warm in Missouri during early war times, and accord-
ingly removed to Kansas. Mr. Lopeman arrived at man-
hood at Leavenworth in that state. His father enlisted
in the Union army from Kansas, and a year later died
while still a soldier.

Such education as Mr. Lopeman had from schools
was acquired while assisting in the support of his mother
and family. He qualified as a teacher, and for six years
was engaged in that work. For four years he had
experience in a store at Milo, Iowa, and in 1884 found
the field for which his talents were best adapted. At

that time he became a grower of nursery stock at Red
Cloud, Nebraska, and his experience in that line has
thus been continuous for thirty-one years.

At the opening of the Cherokee Strip on September
16, 1893, Mr. Lopeman was one of the liomeseekers, and
secured a claim of 160 acres six miles north of Enid.
That land he still owns, and it is famous over that part
of the country for its splendid orchard of forty acres.
This has been profitable, particularly that portion devoted
to the growing of berries and cherries. His cherry
orchard of 2,000 trees has yielded handsome returns.
Mr. Lopeman came to Oklahoma with the idea that a
business might be developed for the supplying of new
settlers with young trees. He knew that every Amer-
ican settler would as soon as possible set out a
variety of fruit, shade and ornamental trees around
his home, and therefore in the spring of 1894 he leased
three or four acres at the north edge of Enid, and
started what promised to be a lucrative business.
Enemies, of which his experience at Fillmore, Nebraska,
had given him no intimation, came and he found it an
uphill, slow and hazardous enterprise. The new country
abounded with rabbits, which were probably the most
serious plague he had to contend with. These pests were
accustomed' to the bark of the tenacious native plum,
hackberry, elm and boisd ’are, and consequently the
tender rind of the young fruit trees offered an especially
attractive morsel for these animals. Several times his
stock was almost annihilated. He fought with this and
other obstacles for eight years, and then secured a tract
of land in South Enid, where his present residence, office
and packing house are located.

There he took a fresh hold. Studying the needs in
Oklahoma, considering climate, moisture, winds and live
pests, he studied to supply what would prove profitable.
Many promising varieties of fruits after a test covering
a few years would be abandoned, but he continued his
trials and experiments and succeeded in the end in
selecting and acclimating the stock most suitable to soil
and climate. Since then his business has had a con-
tinued and constant expansion.

Mr. Lopeman soon bought 160 acres at a mile and
a half distant, of which 140 acres are now devoted to
the growing of fruit and shade trees, also shrubs, roses
and other miscellaneous plants. He sells both wholesale
and retail, and the latter feature is handled by about
fifty salesmen. Orchards from the Lopeman nursery are
now found in every section of Oklahoma, also in the
Panhandle and other parts of Texas, in Southern Kansas,
and New Mexico. From ten to forty men are kept em-
ployed under the immediate supervision of Mr. Lope-
man ’s son, J. A., Jr., and about $6,000 are paid out
annually for the matter of labor alone. Annual sales
of his nursery stock approximate $75,000. This business
gives its proprietor a solid satisfaction since it is the
proof of his patient and indefatigable working out of
fundamental plans. His thorough knowledge comes
from actual experience, failure as well as success, and
the fruits of his work have extended to practically every
fruit bearing district in the Southwest. He is prom-
inent and well known in all nurserymen’s associations,
both district and national, and his success is to be meas-
ured not only by its material profits but also by the
splendid principles which he has kept fundamental from
the beginning to the end. It has been his desire and
determination to deal squarely with every customei.
Knowing the hazards of producing a good orchard when
climatic conditions are so strenuous, he has made spe-
cially liberal terms to replace stock that does not attain
fruit bearing age, no matter what the cause of loss
may be. He has of course suffered bitter experience as

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2133

a result of malicious misrepresentation or failure on
the part of someone to act in accord with instructions,
and this has caused him temporary financial losses.
Nevertheless, he has adhered strictly to the rule to deal
openly and above board with every man, and in the end
has gained a continued and extending business. With a
disposition to be frank and outspoken, and with personal
relations characterized by a hearty greeting and wel-
come clasp of the hand, few men in Enid or in Oklahoma
have now a more extended or loyal circle of personal
friends. A less outspoken manner and more diplomatic
ways might have carried him to the same financial
heights in less time, but no one who learns the honesty
of heart and elements of good will back of his brusque
nature has not also learned to respect and honor this
man, whose qualities as a man and citizen are unsur-
passed. .

In 1893 Mr. Lopeman married Miss Catherine McClel-
lan, who died in July, 1909. She was a splendid com-
panion to him, devoted to her home, took a great interest
in the’ development of his interests, and had a large
circle of warm friends. She left two children: J. A., Jr.,
who is closely associated with his father in business;
and Laura E., wife of Charles Musser of Bristow, Okla-
homa.

Homer Huffaker. One of the pioneer white men in
the Osage country, identified with the thriving Town of
Fairfax since its beginning, now the head of one of
the largest mercantile concerns there, and also one of
the present county commissioners of Osage County,
Homer Huffaker is one of the men who have made then-
influence count for improvement and development in
this section of the state.

He belongs to one of the oldest and most prominent
pioneer families of the State of Kansas. Homer Huf-
faker was born at Council Grove, Kansas, March 1, 1875,
a son of the late Thomas S. and Eliza A. (Baker)
Huffaker. In addition to the many honarable distinc-
tions associated with his father’s name in Kansas, Judge
Huffaker ’s activities also extend into what is now
Oklahoma. About 1870 he established a trading store
at Pond Creek, Oklahoma, and conducted it a number
of years. It was an important supply point for the
Indians of that vicinity, and also for both the white
men and the Indians during th high tide of the industry
of buffalo hunting on the plains.

When Judge Thomas Sears Huffaker died at his old
f.home in Council Grove, July 10, 1910, that event closed
the career of one of the most remarkable of early Kan-
sans. He was born in Clay County, Missouri, March 30,
1825, of a pioneer family in Northwest Missouri, and
moving to Kansas in 1849, five years before the organi-
zation of the territory, his subsequent career was such
that he was called “the grand old man of Kansas’’
first in Indian affairs and then in politics and public
matters. He went to Kansas as a missionary teacher at
the Manual Training School in Johnson County, but
about two years later, in 1850, moved to Council Grove,
where he was given charge of the Kaw Indians, who
had recently been transferred to their reservation in the
Neosho Valley. At Council Grove he founded a mission
school, and the building is still one of the picturesque
landmarks on the banks of the Neosho. It was built
under the supervision of Mr. Huffaker in 1850, and was
large enough to furnish quarters not only for school but
also for the residence of the teacher and his family. The
school was opened in 1851, but the enterprise was not
Successful, since few of the Indians would allow their
children to attend, and after a few years the school was
abandoned. However, Judge Huffaker remained and

soon became a man of importance in the community.
He was one of the three incorporators of the City of
Council Grove in 1858, was appointed the first post-
master, and soon afterward Territorial Governor Reeder
appointed him president of the county commissioners.
He was next elected probate judge of Wise County, his
jurisdiction extending over portions of several adjacent
counties of the present time. He later served two terms
in the Kansas Legislature. Judge Huffaker was a Mis-
souri slaveholder, and took his slaves with him to Kansas,
but after the Kansas troubles had eventuated in the
Civil war he took the side of the Union, and during the
last forty years of his life was a stanch republican. He
had come into Kansas as a missionary under the auspices
of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and the old
Kaw Mission School was founded jointly by that church
and the United States Government. He was also a mem-
ber of the Masonic Order. At the time of his death
Judge Morehouse of Topeka described his personality in
these words: “He was stately of bearing — like a judge.

The Indians regarded him as ‘ father, ’ accepting his
decrees without murmur. Called to settle the many
difficulties of the early days, he always was careful to
learn both sides, and so advised as to make no enemies.
He was rewarded by the love of all.”

The widow of Judge Huffaker and the mother of the
Fairfax merchant is still living at her old home in Council
Grove. She was born at Salem, Illinois, in 1836, and
is one of the splendid pioneer women of Kansas. A year
or so before the death of Judge Huffaker her career was
chosen as the subject for a beautiful article by a Kansas
writer, who wove her story into a collection of articles
describing notable Kansas women. A few sentences are
taken from that interesting sketch before introducing
the career of the Fairfax business man, who has so many
reasons to honor the memory and character of his noble
mother: “On May 6, 1852, there was a wedding in the

stone schoolhouse at Council Grove. The bride was a
girl of sixteen. By her picture of the day she must
have been a pretty girl, for her face is handsome at
seventy. Her maiden name was Eliza A. Baker, and
one of her brothers, Jesse Baker, was one of the victims
of the border ruffian days in Morris County, Kansas.
She was born in Illinois in 1836. She had lived in Towa,
where her father was blacksmith for the Sac and Fox
Indians, and now at the age when our girls are beginning
to talk of sophomore class parties, she became the wife
of a frontiersman in the trackless Indian country. A
missionary on his way to Mexico, a Rev. Mr. Nicholson,
performed the ceremony. The duties of a home keeper,
always strenuous on the frontier, were multiplied for
Mrs. Huffaker. In the old stone house her children were
born, and there a school for white children was soon
opened. Council Grove, at first a mere trading point on
the Santa Fe trail, had grown to be the trading point,
then a village and later a city and county seat in the
center of a rich productive valley. The old stone house
began to serve other purposes. Travelers, explorers, mis-
sionaries and state officials slept under its roof when
they came hither. The Civil war came and passed and
' then came fifteen years of fear of the plains Indians.
The old schoolhouse became by turns council house, school
building, church and fort. It was a refuge for the de-
fenceless, where women and children fled to the strong-
hold for ^protection. Lost in the duties of wife and
mother, housekeeper and teacher, friend and neighbor,
Mrs. Huffaker ’s years ran by. In all the stirring days
of border strife and Civil war and the Indian peril, she
bore her part. In the old stone house where she became
a bride one May day, she lived through the scenes of
territorial and state making. Children grew up in that

2134

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

home and went out to make homes for themselves. There
are no great deeds to be set in bold faced type against
Mrs. Huffaker ’s name. Her’s was the silent story that
is written in good deeds and measureless influence, and
yet her name was one of the very first to suggest itself
to me when I conceived the idea of gathering together
the names of the women of the State whose stories
appealed to me. ’ ’

At the death of Judge Huffaker six children survived
him: Mrs. J. H. Simcock of St. Louis; Mrs. Louis

Wismeyer of Fairfax, Oklahoma; Mrs. Fred B. Car-
penter of Topeka; Homer Huffaker; and George and
Carl Huffaker.

In Council Grove Homer Huffaker spent his youthful
days until 1892, then a boy of seventeen, he came to the
Osage Reservation with his brother-in-law, L. A. Wis-
meyer. He had attended the local schools and had grown
up in a home which inspired in him the best qualities of
manhood. He became an assistant at Gray Horse in the
Osage Nation to L. A. Wismeyer in the trading store,
and remained in that locality until 1903, when he joined
in the business exodus from Gray Horse to the .new
railroad town founded by Mr. Wismeyer and named
Fairfax. For two years Mr. Huffaker was assistant
cashier in the Osage Bank of Fairfax. When the Wis-
meyer Mercantile Company was formed and incorporated
he became its secretary and treasurer, and was identified
with the concern in that capacity for ten years. In 1913
he organized the Big Hill Trading Company of Fairfax,
and is now its president. This firm carries a large stock
of general merchandise, and has extensive trade relations
both with the white and Indian population around Fair-
fax. In many ways Mr. Huffaker has been identified
with the business and civic upbuilding of Fairfax since
it was founded. In 1907 he added to the improvement
of the town by the erection of the fine home in which he
and his family now reside. He has also acquired farm-
ing and stock raising interests in that locality.

In politics he has been a republican voter for twenty
years. In 1912 he was elected county commissioner of
Osage county, served as chairman of the board during
his first term, and was re-elected in 1914. He was also
chairman of the first delegation which chose a representa-
tive 'ior Congress from the Osage country, and assisted
in nominating former Congressman Bird S. McGuire.
Mr. Huffaker is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite
Mason, belongs to the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, and
is also a member of the Elks Lodge of Pawhuska.

In 1905 he married Miss Erma Robins Bates. She was
born in Tupelo, Mississippi, September 29, 1879, was
partly reared in Cairo, Illinois, and at the age of six
years went with her parents to Council Grove, Kansas.
Later her parents removed to Kansas City, Missouri,
where she lived until her marriage. Her parents are W.
T. and Mary (Hall) Bates, who are still residents of
Kansas City. Her father is a railroad man. Mr. and
Mrs. Huffaker are the parents of three sons : Thomas

Bates, born June 23, 1906; Homer Hall, born October
22, 1908; and Darwin S., born August 10, 1912. Mr.
Huffaker is a master of the Osage language, and readily
acquired fluency in that tongue within a short time after
coming to the Osage country.

George M. Berry. The citizens of Pawnee County
know George M. Berry as a successful farmer and banker.
He has lived in this part of the old Cherokee Strip for
thirty-six years. Some of the old-timers know of his
early struggles and the perseverance and industry which
put him on the road to success.

The keynote of his character and success is perhaps
to be found in a little incident of his earlier career.

When he was nineteen years of age, being out of employ-
ment, he took work on a ranch. He remained with his
employer there nine years. All that time he was getting
his board and keep but was never drawing a cent of
wages. As a matter of fact he did not know for what
wages he was working, or what he was to receive at the
end of his term. When the nine years were up the old
Oklahoma was opened for settlers, and the ranch was
accordingly closed out. In settling up the accounts
Mr. Berry was paid $5,400 as a reward for the nine years
of patient work he had put in there. It was possibly
no more than he was. worth, but the point of the story
is liis willingness to work for work’s sake and to go
diligently about his business without any particular
concern about the financial rewards.

Mr. Berry is a Kentuckian. He was born in the
southeastern part of the state December 1, 1858, a son
of T. N. and Sophia J. (King) Berry. His father was
born in Whitley County, Kentucky, and died there Janu-
ary 31, 1868, when his son George was ten years of age.
The widowed mother subsequently brought her family to
Arkansas City, Kansas, in the fall of 1877, and she died
at Ashland, Kansas, April 19, 1886. Her nine children
were: W. E. of Stillwater, Oklahoma; I. K., formerly

a rancher in Oklahoma and now living in Mexico; Nan,
a resident of Cushing, Oklahoma, and widow of Lyeurgus
Laughlin; T. E., formerly an Indian trader, who died
at Norman, Oklahoma; A. A., who was a licensed Indian
trader and conducted a ranch for nine years before the
opening of Pawnee County, and is now a resident of
Norman; Eliza Earley, who died in Texas; George M. ;
Susie, who married j. W. Arthur of Oklahoma City;
and R. C., a merchant at Norman.

After the death of his father George M. Berry lived
much with his older brothers, who looked after him,
and for two years he attended the public schools of
Arkansas City, Kansas. It was in 1879 when he came
to Pawnee, where his brothers, I. K., T. E. and A. A.
Berry were licensed Indian traders. For a time he was
also in the service of the United States Government
engaged to teach the Indians how to break the prairie
sod and raise crops. After a course in a business college
at Lawrence, Kansas, he worked in a store and ou a
ranch from 1880 until the opening of Oklahoma in 1889.

In 1889 he settled on a claim in Lincoln County.
After three years he returned to Pawnee, and for eight
years gave his time to farming. Since then he has lived
in the City of Pawnee, but still owns, a large amount
of farm lands, including three improved farms, and is
an extensive grower of grain and stock.

In 1894 Mr. Berry assisted in organizing the Bank of
Pawnee. Since 1899 this has been the First National
Bank, and is the oldest bank of Pawnee County. Mr.
Berry has been its vice president since it was incorporated
as a national bank. The other officers are : C. J.

Shapard, president; S. Thornton, cashier; and John W.
Wilson, assistant cashier. The bank has a capital of
$50,000, surplus of $10,000, and its total resources are
more than $400,000. The deposits average about $300,000.

Among other interests Mr. Berry has some oil holdings
in the Cleveland field at the east end of Pawnee County.
He has long been active in political and public life and
is a loyal democrat. At Pawnee he served on the city
council several years, and was mayor of the town for*
two terms before statehood. For many years he was
also treasurer of the school board. Mr. Berry repre-
sented the eighteenth district in the Constitutional Con-
vention, and was an influential member of several im-
portant committees. He was elected a delegate to the
Constitutional Convention by 200 votes, although the
district was normally republican by 300. It is evidence

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2135

of his popularity and ability, as well as the value of his
public service, that he has never been defeated for any
office for which he has been a candidate. During state-
hood he has been state committeeman from Pawnee
County, a delegate to a number of state conventions,
and secretary of the county election board. In public
life, as in business and private affairs, he has a large
circle of friends, and men place implicit trust in his
integrity as well as his ability. Again and again he has
sacrificed his own interests in order to do good to the
community. Oklahoma has a warm place in his affection.
He first saw the country when he rode horseback from
Arkansas City to Pawnee, before the building of rail-
roads. In the early days he received mail for the
Pawnee country. The mail was brought from Coffeyville,
Kansas, by way of Pawhuska and when high waters did
not interfere with the schedule it was delivered twice a
week. Mr. Berry and his family are members of the
Methodist Church.

At Perth, Kansas, in February, 1887, he married Miss
Nellie Dowis. She is a native of Missouri. They have
nine children: Boy, Jennie, Ethel, Elida, Everett,
Margaret, Lesta, Catherine and Bobert. The three older
children are graduates of the Pawnee High School and
also attended the University of Missouri at Columbia,
and Elida is now a student in the Oklahoma State
University at Norman. The son, Boy, lives at Pawnee,
while Jennie is the wife of E. A. Holden of Clinton,
Oklahoma.

Hon. Thomas S. Jones. This veteran lawyer of
Guthrie has had a long and interesting career of
experience in many fields. He was a boy soldier in the
war between the states, rising to the rank of lieutenant
in the Confederate army. He went out to Kansas in
pioneer times, had a brilliant career as a lawyer and in
politics in that state, and was one of the first members
of his profession to arrive in the Town of Guthrie at the
original opening of Oklahoma in 1889. He has known
all the leading figures in Oklahoma affairs from the
beginning of white settlement and is himself one of the
conspicuous features among the old timers of the state.

He was born in a log house which stood on a farm
nearj Bichmond, Virginia, on August 17, 1838. His
parents were Meredith and Julia (Coleman) Jones, both
natives of Virginia and of Welsh stock. When Judge
Jones was six months old he lost both his parents by
death, and he was afterwards reared and attended school
while living with his grandfather, Stephen Coleman. His
preparatory education was acquired in the State Masonic
Institute at Germantown, North Carolina. When only
fourteen years of age he qualified and entered as a
student the University of Virginia at Charlottesville,
where he remained to complete his course in the law
department. He was admitted to the bar by the Supreme
Court of Virginia.

He had hardly begun practice when the Civil war
broke out with all its fury, and almost at the first he
enlisted in the Confederate army as a private, and one
year later was promoted to. lieutenant. He also served
as an inspector on the staff of General Wise, and he
made a brilliant record while with his gallajit Virginia
regiment.

I In 1865 at the close of the war Mr. Jones came West
and was one of the early settlers at Cottonwood Falls,
Kansas. There he set up in practice as a pioneer
lawyer, and soon found himself busied with his practice
and with politics. His home was in Chase County,
known at that time as a republican stronghold. In
spite of that fact the young Virginia lawyer overcame
all normal obstacles and was elected in 1867 county

attorney. Another test of his personal popularity and
his influence came a few years later when he was elected
by the people of Chase County to represent them one
term in the state Legislature. While in the Legislature
he served as a member of a number of important, com-
mittees including the judiciary committee.

Judge Jones in the course of the last forty years has
seen much of the pioneer experiences. In fact he seems
to have had a fondness for the frontier rather than for
the settled districts of civilization, and this was indicated
in 1873 when he moved out to a center of some of the
wildest life of the West, Dodge City,' Kansas. He came
well recommended as a lawyer, and in a short time
became a recognized leader in that community. He was
much admired for his personal courage as well as his
efficiency in the profession, and though a democrat he
was elected prosecuting attorney of Ford County. He
was elected on the law-enforcement platform, and the
enunciation of such a policy in Dodge City forty years
ago meant a great deal, and as he had been elected for
'the purpose of enforcing the law and clearing the city
of its disorderly element, he never hesitated a moment
to do all that his office and duty demanded.

After a number of years of practice at Dodge City,
Judge Jones in 1889 participated in the first opening of
Oklahoma Territory and established his home in Guthrie.
Here he was made one of the first judges of the pro-
visional court of Guthrie- and was the fifst county attor-
ney of Logan County to hold that post by election. For
the past twenty years or more he has been in active
practice at Guthrie, and still enjoys a large clientage.
Judge Jones is an active member of the Masonic Order.

In 1865 he married Miss Mary G. West, who was born
in Virginia. They are the parents of two children.
Judge Jones’ daughter Mary is the wife of Harmon
Doolittle, a banker of Strong City, Kansas, and his
grandson, Dudley Doolittle, has already made a dis-
tinguished record and is the present congressman from
the fourth district of Kansas. Judge Jones’ only son
was Edgar W. Jones, now deceased. He took a promi-
nent part in the early history of Oklahoma, served as
private secretary to Governor W. C. Benfrow, was libra-
rian of the State Supreme Court and also served four
years as prosecuting attorney of Logan County and was
a member of the Territorial Legislature. Edgar W.
Jones attained the thirty-second degree in Scottish Bite
Masonry.

Eugene F. Scott. For nearly fifteen years Eugene
F. Scott has been a practicing member of the Okla-
homa bar. With a large private practice at Pawhuska,
he also looks after the interests of several large cor-
porations in that part of the state, and outside of his
profession he has become distinguished as one of the
most influential leaders in the democratic party.

A son of W. G. Scott, whose career as an old time
Oklahoman has been sketched on other pages, Eugene
F. Scott was born at Ocheltree in Johnston County,
Kansas, May 4, 1881. From the age of four until 1901
his home was at Arkansas City, where he gained his
early education graduating from the high school in 1898.
He pursued his law studies at Arkansas City under the
direction of Charles L. Brown, a prominent railroad
attorney there, and was admitted to the bar in the
District Court of Cowley County, Kansas, in 1901.
Soon after his admission to the bar Mr. Scott moved
to Cleveland, Oklahoma, and soon afterward came
to Pawhuska. He was a partner with T. J. Leahy at
Pawhuska until 1908, and from that year until 1913 was
a member of the firm of Grimstead & Scott. Since the
latter year he has been in practice alone. Mr. Scott is

2136

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

attorney in Osage County for tire Midland Valley and
the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railroads. His work as a
lawyer is largely in civil practice.

As a democrat he was chairman of the first Democratic
County Committee when Osage County was organized
and managed the first campaign of the party. He was
also the first chairman of the city committee, and. con-
ducted several of the local campaigns. For eight years
he was a valued member of the State Democratic Commit-
tee from Osage County, up to 1914. The only office in
which he has consented to serve was as president of the
city council of Pawhuska for three years. Mr. Scott
also assisted in organizing as a charter member the
Pawhuska Lodge of Elks and has served as exalted ruler
of that order. He is a member of the general council of
the State Bar Association, and president of the Osage
County Bar Association.

In 1904 he married Miss Dolly Johnson, who died in
1907, leaving two children, William J. and Violet. In
1913 he married Miss Boxie James of Boonville, Mis-
souri.

William S. Hewitt. Twenty years of purposeful
participation in business affairs has marked the career
of William S. Hewitt in Oklahoma. Since his arrival
here, in 1895, he has been variously engaged, his activities
having included operations in freighting, agriculture and
merchandise, and connection with various enterprises
of a business and financial nature, and in each line of
effort he has shown himself capable, energetic and trust-
worthy. Mr. Hewitt is the grandson of a preacher of
the Latter Day Saints, who was twice married and
traveled all over the Southwest, living at different times
in Missouri, Kansas, Indian Territory and Texas. His
death occurred in Indian Territory, while the grand-
mother of Mr. Hewitt died in Kansas.

Richard H. Hewitt, the father of William S. Hewitt,
was born in Illinois, January 7, 1844, and was reared
on the frontier, his entire life being passed amid exciting
scenes and marked with many interesting incidents. His
first venture on his own account was the operation of a
ranch in Nebraska, where his property was destroyed bv
a roving band of Pawnee Indians, and in 1863, with his
brother William, they began general freighting for them-
selves from Marysville, Kansas, to their ranch twenty-
eight miles east of Fort Carney. About the year 1867
he went to Marshall County, Kansas, where he filed on
a tract of eighty acres of land, which he continued to
cultivate until 1894, and for seven years also engaged in
merchandising and in conducting a hotel. This latter
property was destroyed by fire in 1876 and he returned
to his farm in Marshall County, but about the year 1893
moved to Blue Rapids, Kansas, where he made his home
for two years. On April 19, 1895, he and his son, Wil-
liam S., filed on their present farm in Pawnee County,
a tract of 120 acres in the southwest quarter of section
28, adjoining Jennings on the East. But the father
bought out the man who was on this farm. On first
coming here Richard H. Hewitt was engaged for several
years in freighting. The farm is now conducted by
the son, William S. Mr. Hewitt, Sr., was married in
September, 1868, to Miss Nancy J. Strange, who was
born in Missouri in 1850, and to this union there have
been born two children : William S. ; and Hettie, who is
the wife of William Dexter, of Marshall County, Kansas.

William S. Hewitt was born on his father’s farm in
Marshall County, Kansas, July 23, 1869, and was there
reared to farming pursuits and educated in the district
schools. From the time of his arrival in Oklahoma until
his marriage, a period of about three years, he was en-
gaged in freighting from Sapulpa and Perry to Jennings

and following this again engaged in farming, and stock
raising. On coming to Jennings he became a clerk in
the general store of Todd & Bishop, but after a few
months resigned and entered the employ of A. E. Ansley,
a general merchant and hardware and implement dealer.
He was with Mr. Ansley on and off for about five years,
and during this time was also employed as a clerk in
the postoffice for several months, as well as in a bank
and drug store for a short time. In 1907 Mr. Hewitt
was made manager of Spurrie’s Lumber Yards and held
that position until May, 1915. His chief contribution
to the upbuilding of Jennings has been the laying out
and development of the Hewitt Addition, a tract of
seven acres which is almost entirely built up. Every
enterprise of any importance has received his support,
and he is considered one of the energetic and capable
men of the community who has been a factor in the life
of Jennings since his arrival. Mr. Hewitt is a repub-
lican, while his fraternal connections are with the local
lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the
Knights of the Maccabees, the Modern Woodmen of
America and the Blue Lodge.

On July 31, 1898, Mr. Hewitt was united in marriage
with Miss Lillie Belle Wharton, who was born February
13, 1887, in Jefferson County, Kansas, daughter of A. E.
and Sarah (Butcher) Wharton, who are now residents
of Hallett, Oklahoma. Mr. and Mrs. Hewitt have been
the parents of three children: Harry Glenn; Ralph W.,
who died when 2% years old; and Ruth.

George G. LaMotte. One of the most interesting as
well as one of the most efficient business partnerships in
Oklahoma is that of LaMotte & LaMotte, the constituent
members of which are Mr. and Mrs. George G. LaMotte
of Pawhuska. Since, their marriage and in the course
of five years on a partnership basis they have engaged in
the leasing of Osage lands for farming and grazing
purposes, and they probable handle as much land under
one ownership as any other one firm or individual in the
state. Their holdings under lease run to more than
400,000 acres each year, and with such a vast pasturage
it is easy to understand that they are among the largest
producers of cattle and other livestock for the market
in the state. Mr. LaMotte is a young business man
well known through his relations with the public service
and in other affairs, and Mrs. LaMotte is undoubtedly
one of the business women in the Southwest. She has a
talent for getting large things accomplished in a large
way, and is equally at home in the handling of business
and in the brilliant social circles of the national capital,
where she spent several years with her former husband,
Congressman McGuire.

Mr. LaMotte was born at Hayward, at that time one
of the lumber centers of Northern Wisconsin, on March
13, 1880, a son of Frank and Elizabeth (Limry) LaMotte.
His father was born near Montreal, Canada, of French
parentage. He grew up in that locality, became identi-
fied with the lumber industry, and followed the call of
the lumber woods into Wisconsin and Minnesota. He
died when his son was about twelve years of age. The
mother was born at Green Bay, Wisconsin, spent all her
life in that gtate, and died at Hayward in 1902. Through
her Mr. LaMotte has a portion of Chippewa Indian
blood in his veins. He was the oldest of four sons, his
brother James being a resident of Wisconsin, Edward
of Oklahoma, and Lloyd in Kansas.

His early boyhood was spent at Hayward, Wisconsin,
where he attended the public schools, a Government school
at Tom ah, Wisconsin, and also the high school there.
Mr. LaMotte gained his higher education and business
training in the Haskell Indian School at Lawrence,

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2137

Kansas, where he spent four years. During that time
he was prominent both in the social and athletic life of
the college, was a member of the noted Haskell Indian
football team, and also served as secretary of the super-
intendent, H. P. Peavis of the Haskell School. He spent
portions of two seasons on the road with the Wheelock
• Indian Band, playing the bass solo instrument. After
the activities of his college career, he was for one year in
the offices of the Santa Pe Railroad at Topeka, and was
'then with the Rock Island at Kansas City. A part of the
i;' time was spent on the road with different musical organi-
zations, and this and other activities account for the
fact that though still a young man Mr. LaMotte has
seen perhaps as much of the people and cities of
America as anyone. From Kansas City he moved to
Pawhuska in 1905, and here became identified with the
Osage Townsite Commission. He entered the Civil
■Service, and up to 1910 was identified with the Osage
Agency.

1 Mr. LaMotte was first married in 1904 to Louise Bay-
hylle, who died in 1908, leaving one child, Georgia. In
1910 Mr. LaMotte married Mrs. Anna (Marx) McGuire.

: They soon afterwards started their unique business part-

f nership of LaMotte & LaMotte. Mr. LaMotte is a
I. democrat in politics, and takes much interest in party
s affairs, though he is essentially a business man and his
i large and varied interests demand his entire attention.

Mrs. LaMotte is a native of Illinois, but was reared
and educated in Southern Kansas and from an early
age has been remarkable for her intense activity and
is vigor of mind and charm and social character. When a
in girl she held the responsibilities of postmaster at Sedan,
at Kansas. She went into Oklahoma at Pawnee about the
te time the strip was opened, and not only displayed a
■S5 keen ability in competition with men and business affairs,
iii but was from the start an attractive figure in social
n , circles. He has a large acquaintance over this and
le[ other states, and when she went to Washington she
He . [quickly proved her ability as a social leader.

;est I
bet

nan I
rite
■illy
is a

itge

ness
ital> j
and,

one
laieli
lotte.
retell
lenti-
ill of
He
The
11 her
rough
ndian
is, his
dwarf

sonsin,
schooll
there. ;
osiness

menceJ

Judge John M. Hates. The Hayes family, of which
ETudge John M. of this review is the local representative,
had its origin in Ireland, and the first of the name to
come to America was William Hayes, great-grandfather
of the subject. He was a surveyor in his native land,
and coming to America settled in New Hampshire, the
pamily home being near historic Concord then and for
imany years thereafter. He was occupied in his pro-
fession when the Revolutionary fires, long smouldering
in the hearts of the Colonials, burst out vigorously, and
he was soon fighting in the ranks of the Colonial army
with the rank of colonel. His record was a brilliant one
throughout the long struggle for American independence,
and many tales are told of his nerve and daring in en-
counters with the enemy.

I The son of Colonel Hayes was also named William
and was the father of the subject of this sketch.
He was born in New Hampshire, and was educated at
Dartmouth. He was a man of considerable talent in a
literary way, and was long prominent in governmental
affairs of his native state. He served thirty-six years
as a member of the New Hampshire Legislature, and
was a life-long democrat. He served through the War
of 1812 with the rank of colonel, and in 1850 left his
native state and came to Illinois, where he bought and
Operated a large farm for some years.

Dr. A. W. Hayes was born in New Hampshire, and
like his father, had his education at Dartmouth College.
He came to Illinois with his father in 1850, and they
located at Buda, Berrian County. When the Civil war
same on he enlisted in a New Hampshire regiment in

the capacity of an army surgeon, passing through the
conflict until November, 1864. The young surgeon, then
but thirty-two years old, died suddenly as a result of
illness, and his wife survived him only a few hours.
Both were interred in the same grave, and their burial
place is at Buda, Illinois. His wife was Sarah M. Webb,
also of New Hampshire birth, and she left one child
John M. Hayes, then an infant.

Judge Hayes was reared on his grandfather’s farm in
Illinois, and was graduated from the Buda High School
in 1879. He entered a law school later and in 1883 was
graduated with the degree LL.B. He established himself
in practice in Coles County, Illinois, continuing there
until 1901, and winning various professional and political
honors in the time of his service there. In 1901 he came
to Oklahoma, settled on a farm in Karva County and
practiced law at the same time. For some time he
owned and edited the Sulphur Democrat. During the
first years of Oklahoma’s statehood he was an attorney
in the land department, and in 1911 he came to Cleveland
and settled down to the practice of his profession. Judge
Hayes has been a democrat all his life.

In 1886 Judge Hayes was married to May Shepherd, a
native of Burrage County, Illinois, and the daughter of a
Buda (Illinois) merchant. She had her higher education
in the Geneseo Normal School of Illinois and for some
years was occupied as a teacher in her native state.
She is prominent in the social activities of Cleveland,
and is president of the Mothers’ Club of the city. To
Judge and Mrs. Hayes have been born three children:
Harold, Ophelia, and John M. Jr.

Hon. Scott Ferris. The representative of the Fifth
Congressional District of Oklahoma in the United States
Congress, Hon. Scott Ferris, is also known as one of
the leading legal lights of Lawton, Oklahoma, his home
city, and as an agriculturist has been identified
with the development of Comanche County during the
past decade. In each capacity he has shown himself
capable, painstaking and thoroughly informed, and al-
though he is still a comparatively young man he is gen-
erally accounted as one of Lawton’s leading citizens.

Mr. Ferris was born November 3, 1877, at Neosho,
Missouri, and is a son of the late Scott and Anna M.
(Thorp) Ferris, and a member of a family which, orig-
inating in England, emigrated to the United States and
settled first in Delaware and later in New York. Scott
Ferris, the father of Congressman Ferris, was born in
1842, at Mount Morris, near Rochester, New York, and as
a young man came to the West, locating at Neosho,
Missouri, in 1866. There he followed agricultural pur-
suits with success until 1902, in which year he took up
his residence at Walter, Oklahoma, where he died two
years later. He was an active democrat in his political
views, and fraternally was connected with the Masons
and the Ancient Order of United Workmen. Mrs. Ferris,
who was born at Mount Morris, New York, in 1847, died
at Walter, Oklahoma, in 1905. They were the parents of
three children, namely: Thomas, who is in the Govern-

ment Indian Service and resides at Lame Deer, Mon-
tana; Scott, of this review; and Anne, who makes her
home with her brother at Lawton.

Scott Ferris received his early education in the public
schools of Neosho, Missouri, where he was graduated
from the high school in 1897, and following this at-
tended the University of Missouri for one year. He theh
enrolled as a student in the Kansas City School of Law,
being graduated therefrom in 1901, with the degree of
Bachelor of Laws, and almost immediately took up his
residence at Lawton, where he has continued in active
practice, his law office being located at 406 D Avenue.

2138

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

As a lawyer lie early attracted to himself an excellent
professional business, and in the meantime became ac-
tively interested in democratic politics, being elected a
member of the last Territorial Legislature of 1905-06. In
1907 he became the candidate of his party for Congress,
as representative of the Fifth Congressional District of
Oklahoma, and was sent to that body, where he imme-
diately demonstrated his fitness for public service of an
exalted character. His excellent services gained him
repeated re-elections, and at the present time he is serv-
ing his fifth consecutive term. In this time, Mr. Ferris
has served on many important committees, and the work
that he has accomplished for the benefit of his constit-
uents has been of a nature to give him prestige as one
of Oklahoma’s most helpful public servants. At the
present time Mr. Ferris is chairman of the important
Public Lands Commission. In 1911 he was appointed
by Speaker Champ Clark as one of the two members of
Congress chosen as members of the Board of Regents
of the Smithsonian Institute.

Fraternally, Mr. Ferris is affiliated with Lawton Lodge
No. 183, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons; Lawton
Chapter No. 44, Royal Arch Masons; Lodge No. 1056,
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, of Lawton,
and the Modern Woodmen of America. He is a working
member of the Lawton Chamber of Commerce and has
done much to accelerate its undertakings. As a farmer,
Mr. Ferris is the owner of two valuable properties, one
of 126 acres adjoining Lawton and one of 160 acres
located 1% miles from the city, in Comanche County. He
has specialized in alfalfa and has met with excellent
success in his agricultural ventures.

On June 23, 1906, at Neosho, Missouri, Mr. Ferris was
united in marriage with Miss Grace Hubbert, daughter
of George Hubbert, a prominent attorney of that city.
They have no children.

J. C. Byers. Long a cattle man in Oklahoma, in the
days before it was opened, J. C. Byers has lived the life
of the open through a good many years. In more recent
years he has devoted himself to the operating of a
general merchandise store in Cleveland. He is a pioneer
in this section of the country, and is identified with
numerous branches of industry, including farming, oil
production, real estate and insurance. Mr. Byers was
born in Fairfield, Iowa, on August 14, 1861, and he is a
son of H. H. and Mary E. (Laughlin) Byers.

H. H. Byers was born on April 13, 1838, and his wife
on June 9th of the same year, in Ohio and Pennsylvania,
respectively. He was a son of John and Mary (Hunter)
Byers, and they came from Virginia to Ohio in the early
pioneer days of that state, and John Byers was killed
by the Indians when in middle life. They had two sons,
H. H., father of the subject, and John H. Mary Hunter,
his wife, was a sister of General Hunter, a Union
general in the Civil war, and one of their brothers was a
member of Jeff Davis’ cabinet.

When H. H. Byers was sixteen years of age the
family came to Iowa, and he and his brother were still
in their early twenties when they enlisted in Company
H, Second Iowa State Infantry in 1861. Both served
through a three year period, and they were stationed at
Beaeonsville, Texas, when the war was closed. H. H.
finished his service with the rank of second lieutenant.
He was at Pikes Peak, Colorado, when the wgr broke out,
but lost no time in getting back to his native state so
that he might enlist for service. He was at the front
when his son, J. E., of this review, was born. In 1869
H. H. Byers came to the Osage Nation, near Old Hickory
Fort. He thought he was on the Kansas side, but when
the survey was made discovered that he was mistaken,

so he moved across the line into Kansas and settled on
farm on the state line. When the Cherokee strip was
opened in 1893 he came to Oklahoma, and he died here-
in Cleveland, in 1898. All his life he was a cattleman
and farmer, and he enjoyed a generous measure of
success

Of his marriage with Mary E. Laughlin, five sons were
born. J. E. is the eldest. W. L. is a resident of 'Osage
County. Fred L. lives near Cleveland. Emmor also lives
in Cleveland, and Rolla lives in Cushing.

_ J. E. Byers spent his early life as his father’s as
sistant, and he was very young when he familiarized
himself with the details of the cattle business. He was
eight years old when the family moved to the Osage
Nation, where the father had contracts for supplying
the Indians with beef, and the boy was not slow to
learn the Osage language. When he first left his father
young Byers went to Texas and there was employed by

Hart

(atii

cattle men. He drove cattle over the trail from Texas to blit

arinj

Emporia, Kansas, in 1872, and later made many trips
over the same trail. It may properly be said that hi
has been a cattle man all his life, for he began in
when he was only eight years old.

On coming to Cleveland Mr. Byers established a mer-
cantile business. He ran a general store here and at
Horning until 1897, when he moved on a ranch in Osage iage
County and continued there for three years. He then
became assistant cashier in the Cleveland National Bank
and a little later went into the oil business. Prior to
that time, however, he had been interested in the oil
activities of the district, and had operated to some fee
extent, so that he may properly be called one of the
pioneer oil men of the state. In fact, he was one of
those who discovered the oil deposits in Oklahoma. To
day he is the owner of extensive oil lands. Mr. Byers
owns considerable farm land in the county, and has a
one-fourth interest in the second addition to the Town
of Cleveland. He has a real estate and insurance office Jj™,
in the National Bank Building, where his interests are "
handled. Another enterprise that has had his attention
is the zinc industry in Arkansas, where he has som
valuable properties.

Mr. Byers is a member of the progressive party, and
with his family has membership in the Presbyterian
Church, of which he is a trustee. He is a Master Mason
and a Pythian Knight.

On June 2, 1897, Mr. Byers was married to Florena
Powell, of Independence, Kansas. They have three sons
Harold C., Dale and Lewis.

it®

Milton Clark Ware. One of the prominent familie:
of the old Osage tribe is that household of which Milto
C. Ware is the head, residents of Pawhuska. For many
years the Ware family lived on a large ranch and farm™
in Osage County, but moved to Pawhuska some years
ago in order that the children might secure bettei
educational advantages.

Mr. Ware himself is an intermarried citizen of thi
Osages. He was born in Collin County, Texas, Oetobe:

11, 1856, a son of James and Nancy (Howell) Ware,

His father was born in Lawrence County, Arkansas, and
his mother in Illinois, but they spent most of their lives
in Collin County, Texas, where his father was a farmei ro
and stock raiser and also one of the pioneer settlers
That section of Northern Texas had a very scant popula-
tion until after the close of the Civil war. In thei
family are five sons and one daughter still living.

Milton Clark Ware grew up on the old Texas farm
gained his education in the common schools of tha
country and lived there as a farmer and stock man unti
coming to Osage County in 1890. After his marriage hi

ition

Bora i

.then

(lifers

(ghters

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2139

;es

Si-

iiig

to
list
by
i tO
ips
k
S69

Her-
at
■age
:kn
mk,
r to
oil
we
tie
e of
To-
ilers
■ a
’owi
Ice
are.
ition
some

aid

efian

Il-OD

rence

sobs:

milies
lilton
many j
farm ■
years ;
letter ,

if tie |
ctober
Ware,

?, aid
r lives
tanner
ettlers,
icpula-
i tier

fann,
if flat
a until

iage he

located on a large farm five miles south of Pawhuska,
and that was his home until six years ago when he moved
his family to Pawhuska in order that his children might
be close to good schools. He keeps a home in town and
also lives at the ranch, and still operates the farm and
has some very extensive interests as a farmer and stock
man. His wife and children have shared in the allotment
of Indian lands, and there are seven, individual par-
ticipants in this allotment among his own family, each
one having more than a section of land.

Mr. Ware is affiliated with the Independent Order of
Odd Fellows, and he and his family belong to the
Christian Church. October 3, 1891, he married Agnes
Martin. She was born near Tahlequah in the Cherokee
Nation September 13, 1870, and she is of Cherokee and
! Osage blood. She lost her mother when she was fourteen
months old, and soon afterward her father brought her
to the Osage Nation. Her parents were Alexander and
Rachel (Sanders) Martin. Her father was born near
Pryor Creek in the Cherokee Nation, and her mother
near Talequah. Both were half blood Indians, her father
[being of the Osage and her mother of the Cherokee
[blood. Her father died December 17, 1915, his home
having been on Eighth Street, Pawhuska. He married
for his third wife Minnie Denton. By the first mar-
riage there were two children and Mrs. Ware’s sister
: is Julia, the wife of William Edwards of Wynona.

Mr. and Mrs. Ware have eight children: Julia,

wife of Gordon Wells, living near Bartlesville; Nancy,
wife of Edward German of Ponca City; Beulah May,
[Rose Lee, Henry, Davis, Marie and James, at home.

I Eben Soderstrom. This is one of the few men who
lean claim lifelong residence at Pawhuska, though until
[recent years there was no city specially worthy of the
[name in that locality. The milling industry in this
[section of Oklahoma owes more to the enterprise of the
ISoderstroms, father and son, than to any other individual.
It has been with milling and the grain business that
[Eben Soderstrom has been identified all his active
■career, and his father before him was one of the promi-
j nent millers in the early days of old Indian Territory.

Born at Pawhuska November 3, 1879, Eben Soderstrom
is a son of John and Laura (Coffey) Soderstrom. His
Bather was born in Sweden in 1853, and died at Paw-
ihuska in 1905. When nineteen years of age he cam,e to
America, having learned the trade of millwright in the
old country, and from Chicago, where he first located,
worked at different points until he came to Indian Ter-
gritory in 1878. He was at that time and for a number
pdf years in the employ of the United States Government,
and it was under Government auspices that he built two
i mills in this part of Oklahoma, one at Kaw Agency and
: another at the Osage Agency at what is now Pawhuska.
iWhen the Government sold this latter mill at auction he
i and W. S. Mathews secured the property, and following
this purchase he continued its operation until his death.
| His early death was the result of drowning in Bird
'Creek, while putting up ice. While he followed the

• milling industry all his life, and built a number of mills
in different parts of the country, he was also for a
number of years in the cattle business, operating a large
ranch near Pawhuska. In politics he was a republican,
■but contented himself merely with voting, and was not

• an active party man. He was affiliated with the
^Masonic order and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.
John Soderstrom was married soon after coming to
Indian Territory in the spring of 1878 to Miss Laura
Coffey, who is still living at Pawhuska. Special interest
attaches to her because of the fact that she is one of the
daughters of Colonel Coffey, the founder of the City of

Coffeyville, Kansas, where she was born in 1863. Of
their six children Eben is the oldest; Della is the wife
of Ben Parsons of Pawhuska; J. W. lives at Pawhuska;
Hannah is the wife of John Renfrew, also of Pawhuska;
and Carl and Floyd are likewise residents of that city.

After his education in local schools up to the age of
sixteen, Eben Soderstrom found a place in his father’s
mill, and under the latter’s direction learned all the
details of the milling business. He was associated with
the elder Soderstrom until his death, and then in part-
nership with J. E. Scarborough bought the old stone mill
on Bird Creek which his father had built and operated.
Three years later this landmark of early industry burned.
Then with his own capital Mr. Soderstrom built the
present grain elevator and seed mill located near the
Midland Valley Railroad station in Pawhuska. The
elevator has a capacity of 10,000 bushels of grain, and
he also does a business of custom grinding for the
farmers of that community. He is wholesale flour agent
in this part of Oklahoma for the Globe Flour Mills.
In his business Mr. Soderstrom employs three men, and
is one of the live and enterprising citizens of Pawhuska.
Fraternally he is affiliated with the Masonic Order and
the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. In 1914 occurred
his marriage to Naomi Conley, who was born at Arkansas
City, Kansas, in 1886, a daughter of Joseph Conley.
They have a son, John, who is one year old at this writing
and named in honor of his grandfather.

Loris E. Bryant. One of the progressive young men
who have fully availed themselves of the opportunities
afforded in the vital young State of Oklahoma is Hon.
Loris E. Bryant, who was elected representative of Osage
County in the Fifth Legislature of this commonwealth
and who is a prominent and successful merchant and
agriculturist of that county, his home and mercantile
establishment being in the thriving and ambitious Village
of Bigheart.

Mr. Bryant was born at Chautauqua Springs, Chau-
tauqua County, Kansas} on the 15th of October, 1884,
and is a son of Thomas A. and Sarah (Davenport)
Bryant, the former a native of Bates County, Missouri,
and the latter of Cass County, that state, her father
having, been a valiant soldier of the Union in the Civil
war. Thomas A. Bryant was a pioneer of where he
eventually became a substantial agriculturist and stock
grower. Shortly after the close of the Civil war he re-
moved from Missouri to Chase County, Kansas, where
he settled near Gottonwood Falls. He endured the full
tension of the turbulent period attended by the opera-
tions of the jayhawkers and bushwhackers in the Sun-
flower State after the close of the war and served as a
member of the home guard, a militia organization estab-
lished to defend the settlers against the depredations of
these lawless elements. He became one of the honored
and well known citizens of Chautauqua County and
served at one time as mayor of Chautauqua Springs,
where his death occurred on the 6th of July, 1914. He
was seventy-one years of age -when he passed away, his
devoted wife having been summoned to the life eternal
on the 26th of April, 1907, at the age of sixty years, and
both having been persons of sterling character as well
as of deep and abiding Christian faith and effective
practice.

Relative to the formative period in the life of Loris E.
Bryant the following significant statements have been
made: “Mr. Bryant’s early training was exemplary

and benignant, his parents having been devoted Chris-
tians, and when, at the age of thirteen years, he faced
the world alone and set forth to make his own way, he
was fortified by conscientious honesty and integrity, from

2140

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

the course of which he has never wavered during the later
years of earnest and successful endeavor. ’ ’ Between the
ages of eight and eighteen years Mr. Bryant had at-
tended school for a total period of only nineteen months,
but his alert mentality and self-reliance have enabled him
effectually to make good this handicap of earlier years.
He was still a boy at the time of his parents’ removal
from Kansas to the territory of the Osage Nation in
Oklahoma, where they made settlement on a farm. The
financial resources of his parents werq extremely limited,
but Mr. Brown determined to acquire through his own
exertions the means for further education. It will thus
be seen that his ambition was one of action, and by
zealous application to farm work before and after enter-
ing the institution, he was enabled to defray the expenses
of a three years’ course in the Oklahoma Agricultural &
Mechanical College at Stillwater. He left college in his
junior year and came forth well fortified in both academic
and scientific knowledge, as he had applied himself with
all diligence and earnestness. He returned to the
home farm and later he became associated with one of
his brothers in the operation of a ranch near Pawhuska,
the present judicial center of Osage County. After a
time this property was sold by the brothers and Loris
E. Bryant then engaged in the general merchandise
business at Kiefer, Creek County. There he contracted
typhoid fever and in his period of convalescence it was
found imperative for him to seek a change of climate.
Accordingly he passed a year in Tampico, Mexico, where
he held the position of managing editor of the Tampico
Post, the only paper there published in the English lan-
guage. After his return to Oklahoma he passed another
year at Kiefer and then engaged in the mercantile busi-
ness at Pawhuska, Osage County. Later he and his
brother established a general store at Bigheart, this
county, where they built up a prosperous business, under
the firm name of Bryant Brothers. The subject of this
review finally sold his interest in this enterprise and
purchased stock in the Bank of Bigheart, of which he
was assistant cashier until 1912, when he there resumed
his association with the mercantile business, with which
he is still actively and successfully identified, besides
being the owner of valuable farm property in the north-
ern part of the county. It is his purpose to devote
eventually his entire attention to scientific agriculture
and stock growing, and his experience and technical
knowledge assure to him large and worthy success in
this important fieid of industrial enterprise. Mr. Bryant
has served as city clerk of Bigheart, as clerk of the
board of education of the village, and as clerk of the
Osage County Association of Boards of Education. He
is progressive and energetic in his efforts to raise the
standard of these lines of enterprise in his section of
the state and is a close student of the scientific and prac-
tical matters pertaining thereto. Mr. Bryant is a young
man of sterling character and high civic ideals. He has
shown a lively concern in political and religious affairs
and assisted in the organization of the Young Men’s
Christian Association at the Oklahoma Agricultural &
Mechanical College at Stilwell, representing the same at
the meeting of the Western Division of the Students’
Young Men’s Christian Association at Lake Geneva,
Wisconsin, in 1903, while he was still a student in the
college mentioned.

In the autumn of 1914 Mr. Bryant was elected repre-
sentative of Osage County in the Oklahoma Legislature,
as candidate on the Democratic ticket. He received a
plurality of 322 votes, though the largest previous plu-
rality accorded to a Democratic candidate for this office
in the county had been but seventy votes. In the Fifth
General Assembly Mr. Bryant was assigned to member-

ship on a number of important house committees, namely :
General agriculture, oil and gas, insurance, county and
township organization and government, relations to the
Five Civilized Tribes and other Indians, and enrolled and
engrossed bills. He was the author of a bill providing
for the free distribution of dyphtheria antitoxin; a bill
establishing a Pasteur station for the prevention and
treatment of hydrophobia, this having the strong approval
of the administration; a bill providing for the election
of county commissioners for a term of six years, with
the term of one of the commissioners to expire every two
years ; a bill providing regulations for the sanitary opera-
tion of bottling works ; a bill abolishing township govern-
ment in Osage county; and a bill creating county courts
at Hominy and Fairfax, that county. Mr. Bryant proved
a far-sighted, careful and practical member of the legis-
lative body and manifested specially active interest in
measures relating to good roads, education, home owner-
ship, and workmen’s compensation.

As may be inferred, Mr. Bryant is a stalwart advocate
of the principles and policies of the Democratic party
and is one of its influential representatives in Osage
county. In his home village of Bigheart he is affiliated
with the organizations of the Independent Order of Odd
Fellows and the Modern Woodmen of America, and at
Pawhuska, the county seat, he is identified with the fra-
ternal association known as the Homesteaders. He has
been liberal in the support of measures and enterprises
tending to advance the general welfare of his home
village and county and is vice-president of the Bigheart
Telephone Company. He has two brothers — Charles A.:
who is engaged in business at Pawhuska, and Thomas
Edward, who conducts a general merchandise business
at that place.

At Pawhuska, on the 29th of December, 1909, was
solemnized the marriage of Mr. Bryant to Miss Mary
Jessie Tinker, whose father possesses a strain of Osage
Indian blood. Mrs. Bryant was educated in the Ursline
Academy at Paola, Kansas, is a young woman of refine
ment and gracious presence, and is active in religious and
social affairs at Bigheart. The two children of Mr
and Mrs. Bryant are Harold T. and Velma, the former
having been born in 1911 and the latter in 1913.

In Com
of land,
h 1892
sitlffi

Francis T. Norbury was a man most prominent anc
influential in founding the town of Hooker in Texas
County. The creation and upbuilding of that center
of population and trade are the facts which give Mr
Norbury a special place in Oklahoma - City.

By profession he is a lawyer, has been in practice in
Oklahoma in connection with his large business interests
and is also a real estate and loan broker.

An Englishman by birth, he was born February 16
1857, at Worcestershire, was educated in Cheltenhan ltMe,
College, beginning with the age of nineteen and took up Pj
the law in his native country. In 1889 he came tq

America and practiced in Wisconsin and Illinois and for j®aM

a few years was a member of the Chicago bar.

It was in 1903 that he came to Oklahoma with Captair Ps also

A. R. Cobb. They bought the site and started the towi
of Hooker and Mr. Norbury erected the first house ii
that town. He also opened the first law office and was Weu
soon appointed a justice of the peace. Everything vital!;
concerning the welfare and upbuilding of the town has bias
had his earnest support. He organized the first Christiai “e is k
church, and was ordained a deacon and has been espeeialljfl1*^,
prominent in its affairs. Since becoming an America!
citizen he has been aligned with the republican partjB
and in Oklahoma has served as chairman of the township Jat»] ;
committee and for four years was clerk of the town oi
Hooker.

liitckfie

iis stut
Jrritori

if tie

at boo

On Ms

orn th,

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2141

ml for

laptaif
e tom
mse ii
ml ms
vitally
mi W
iristiai
feiiall;
meric®
i party

■

While living in England Mr. Nor bury married and has
eight children, tnree daughters and five sons, all of whom
live in England and tne boys are now fighting with the
British army. On February 14, 1893, in Oconto County,
Wisconsin, he married Miss Clara Anderson, who was
also a native of England. They have no children of
their own, but adopted a son Lionel, who was born
September 10, 1912.

Thomas E. Willis,, a lawyer at Fairview in Major
County, is an Oklahoma pioneer. His early years in this
state were spent as a teacher, and he has been an active
member of the bar since 1897.

Mr. Willis represents an old and honorable line of
American ancestry. His forbears were patriots, and all
of them for several generations had military records.
His great-grandtather Colonel Nathaniel Willis served
with that rank in the army of General Washington during
the Revolution. Colonel Samuel Willis, the grandfather,
saw active service at the head of a regiment in the War
of 1812, being under the command of General Andrew
Jackson.

Captain William R. Willis, father of the Oklahoma
lawyer, was born April 6, 1834, in Grayson County, Ken-
tucky. Though a Kentuckian he was a strong Union
man, and commanded a company in the army of General
Sherman during the Civil war. He also came to Okla-
homa, where he spent his last years and died at Canton
April 6, 1906. In 1865 Captain Willis married Harriet
L. Brown, who was born in Grayson County, Kentucky,
in 1842 and died at Enid, Oklahoma, in 1901. Her par-
ents Jacob H. and Sarah (Anderson) Brown were natives
of Tennessee. Captain Willis and wife, were members
of the Christian Church. They were the parents of
eleven children, eight sons and three daughters, namely:
Thomas E., H. Clay, Jacob H., Oliver P., Sarah Viola,
William E., Eugene, Phelegmon, (deceased), Albert R.,
Laura and Myrtle.

In the same log house in Grayson County, Kentucky,
where his father was born, Thomas E. Willis also saw
. the light of day September 15, 1865. His early years
were spent on his father’s farm. He attended the public
schools until he was nineteen, and graduated from the
Litchfield Academy of Litchfield, Kentucky. Mr. Willis
came west in 1885, locating in Kansas with his parents.
In Comanche County of that state he proved up a claim
of land, and for six years was also a locomotive engineer.
In 1892 Mr. Willis came to Oklahoma, identified himself
with Kingfisher County, and was one of the early school
teachers in that locality. While teaching he also pursued
i, his studies of law, and in 1897 was admitted to the
territorial bar. In the same year he was elected on a
i, fusion ticket to the fifth session of the territorial legis-
lature, representing Kingfisher County. He took an active
apart in the deliberations of that body and was chairman
of the Committee on Education. In this capacity he
became author of the first bill providing for free school
text books that was ever introduced in Oklahoma. He
was also author of the fee and salary law which found
a place on the statute books.

Since 1910 Mr. Willis has been in active practice at
Fairview in Major County. He is one of the leading
democrats of the state, served as state committeeman,
and has given his time generously to the public welfare.
He is recognized as one of the ablest lawyers of his
county. Mr. Willis has been an active member of the
Independent Order of Odd Fellows since 1890.

^ On May 12, 1893, in Comanche County, Kansas, he
married Miss Josephine L. Bratcher. She was born in
I Kentucky November 9, 1872. To their union have been
born three children: Mabel O., born July 22, 1896;

Roland Emmet, born June 1, 1898, and died June 1,
1899; Jessie Lillian, born November 16, 1900.

Dee Rodman is one of the successful newspaper men
of Oklahoma, entered the profession through the ranks of
a printer, and is now editor and publisher of the Fair-
view Enterprise at Fairview in Major County.

Mr. Rodman is a young man, and has spent most of
his years in Oklahoma. He was born March 6, 1884, on
a farm in Erath County, Texas, a son of John B. and
Nancy Jane (Kimbro) Rodman, the former a native of
Kentucky and the latter of Arkansas. John B. Rodman
was born December 17, 1860, at Paducah, Kentucky, fol-
lowed farming and stone masonry for his active career,
and is still farming in Beaver County, Oklahoma. He
was married in 1880 and his wife was born May 22,
1861, in Hope County, Arkansas, daughter of Thomas W.
and Clementine Kimbro, both of whom are natives of
Tennessee. John B. Rodman and wife have the follow-
ing children: Arthur, born August 3, 1882; Dee; - Ella,
who was born December -19, 1886, and was married in
1902 to L. R. Houx, and they live in Colorado; Fred L.
born February 14, 1888; John J., born June 21, 1891;
Ila Belle born December 28, 1894; Daisy, born December
21, 1896; and Hugh B., born June 30, 1901.

The first sixteen years of his life Dee Rodman spent
on his father’s farms in Erath and Ellis counties, Texas.
His parents then moved to Oklahoma, locating in Chey-
enne, and there he continued his education in the public
schools. Mr. Rodman also had the benefit of a two years ’
business course in the University of Oklahoma at Norman.
In 1903 at the age of nineteen he entered the office of
the Beacon at Cordell, Oklahoma, and learned by prac-
tical experience the printer ’s trade. In 1905 he came to
Fairview and followed his trade as a journeyman printer
until 1914. In that year he bought the plant of the
Enterprise at Ames, Oklahoma, removed it to Fairview
and has since published the Fairview Enterprise, one of
the leading papers of Major County. Politically Mr.
Rodman is a republican, and he and his wife are members
of the Christian Church.

On March 12, 1910, at Fairview he married Miss "Vie
Morse. Mrs. Rodman was born at Girard, Kansas,
November 20, 1891, a daughter of J. E. and Sadie
(Nunally) Morse. To their marriage was born one child,
Roberta Marian, born' May 28, 1914.

The City National .Bank, of Lawton, Oklahoma,
the pioneer bank of Comanche County, was organized
March 23, 1901, as the First National Bank of Fort
Sill, with a capital of $25,000, authorized to do business
by the comptroller of the currency as No. 5753. It was
the first bank organized to do business in the Kiowa,
Comanche and Apache Reservation, comprising the coun-
try now included in Comanche, Kiowa, Caddo and Till-
man counties, as well as part of the counties of Stephens,
Jefferson and Grady.

When this country was opened for settlement, and the
City of Lawton entered upon its career, the name of this
institution was changed to the City National Bank, of
Lawton, and doors thrown open for business at nine
o’clock, A. M., August 6, 1901. From that time to the
present this bank has prospered and developed, growing
with the needs of the country and contributing to the
growth of that country and the wealth and welfare of
its citizens. The first home of the City National Bank
was in a small frame structure, located on a lot adjoin-
ing the United States Land Office property, but this was
soon found to be too small, although the institution con-
tinued to have its residence there until its new brick
building, the second brick building in the City of Lawton,

2142

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

was ready for occupancy, July 1, 1902. The bank’s
continued prosperity and growing business has com-
pelled its present removal to still larger and better
quarters.

On April 16, 1906, the capital of the City National
Bank was doubled out of its earnings, and at the present
time its capital, surplus and profits approximate nearly
$100,000, while its deposits average in the neighborhood
of $500,000. The City National was designated as a
depositary of the United States by the Treasury Depart-
ment, July 19, 1906, and since that time this institu-
tion has handled millions of dollars of the moneys of the
United States Government.

The success and growth of this bank may be ascribed
to the judgment, acumen, foresight and ability of its
officers, all well known business men of Lawton, whose
well known integrity has inspired confidence in deposi-
tors and has naturally attracted business. They are:
Prank M. English, president ; Samuel M. King, vice presi-
dent;- Edwin E. Shipley, cashier, and Charles W. Crab-
tree, assistant cashier.

Dr. Tolbert Barton Hinson. The Hinson family
was long established in Tennesee before one of its number
migrated in a westerly direction and located in Arkansas.
It was in that state that Dr. Tolbert Barton Hinson was
born, and his father before him, one A. J. Hinson, was
also born there, in the vicinity of Cave City, on May
25, 1855. He died there on July 16, 1915, having spent
his entire life in that community, barring a period of
one year’s time spent in Walden, Arkansas, and a brief
time in Philadelphia, Arkansas, sometime in the early
eighties. It was in Walden that Doctor Hinson was
born, on February 8, 1882.

A. J. Hinson was a farmer and stockman, prosperous
and progressive, and he was a lifelong member of the
Presbyterian Church. He married Elizabeth McGee, who
was born in Arkansas in 1858, and who died in Oxford,
Arkansas, in November, 1890. Their children were six
in number, and are briefly mentioned as follows: George
Franklin, the eldest, is living in Newport, Arkansas, where
he is a dealer in marble ; Doctor Hinson was the second
born; W. E. resides at Fort Smith, Arkansas, where he
has charge of a cut glass and china store; Parkie Elmore
is a farmer and lives in Day, Arkansas; Lily married
William Hood, a farmer of Day ; and Sturling Alexander
is a farmer and lives near Thomas, Oklahoma.

Doctor Hinson had his early, education in the public
schools of Arkansas. His ambition was toward the
medical profession, however, and he entered the Hospital
Medical College, in Louisville, Kentucky, and for four
years pursued a rigid course of study. He was gradu-
ated in the class of 1905 with the degree M. D., since
which time he has taken post graduate work in Chicago
in 1913 and 1915. In June, 1908, Doctor Hinson located
in Thomas, which place was the center of his profes-
sional activities until 1915, when he located in Enid,
forming a partnership with Doctor Boyle and buying a
half interest in the Enid Springs Sanitarium and Hos-
pital with Doctor Boyle. Enid Springs Sanitarium and
Bath House was established by Dr. Boyle on September
1, 1814. This institution filled a long felt want and
is the only institution in the state combining the three
features of sanitarium, hospital and bath house. It
has an ideal location within a half block of Enid’s
famous Mineral Springs. Its house physicians are
Doctors Boyle and Hinson. Doctor Hinson was the
founder of the Thomas Hospital. He is a member
of the Presbyterian Church, and is a Mason of high
degree. His Masonic affiliations are with Enid Lodge
No. 80, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, Enid Chapter

No. 27, Royal Arch Masons, Enid Commandery No. 13,
Knights Templar, Council No. 35, Guthrie Consistory
No. 1, and Akdar, Ancient Arabic Order of the Noble
Mystic Shrine, of Tulsa Oklahoma.

In Salem, Arkansas, in the year 1901, was recorded
the marriage of Doctor Hinson to Miss Doeia Gault,
daughter of J. H. Gault, now living retired in Day,
Arkansas. They have three children: Amy, born Novem-
ber 15, 1902; Bruce Ratliff, born August 4, 1906; and
Kirk, born May 7, 1909.

Nathan A. Robertson. Among the men of Okla-
homa who have been connected with financial enter-
prises, few are more widely known than Nathan A.
Robertson, of Lawton. While his activities are centered
in this city, his connections are of such an extensive
nature that they include this entire part of the state.

Mr. Robertson was born in Appanoose County, Iowa,
January 30, 1855, and is a son of Moses C. and Elizabeth tlie

Jane (Streepey) Robertson. The Robertson family »!

originated in England, andi Mr. Robertson ’s great- in ;

grandfather was a participant in the Revolutionary War, jolil

while his great-uncle was the founder of the City of M

Nashville, Tennessee. Hiss

Moses C. Robertson was born in Tennessee, in 1811, Lesu

and at twelve years of age removed to Indiana, where In tl

he engaged in farming. He was a pioneer of Appa- Fniv

noose County, Iowa, in 1851, a strong Presbyterian and lege,

elder in the church, and a stalwart abolitionist. He died Aits,

at Cincinnati, Iowa, in 1889. Mr. Robertson was mar- taut

ried first to Mildred Pringle, who died in Indiana. His Horn

second wife was Elizabeth Jane Streepey, who was born of L;

in Indiana, in 1826, and died at Cincinnati, Iowa, in itoiy

1863, and they became the parents of five children, Lela,

namely : Edward, deceased, was a farmer and stockman lion a

of Cincinnati, Ohio; Nathan A., of this review; J. H., ulei

who was formerly a large farmer and stockman of ariou

Montana, and is now living retired at Butte, that state; take

M. M., who is a ranchman in Montana; and Charles ourse

Sumner, of Des Moines, Iowa, who was formerly a mer-
chant and traveling salesman, but is now engaged in the ]pai
real estate and insurance business. Moses C. Robertson lank c
was married a third time, his wife being a Miss Sheppard, atcd i
who died at Cincinnati, Iowa. id ^

The early education of Nathan A. Robertson was swta
secured in the public schools at Cincinnati, Iowa, where
he completed the high school course in 1871. At that
time he became a grain buyer for a concern of that plai e,
continuing as such until the year 1875, when he went to 1(.,?
Promise City, Iowa, and established himself in the grain j n,,e
and stock business, with which he was connected until ,Jr,,a
1910, when he disposed of his interests there. As early , e
as 1882 Mr. Robertson became interested in financial . s
matters, when he established a private banking business '
at Promise City, and from that time to the present he
has been an important figure in the financial world of
Oklahoma and Iowa. In 1895 he incorporated his bank ' ,ffl
at Promise City into the Farmers State Bank, continu- '
ing as its president until coming to Lawton, Oklahoma, » '
in 1910. In the meantime, in 1903, he had opened the ■ 5®!
Farmers and Commercial Bank at Cincinnati, of which r'
he is still president. At the present time he is a stock- ,,acatl
holder in the National Bank at Walter, Oklahoma, presi- J '“|a:
dent of the National Bank of Waurika, Oklahoma, and ^ ®
president of the National Bank of Hastings, Oklahoma, °’“l
a position which he has held since 1901. On coming to j,.11 ™
Lawton, in 1910, he became interested in the First
National Bank, and in that same year purchased the J
Oklahoma State Bank, which was consolidated, December
31, 1912, with the First National Bank, of which Mr. '
Robertson has been president since January, 1913. He

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2143

sent he

oild ofj

is ban®
tout®
Jahoma,
sued ft®
if which
a stock
ia,p®'
ma, and
Mai

oming to
lie M
teed* I

December
svhieh Mr.
1913. Se

is also president of the Citizens State Bank, of Geronimo,
Oklahoma, a director in the Bank of Tuttle, Oklahoma,
and president of the J. J. Brown Cotton Company, of
Lawton. There is probably no name in this part of
Oklahoma that stands in greater degree for integrity,
probity, honorable dealing and devotion to the highest
ethics of business life than that borne by Mr. Robertson.
He has been deeply interested in every movement which
has tended to secure the best interests of his community,
and with this end in view has been a hearty worker in
all elevating undertakings. With his family, Mr. Rob-
ertson is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
He belongs to Lawton Lodge No. 183, Ancient Eree and
Accepted Masons, of which he is past master; Centerville
(Iowa) Chapter, Royal Arch Masons; Centerville Com-
niandery, Knights Templar, and Za-Ga-Ziz Temple,
Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine,
and also holds membership in the Knights of Pythias and
the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. He is a member
and active worker of the Chamber of Commerce, and
in political matters is a republican, although not a
politician.

Mr. Robertson was married at Cincinnati, Iowa, to
Miss Emma Lesney, daughter of the late Jonathan
Lesney, a hardware merchant. Nine children were born
to this union, as follows: R. L., who attended Drake
University for three terms, a graduate of Parson’s Col-
lege, Fairfield, Iowa, with the degree of Bachelor of
Arts, and now engaged in the real estate business at
Lawton; Guy C., a graduate of C. C. C. College, Des
Moines, Iowa, and now cashier of the First National Bank
of Lawton; Cecile, a graduate of Des Moines Conserv-
atory of Music, who died at the age of twenty years;
Lela J., who lives at home; Mabel, a graduate of elocu-
tion at Drake University, a talented speaker and much
in demand at entertainments and public gatherings of
i various kinds; Pansy I., residing at home, a graduate of
Drake University, in music, who also took a four-year
course at Howard Hall; James B., residing with his
[parents; Nathan Ray, educated in the high school at
El Paso, Texas, and now cashier of the Citizens State
iBank of Geronimo, Oklahoma, and Rex Wayne, also edu-
cated in the El Paso High School, who is now secretary
and treasurer of the J. J. Brown Cotton Company, at
(Lawton.

i Harris L. Danner, of the law firm of Shirk & Danner,
[although still so young a man, has already attained an
enviable degree of prominence among the legal fraternity
of Oklahoma City. He has fairly earned the right to
bear the honorable title of self-made man, for from the
time he was fourteen years of age he has made his own
way in the world, educationg himself and making his
own opportunities. He was born at Astoria, Fulton
jCounty, Illinois, February 13, 1888, and is a son of
B. and Melissa (Moore) Danner, the father being of
Bsrerman descent and for many years an agriculturist in
the fertile fields of the Prairie state.

Reared amid rural surroundings, Harris L. Danner re-
ceived his early education in the country schools, while
|is vacation periods were spent in the work of the farm.
He became self-supporting at the age of fourteen years,
and when he had graduated from Rushville Normal
School, Rushville, Illinois, at the age of seventeen years,
fegan teaching school in Schuyler County, that state.
During the next three years, in addition to discharging
is duties in the school room, he accepted whatever honor-
tble outside employment presented itself, and also found
ime to devote to the study of law, finally being enabled
o enter the law department of the University of Indiana,
t Valparaiso, from which he was graduated with the

class of 1909 with the degree of Bachelor of Law and
was immediately admitted to the bar of Indiana, and
in the same year came to Oklahoma and was here admitted
by the Supreme Court, taking up his residence and prac-
tice at Oklahoma City. Shortly after his arrival, Mr.
Danner formed a partnership with John Shirk, under
the firm style of Shirk & Danner, and this combination
has continued to the present time, offices being maintained
at 604-610 Security Building. The firm carries on a
general practice, which has steadily increased in volume
and importance.

Mr. Danner is unmarried and resides at No. 1210
North Broadway, Oklahoma City.

Chester C. Clark. In education circles of Southern
Oklahoma, Chester C. Clark has, within recent years,
become known as a young man of energetic spirit, whose
zeal is leading him toward an elevation of educational
standards and whose abilities and talents undoubtedly
will bring him to a realization of his ambitions. Himself
an earnest, conscientious and untiring scholar, he is pos-
sessed of the happy faculty of being able to imbue others
with his own ideals, and the period of his incumbency
of the position of superintendent of schools of Pauls
Valley has been characterized by marked advancement in
system and efficiency.

Mr. Clark is a Kansan by nativity, born at Mayetta,
Jackson County, December 30, 1885, a son of Charles C.
and Alice (Morrow) Clark. His branch of the Clark
family originated in England and its early members
in this country were pioneers of Ohio. The Morrows
were of Scotch-Irish origin and early settlers of
Tennessee. Charles C. Clark was born in Southern
Ohio in 1852, and as a lad of five years accompanied
his parents to Leavenworth, Kansas, where he was
reared, educated and married. In 1884 he removed to
Mayetta, six years later went to Holton, in the same
state, and in 1899 took up his residence at Law-
rence, Kansas, from whence he came in 1901, to his
present home at Comanche, Oklahoma. He has devoted
his energies to agricultural work and at the present time
is the owner of a tract of 160 acres of valuable land
lying six miles west of Comanche on which he does
stockraising and diversified farming. Mr. Clark is a
republican and fraternizes with the Masons. He married
Alice Morrow, a native of Southern Missouri, and they
have had five children: Chester C., of this notice; Glenn,
a graduate of the Oklahoma State University at Norman,
where he was captain of the varsity football team,
and now head of the mathematical department of the
State Normal School at Ada, Oklahoma; Hazel, who died
aged one year; William, a graduate of the Oklahoma
State Normal University, at Norman, where, like his
brother, he captained the football team, and now a teacher
in the Shawnee High School; and Grace a graduate of
the State Normal School at Edmond, Oklahoma, now a
teacher in the Pauls Valley schools.

After attending the school at Holton, Kansas, through
the eighth grade, Chester C. spent two years in the
Lawrence (Kansas) High School, then returning to the
farm, where he assisted his father for four years, or
until 1905. He then resumed his studies as a student
at the Norman preparatory department of the State
University, being graduated from the university proper
in 1910, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Many of
the wiseacres are inclined to make us believe that ath-
letics and intellectual attainments cannot be formed into
a happy combination, but in refutation of this idea we
may state that the name of Clark is one idelibly in-
scribed upon the athletic annals of the university, while
the brothers bearing this name have all shown rare

2144

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

■worth and ability in the field of education. Like his
brothers, Chester C. Clark showed a wholesome desire
for athletics and his prowess upon the gridiron won him
a place in the hearts of students and faculty alike. He
played with the varsity team, and not only won his full
share of honors in the strenuous game of football, but
proved himself a valuable man in track events. During
the school year of 1910-11 he was principal of Cordell
(Oklahoma) High School, and in the summer of the
latter joined the United States Geological Survey, gain-
ing valuable experience during the four and one-half
months he spent in the service in Montana and North
Dakota. To further prepare himself, in October, 1911,
he entered Columbia University, New York, where for
three months he specialized in geology. The school year
1912-13 found him principal of Tishomingo (Oklahoma)
High School, and during the summer of the latter year
he was an instructor at the Ada State Normal School.
In the fall of 1913 he left this position to become prin-
cipal of the Pauls Valley High School, where his work
attracted such favorable notice that in September, 1914,
he was made superintendent of schools of Pauls Valley,
a position in which he has under his supervision three
schools, twenty-two teachers and 900 scholars. In the
summer of 1914 Mr. Clark took post-graduate work at
Chicago University, and in the summer of 1915 again
attended that institution, taking a course in educational
work. He is in line to receive the degree of Master of
Arts, in 1916. Popular, capable, and possessed of much
executive ability, Mr. Clark is undoubtedly doing great
things for the Pauls Valley schools, and, naturally, for
the future welfare and advancement of the community.

Mr. Clark is on the Garvin County Examining Board
for Teachers, and belongs to the Garvin County Teachers ’
Association and the Oklahoma State Teachers’ Associa-
tion. He is a democrat, a Methodist by religious faith
and a member of Valley Lodge No. 6, Ancient Free and
Accepted Masons, of Pauls Valley. He is unmarried.

D. C. Maher. One of the men of real business leader-
ship in Osage County is D. C. Maher, who has been
cashier of the Fairfax National Bank since its organiza-
tion. Mr. Maher has spent all his years since early
childhood in this part of Oklahoma and in point of resi-
dence is one of the oldest white citizens among the Osage
people.

He was born in St. Lawrence County, New York,
October 29, 1877, a son of John B. and Amelia (McEwen)
Maher. On both sides his grandparents came from Ire-
land. His parents were both born in northern New York,
and his father died at the home of his son in Fairfax
November 10, 1913, aged seventy-three. The mother
died at Pawhuska November 20, 1904, at the age of
fifty-nine. The family lived in New York until 1885,
when they moved to Indian Territory, and for about
twenty-five years the father managed the Leland Hotel
at Pawhuska. His later years were spent in practically
total blindness, and in spite of this affliction he knew
all the people around him by the sound of their voices
and their footsteps. He possessed a wonderful memory,
and was one of the kindly and loved characters of Paw-
huska. While living in the East he performed clerical
work and was a cattle buyer. D. C. Maher was the fifth
in a family of six children, record of the others being
as follows: Alice, wife of H. L. Cox of Cedarvale;

Ransom J. of Pawhuska; Daniel B. of Pawhuska; How-
ard M., who died October 5, 1912, at the age of thirty-
eight; and Bertha, wife of N. D. Sanders of Phoenix,
Arizona.

When the family removed to Indian Territory in 1885
D. C. Maher was eight years of age. He grew up in

Pawhuska, attended the subscription school there, ' and
the high school at Cedar Vale, Kansas, two years, but
since boyhood his life has been one of independent ven-
ture and of increasing commercial experience. At 17
years of age he went to work at Hominy, and was em-
ployed by the old Indian traders Read & Bopst for
about three years until that firm went out of business. ,
The following three years he worked for Prentice Price j
in mercantile business. It was during these associations s
that Mr. Maher gained his fluency and command of the ;■

Osage language and for years he has spoken it like a Cl

native. Mr. Maher in association with Mr. Price and f]
R. J. Inge bought a store at Cleveland and Maher & Inge j]

conducted this establishment for six years. They sold it j,

during the oil boom. For a time Mr. Maher was con-
nected with the oil industry. ,-0

In 1905 he came to Fairfax and soon afterward organ- al|
ized the Fairfax National Bank, which opened its doors
to business May 12, 1906. He has since been its cashier
and has much to do with the solid prosperity of this j0
institution. The bank was first housed in a frame build- jjr(
ing, but since 1910 has been in its fireproof and modern gj
bank home. The Fairfax National Bank is a strong ^
institution for a town of the size. Its total resources m
in June, 1916, according to the official statement at the .
time, were $154,491.02. It has capital stock of $25,000,
surplus of $5,000, undivided profits of $2,411.11. The "
deposits at that time were upwards of a hundred thou- «
sand dollars. The officers of the bank are: G. M. Car- „
penter, president; J. L. Bird, vice president; D. C. Ma- JjJ
her, cashier. n

Outside of banking Mr. Maher is also interested in ™

farming and stock raising and owns a well improved ,•
ranch on Dago Creek with about three hundred head of J'
cattle. He is a breeder of thoroughbred Herefords. He e?e(
is also secretary and one of the directors of the Big J
Hill Trading Company, Incorporated. ^

Politically his actions have always been in harmony ^
with republican policies and principles. He is a thirty-
second degree Scottish Rite Mason, a member of the L „ '
Mystic Shrine, and is also affiliated with the Benevolent . '
and Protective Order of Elks, August 10, 1904, Mr 1
Maher married Miss Genevieve Elwell. She was born Jm
in Leonardville, Kansas, December 24, 1885, a daughtei j|f
of Samuel Elwell. At their happy home in Fairfax thej ,,so
have four children: Madalene, Dyke C., Jr., .Don Elwel ! '!
and John P. lea°u

Charles D. Webber, now sheriff of Pawnee County ^esj
has had a career of many experiences, pleasant an< ™
otherwise, but all of an interesting character, both in th j e "
line of his official duties and as a traveling salesman f o #f aBl
large business houses. He first came to Oklahoma i . ,e,ie
1898, and with the exception of about three years ha ^ ®
continued to make his home in this territory and statf reP*
with headquarters in the larger cities, but since 190
has lived at Pawnee. ^ ,e

Born on a farm near Warsaw, Gallatin County, Kei ^ . Er’
tucky, February 14, 1870, Sheriff Webber is a son c aB
Virginius and Sally (Ellis) Webber. The family is < j r, 01
Scotch origin and for many years has been prominentl ^ ,.rs'
represented in Gallatin County, Kentucky. His grant J ?1
father Phillip Webber was an early settler there, ownt (j. V
extensive tracts of land and many slaves, was prom 11
nent in public affairs, and was the first county clerk < j ,ra
the county and held other offices besides. Phillip Webb g, ?„r '
was a man of unusual education for the times, partic ^ 5
larly in the line of mathematics, and completed an arit ^ 1

metic which was widely used as -a text book during h ’,p°
day in the public schools. Otherwise he was a qui< ^ ™ «
unassuming man with no desire for publicity, and ma a,

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2145

it a rule never to accept remuneration for his official
services. He and his wife had six children.

Virginius Webber was born on the homestead farm in
Gallatin County, Kentucky, and spent his entire active
career as a farmer. He is now living in quiet retirement
in his native county. His wife died in 1909. She was
| active in the Baptist Church, of which her husband is
also a member. During the Civil war Virginius Webber
spent two years in the Union army. He is a republican
in politics, and a man of substantial reputation in his
community, where his sterling integrity and probity of
character has won him the regard of his fellow citizens.
:: He and his wife were the parents of eight daughters and

1 five sons.

!l One of this large family of children, Charles D. Webber

found his early life one of mingled duty and pleasure,
and his first twenty-one years were spent on the old
rs Kentucky homestead. In the meantime he attended the
et public schools and on starting out independently went
!? to Illinois where he began work as a traveling salesman.

From Illinois he came to Oklahoma in 1898, locating at
!m El Reno. At that time he was district manager for the
lnS Singer Sewing Machine Company and had a number of
® men under him. With this force he covered the north
J half of Oklahoma and part of Indian Territory, selling
’ machines and making collections, and he or his men
e visited practically every Indian tribe in this section of
the country. It was a difficult as well as interesting
5' experience. In many localities railroads had not yet
a’ been built, and there Mr. Webber made his journeys in
, . a wagon. He slept under the wagonbed at night, and
, was more than once exposed to danger as well as hard-
. , ship. At the same time he gained an intimate knowl-
®Jj edge of the country, which has since been useful to him,
p.e and also became familiar with the habits and customs
of the Indians, among whom he made many friends.
While pursuing that business Mr. Webber had his home
at various places, including El Reno, South McAlester and
"T Guthrie. Later he moved to Salina, Kansas, from there
to St. Joseph, Missouri, and in 1909 took up his perma-
®" ' nent residence in Pawnee. Here he became traveling
i.“' representative for a wholesale grocery concern. A man
jom of great popularity on the road and among business men,
“» | he also gained the confidence and friendship of the people
^ j. of his home city, and in December, 1914 was elected to
k™ the office of sheriff of Pawnee County. After his election
he at once gave up his work on the road and began the
duties of his office January 4, 1915. As sheriff he has
.omity, si10WI1 himself an efficient and fearless officer, and has
"I * come through several desperate struggles with despera-
1 in the (]oes an(j had men with great personal credit. In one
11311 . of these fights a deputy, Robert Moore, was shot through
l0M ® : the heart.

ars a republican, Mr. Webber is one of the stalwart wheel
si 8®J t horses of his party in Pawnee County. He is an elder
“ “ ' in the Christian Church, of which his wife is also a
member, and she is very active in its work. Fraternally
ty, K® he is a member of the Masonic Order, the Independent
i son 0 Order of Odd Fellows, and the United Commercial
iljis® Travelers. A number of years ago while traveling over
minentl: the wild district of the southwest, Sheriff Webber ae-
is p®( quired a fondness for hunting, and he still takes great
:e, om® : delight in getting into the country with his gun and
is P'O® ! hounds, rarely returning without some fine specimens to
: ctak° show f0r his skill and prowess as a marksman.
p'Webhe Sheriff Webber was married February 15, 1891, ip
>, Gallatin County, Kentucky, to Miss Florence A. Rob-
[ an arito erts, who was born in that county October 8, 1862, a
during l1 daughter of John Samuel and Mary E. (Taylor) Rob-
; a q® erts. Both her parents died in Illinois, where they had
ail n® spent the last few years of their lives. Mr. and Mrs.

Webber had five children. Maude, who graduated from
the St. Joseph High School in Missouri, spent one year
in a college at Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and then taught
school four years, two years at Pawnee, was married
June 1, 1915, to Forest Ryan, and they now reside near
Glencoe in Payne County, Oklahoma. Ira Earl, the sec-
ond child, is a graduate of the Pawnee High School and
is now a student in Phillips University at Enid, Okla-
homa, preparing for the ministry of the Christian Church.
Florence Fern, is a graduate of the Pawnee High School
and is now teaching at Terlton, Oklahoma. Margaret
Esther is also a graduate of the Pawnee High School
and is a student in the Phillips University. Harry E.,
the youngest, is still pursuing his studies in the Pawnee
High School.

Hon. Milton M. Ryan. It was with a long experience
as an educator and civil engineer that Milton M. Ryan
was so highly qualified for the honor he reserved from the
Twenty-first Senatorial District in election to the Okla-
homa Senate in 1914. In contributing to the material
growth of his town, in championing and defending
measures of interest or organized labor, and in partici-
pating in the passage of laws affecting farmers and
other land owners, Senator Ryan proved himself both a
useful and patriotic Oklahoman.

A brief sketch of his career will indicate how well he
has utilized his opportunities. He was born in Whitley
County, Kentucky, June 6, 1860, a son of Joel and
Jennie (Creekmore) Ryan. The Ryan ancestry goes
back beyond the days of the American Revolution, is of
Irish stock, and members of the family were among the
colonists who traveled with Daniel Boone into Kentucky.
Joel Ryan was a native of Virginia, an early settler in
Southeastern Kentucky, a farmer and stock man, and
widely known as an advocate of free schools in a section
of Kentucky where education was backward for many
years. He died at the age of seventy-seven. The mother
of Senator Ryan was a native of Kentucky, descended
from a sturdy stock of farmers and stockmen, and died
at the age of eighty-four in Missouri, her body being
returned to the family burying grounds in Kentucky.
Senator Ryan has a sister and three brothers : Mrs.

Louisa Beard, the wife of a farmer in Crawford County,
Arkansas; James, a former police judge and real estate
dealer of Claremore, Oklahoma; J. C., superintendent of
schools at Portland, Oregon; and S. S., a farmer and
teacher in Benton County, Arkansas.

Senator Ryan was educated in the Kentucky public
schools, in 1879 entered the London Academy of that
state, was there one year, and for two years in the
Cumberland Academy at Williamsburg, Kentucky. Then
followed several years of teaching, and among his stu-
dents at that period was Charles Findlay, afterwards
secretary of state of Kentucky. While teaching in the
Cumberland Academy he also continued his academic
courses, and finished the work in mathematics, German
and French and lacked six months of completing the
course in Latin. After leaving school he took up the
profession of civil engineering, but after a year aban-
doned it in favor of educational work, and was teacher
for twenty-five years, four of which were in Kentucky,
thirteen in Arkansas and eight in Oklahoma. Mr. Ryan
located in Le Flore County, Oklahoma, in 1893, and his
last school work was as principal of the public schools
at Spiro. Senator Ryan is also a lawyer, having studied
law at home between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-
eight, and for a short time was in practice at Alma,
Arkansas. After giving up school work definitely at
Spiro, Mr. Ryan resumed his profession as engineer and
was the first elected county surveyor of Le Flore County.

2146

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Later for three years he was county assessor, refusing
the nomination for continued service at the end of his
last term. For a number of years he has been a munici-
pal and county leader in affairs, served as a member of
the board of trustees at Spiro, and in 1910 led a cam-
paign that resulted in the town voting $50,000 in bonds
to establish a municipal water and light system. Spiro
has a population of about 1,000, and the fight for the
bonds was won against the opposition of some of its
most influential citizens.

As a defender of labor issues, Senator Ryan made an
aggressive campaign for the national democratic ticket
in 1912, and gained a reputation over this part of the
state as a forcible and effective speaker. In 1914 he
was elected to the senate by a plurality of 771 over his
republican and socialist opponent, and was gratified by
receiving a larger vote than was cast for the state
ticket. In the senate he was made chairman of the Com-
mittee of Fees* and Salaries, and a member of committees
on Code Revision, Roads and Highways, Education, Public
Buildings, Oil and Gas, Drugs and Pure Foods, Fish and
Game and State and County affairs. In several of these
committees his own work and experience has made him
an invaluable member. He joined with Senator Camp-
bell Russell in preparing and securing the passage of
the graduated land tax measure and was author of a bill
pensioning Confederate soldiers, and, jointly with Rep-
resentative Council, prepared a bill rearranging a system
of taxation and providing that tax assessors should meet
tax payers at stated times for the returning of their as-
sessable property. He was a supporter of the rural
credits bill, and of other measures of interest to the
farming and laboring class.

Senator Ryan is now a resident of Poteau. He was
married June 24, 1883, in Crawford County, Arkansas,
to Miss Laura E. Ford. They have nine children living:
Wendell M., a printer in Poteau; Mrs. Hazel G. Adams,
wife of a bookkeeper and salesman of Pittsburg, Kansas ;
Leonard G., in Alaska; Flora A., a teacher in Poteau;
and Robert W., Louis M., Reba J., Berkley B., and Lucy
A., all at home with their parents. Senator Ryan is a
member of the Baptist Church and of the Woodmen of
the World, and belongs to the Oklahoma Association of
County Tax Assessors. His career as a teacher has been
especially gratifying in that a large number of his pupils
profited by his example and instruction and are filling
honorable and lucrative financial and professional
positions.

George H. Montgomery. There is much of romance
and considerable of tragedy contained in the history of
a large region of the Chickasaw Nation of which the
Washington ranch at Marietta was the center. Here for
nearly forty years Bill and Jerry Washington had their
activities among the leading live stock men of the South-
west. Near their ranches grew the little Town of
Marietta that prospered and reached the proportions of
a city of the first class between the years of the building
of the Santa Fe Railroad and the entrance of the terri-
tories into statehood. The history of the Washingtons
and of Marietta is another story, but a fragment of that
history is contained in the activities of George H. Mont-
gomery, of Valliant.

Mr. Montgomery was the first lawyer at Marietta,
whence he went in April, 1904, the year in which a
federal court was established there, and his practice m
federal courts for a few years was before Judge Hosea
Townsend and Judge J. T. Dickerson, who were assigned
consecutively to the Southern District of Indian Terri-
tory. After statehood, in 1907, Mr. Montgomery was
elected the first county judge of Love County, of which

Marietta had become the couuty seat, and which obtained
its name from Sobe Love, an Indian of parts and
much wealth, and a picturesque character into whose
family Jerry Washington married. Before he became
county judge Mr. Montgomery was asked to write the
will of Jerry Washington, which he declined because he
feared that later the will would come before him as
county judge, in which belief he was correct. J. R.
McCalla, of Marietta, Who was a member of the First
State Legislature, wrote the will, which, during the term
of office of Mr. Montgomery as county judge, was con-
tested by certain of the children of Jerry Washington,
unsuccessfully, however, and the estate of nearly $200,000
was divided as Jerry Washington had willed it.

Mr. Montgomery was born near Bells, Grayson County,
Texas, in 1873, and is a son of George H. and Martha
(Pritchett) Montgomery. His father, who was a native
of Tennessee, settled in Grayson County, Texas, near the
close of the Mexican war, in which two brothers who
preceded him to the Lone Star State, Purris and Atwood
Montgomery enlisted as soldiers and with General Scott
went to the City of Mexico. Prior to the Civil war,
George H. Montgomery, Sr., was a United States ranger
in Texas and later received a pension as reward for his
service in that capacity. His health did not permit him
to fight for the Confederacy and during the war his time
was largely given to the care of the wives and children
of those who were at the front. He lived in Grayson
County thirty-two years, and died in Hall County in
1906. The mother of George H. Montgomery, Jr., was
descended from a Virginia family from which several
educators of note came, among them Dr. Henry Pritchett,
and Professor Pritchett, former state superintendent of
education in Texas and president of the Sam Houston
State Normal School.

Most of the education received by George H. Mont
gomery was as a student of a private college conducted
by Prof. R. R. Halsell, now of Durant, Oklahoma, located
at Savoy, Texas. When he completed his education there
he became a teacher and taught for a number of yearsj
in Texas and Oklahoma, and for two years was in charg
of the school at Supply, Oklahoma, near the historic ol
post of Fort Supply. He taught also at Texline, Texas,
for two years, and while thus engaged applied himsel"
so steadfastly to the study of law that he was admitte
to the bar, and later .was elected prosecuting attorne;
of Dallam County. Mr. Montgomery recalls that whe:
he located at Dalhart there were but thirty-five voters
in the county, whereas two years later the vote exceede
1,200. He moved to Marietta, Indian Territory, in 1904
and after completing his term as county judge there
January, 1911, moved to Valliant, where he has sine
lived. Here he has served as city attorney, and is
the enjoyment of a large, important and lucrative pro!
fessional business.

Mr. Montgomery was married December 25, 1897, a|
Memphis, Texas, to Miss Pearl Pritchett, and they an
the parents of five children: Maude, who is seventee:
years of age; Joel, born in 1900; George H., Jr., bori
in 1903; William, aged ten years; and Rebecca Elizabetl

the hoi
'Smith,
[brother
[jeet we

'Cheroke
[he was s
lie

[been set
Other
[in Mr. i
fidelity
pu 1912,.
Served as

who is one year old. Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery anBwident

their children are members of the Presbyterian Churcl
He belongs to the McCurtain County Bar Associatioj
and the Oklahoma State Bar Association, and his fr:
ternal affiliation is with the local lodge of the Knighl
of Pythias.

J. P. Martin. In 1893 J. P. Martin came to Clev^
land, Oklahoma, and here started the first store that ws
operated in the city. It was a grocery in the beginnir
and later, in response to the incessant demand for a di

[deal of ai
the sti
'which he I
Bern in 8:
I Political
prof the
[■filiations
In 1897
Pen, „j,0
f Kansas

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2147

goods establishment of some sort, he added that end of
the business. Five years after the business was first
established Mr. Martin built his present store, adding
many facilities for the successful handling of his con-
tinually growing trade, and today six clerks are required
to handle the business, with his supervision. The build-
ing is a one-story affair, with a floor space of 25x125
feet, and is adequate to the proper display of the stocks
they handle. Mr. Martin has been successful, and has
made a name and a position for himself in the town
to which he came in its early days, and his prosperity
is the just reward of his business integrity and energy.

Mr. Martin was born in St. James, Maries County,
Missouri, on February 28, 1863, and he is a son of J. T.
and Clementine (Underwood) Martin. The father was
born in St. Louis County, Missouri, on December 25, 1814,
and died in Cleveland at the home of his son in 1906,
when he was ninety-two years old. He came of a family
noted for its longevity, many of the men of his name
having reached that fine old age. His wife, the mother
of the subject, died when J. P. Martin was one month
old, so that he was forever deprived of the love and
care that should have been his in childhood. J. T. Martin
was a farmer all his active life, carrying, on his business
in Missouri, his native state. Horse and mule buying
and trading formed an important part of his lifework.
He bought and sold in Missouri and Texas, driving his
purchases from one point to another, for his greatest
activity in that line was carried on prior to the days
when railroads made transportation a simple problem.
Before the war this thrifty Missourian sold goods on his
farm, conducting a primitive sort of general store at his
farm, and so adding much to the material comforts of
the farming people in his section, as well as adding some-
thing to his legitimate profits and prosperity. When
the war came on he disposed of that end of the business,
but still carried on his buying and trading.

This native Missourian had two wives. There were
nine children born of the first union, and three of the
second. J. P. Martin of this review was the last of
the nine.

Until he was eighteen years J. P. Martin lived at
home with his father, getting what education he might
in the primitive schools of that period, and helping on
the home farm. When he was eighteen he went to Fort
Smith, Arkansas, in company with his father and a
brother, and they farmed there until 1888, when the sub-
ject went to Arizona and was there for two years, being
engaged in operating the Arizona Ore Works at Prescott.
In 1893 he was induced to come to the opening of the
Cherokee Strip, and located in Cleveland, Oklahoma, and
he was so impressed with the possibilities for the future
that he established himself in business, as has already
been set forth in the opening paragraph.

Other activities than merchandising have had a share
in Mr. Martin’s attention, and he is president of the
Fidelity State Bank of Cleveland since its organization
in 1912.. In fact, he organized the bank and has since
served as a member of its directorate, as well as being
president of the concern. Mr. Martin has given a good
deal of attention to gas and oil interests in this section
of the state, and has located several paying properties,
which he has disposed of from time to time after getting
them in shape.

Politically Mr. Martin is a democrat and he is a mem-
ber of the Cleveland Presbyterian Church. His fraternal
affiliations are confined to the Knights of Pythias.

In 1897 Mr. Martin was married to Miss Gertrude
Diem, who was born in Pennsylvania in 1874, and came
to Kansas with her parents when a child of about five

years. Two children have been born to the Martins.
They are James Parvin, Jr., and Gertrude Maxime.

Mr. Martin is conducting the oldest mercantile estab-
lishment in Pawnee County, having started to carry on
business in a tent on September 16, 1893, when the
Cherokee Strip was first opened.

Among a number of family relics which Mr. Martin
has in his possession is the old Bible used by Thomas R.
Musick, a brother of his maternal grandmother. This
pioneer Missourian was a well known circuit rider in the
early days of Missouri and he organized and built the
Fee Fee Church in 1801, which was the first church built
in the Louisiana purchase, and is still standing on the
old rock road near St. Louis, Missouri. He is a devout
Christian and he spent his life in a labor of love that
was productive of such results as no man can estimate
in these later days.

Robert E. Edmisson has had a long and favorable
business experience in Western Oklahoma, particularly
in Beaver County, was in the grain and elevator industry
for some years, but now has an office at Gate, for the
handling of real estate and farm loans.

He was born November 11, 1883, at Conway, Missouri,
a son of George T. and Amanda M. (Stafford) Edmisson,
and a grandson of John George Edmisson, a native of
Kentucky. George T. Edmisson was born October 11,
1834, in a log house on a farm in Dallas County, Mis-
souri. Early in life he was a teacher, gained admission
to the bar at the age of twenty-four and at thirty-two
was representing as attorney in Missouri the St. Louis
and San Francisco Railway Company. He became one
of the leading lawyers of the state. He also served two
terms as county attorney of Dallas County, and was the
founder of the Town of Conway. He rose to the distinc-
tion of the 33rd and Supreme Degree in Scottish Rite
Masonry. He took that degree at a time when candidates
for the honor were required to go to Scotland to receive
the work. He was also a factor in democratic state poli-
tics in Missouri. His death occurred at Buffalo in that
state August 3, 1900. In 1872 George T. Edmisson mar-
ried Miss Stafford, whose father was Nathaniel Stafford,
a native of Kentucky. She was born in Dallas County,
Missouri, April 28, 1856. To their union were born ten
children, nine sons and one daughter. Those now living
are: Felix C., born October 28, 1876, and a merchant
at Centralia, Washington; George I., born April 14,
1880, and a farmer and stockman in Harper County,
Oklahoma; Robert E. ; Albert P., born November 8,
1886, engaged in merchandising at Larned, Kansas; and
Clarence R., born April 2, 1889, and a merchant at Gate,
Oklahoma.

Robert E. Edmisson spent his early youth at Buffalo,
Missouri. He attended public school there but at the
age of twelve went out to live with a brother in Colorado
Springs, Colorado, where he was graduated from the
high school in 1907. He then removed to Englewood,
Kansas, where for two years he was in mercantile pur-
suits and then with four brothers he engaged in the
grain business under the name Edmisson Brothers. This
firm had an elevator at Englewood, Kansas, and other
elevators and shipping points at Knowles, Gate, Rosston
and LaVerne, Oklahoma.

Mr. Edmisson sold out his business in the grain busi-
ness in 1912, and since then has devoted his time suc-
cessfully to the real estate and loan business. Frater-
nally he is a Mason. On October 2, 1907, at Englewood,
Kansas, he married Miss Minnie Edith Walden, daugh-
ter of William and Emma Walden. Mrs. Edmisson claims
Oklahoma as her native state. She was born January
1, 1891, in a sod ranch house owned by her father and

2148

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

located on Kiowa Creek at a point now in Beaver County.
Her birth occurred nearly three years before the opening
of the Cherokee Strip to settlement. Mrs. Edmisson spent
most of her early life in Kansas, and graduated from
the Englewood High School. They have one child,
Francis Albert, born May 15, 1911, at Bed Cliff,
Colorado.

Capt. Geokge W. Sutton, veteran of the Civil war,
long a practicing physician in Cleveland, Oklahoma, for
several terms a member of the Kansas and Oklahoma
State legislatures and a banker of prominence in Cleve-
land and Bartlesville, has had a varied and interesting
career, amply deserving of mention in this work.

Captain Sutton was born in Eising Sun, Indiana,
August 5, 1843, and is a son of Joshua and Sarah
(Wells) Sutton, natives of Pennsylvania and Ohio, re-
spectively.

Joshua Sutton, be it said, was a young man when
he left Pittsburg and sailed down the Ohio Biver seeking
adventure and a new home. He was still young when
he met and married Sarah Wells at Bising Sun, and they
lived there until 1868. In that year they moved to
Kansas, settling near Emporia, and there they passed
their remaining years. He was a farmer all his life,
and enjoyed a fair measure of success in that field.
They were the parents of seven children, four sons and
three daughters, three of whom are now living. Calvin,
the eldest, a farmer all his days, is deceased. Mary Ann
married first W. McIntyre, and second, B. Bodine and
is deceased. Lucy is deceased. Candice also died young.
The fifth child was George W., of this review. Bachel
married Mr. Bidland and lives in Gardner, Kansas.
Louis W. is a resident of Americus, Kansas. He served
in the Civil war, a member of Company H, One Hundred
and Forty-sixth Begiment Indiana Volunteer Infantry.

George W. Sutton lived with his parents on the home
farm until he enlisted in 1862 in Company E., Fiftieth
Indiana Volunteer Infantry. He served two years in
that regiment, and later was a member of Company I,
One Hundred and Thirty-ninth Indiana Volunteer In-
fantry, going out as a captain and serving until the close
of the war. He was in action at the battles of Mills
Springs, Kentucky, Shiloh, Three Days, and many other
important engagements, acquitting himself creditably on
all occasions.

Eeturning to pursuits of peace, the young captain
turned his attention to the study of medicine. He
studied first at Bising Sun and later at Cincinnati Col-
lege of Medicine and Surgery, receiving his M. D. de-
gree in 1867.

Captain Sutton, or Doctor Sutton, as he was then
called, began medical practice in Americus, Kansas, and
was there two years. He then went to Hartford, in the
same county and continued in practice there until the year
1889. In 1881 he was elected to the state legislature of
Kansas and served from 1881 to 1884, four successive
terms in all. In the year 1889 he was appointed Govern-
ment physician and served the Comanche, Wichita and
Osage tribes in that capacity from 1889 to 1893.

Following that period of public service, Doctor Sutton
resumed the practice of his profession,- and he was thus
engaged in Cleveland until a few years ago, when he
withdrew from that field of labor and since has devoted
himself to banking activities.

In 1900 he organized the First National Bank in
Cleveland and the First National Bank in Bartlesville.
He has been president of each bank since organization,
and is now a member of their respective directorates.
The First National Bank of Cleveland lias a capital
stock of $50,000, with deposits of more than $522,000,

and a surplus and undivided profits aggregating $40,-
449.50. The officers and directors of the bank are men
of high local standing, and the Bartlesville institution is
run according to the same high standard that is one
of the essentials of the Cleveland bank. Both banks
have fine homes, the Bartlesville concern bearing the repu-
tation of being the best housed bank in the state.

Doctor Sutton has been a lifelong republican, and
has done excellent party work wherever he has been
found. Since coming to Oklahoma he served one term
in the Territorial Legislature in the years 1893-4 and he
has served four terms as mayor of Cleveland. He was
one of those who layed out the townsite of Cleveland in
1893, and from then until now has been a leading spirit
in the affairs of the community city. He was regent of
the State University and president of the Board of
Begents for seven years, and has ever been the friend
of the schools and colleges of the state. He has been
financially interested in the Caney. Valley Oil Company,
and assisted in its organization. He is president of the
Coronado Oil Company of Cleveland, capitalized at
$50,000.

Doctor Sutton is a Mason since 1870, and has all
degrees known to Masonry. He organized and was
Master for six years of Hebron Lodge, Ancient Free and
Accepted Masons of Cleveland. He also is a member
of Grand Army of the Bepublic Post McPherson.

Doctor Sutton was married in Kansas in 1871 to Kate
King, and they have three children. Birdie is the wife
of Frank Boucher, cashier of the First National Bank
of Bartlesville. Dr. F. B. Sutton is a practicing physi-
cian in Bartlesville. Leila is the wife of W. H. Boles,
assistant cashier of the First National Bank of Cleve-
land.

The family have membership in the Methodist Epis-
copal Church. Mrs. Sutton is a prominent club woman,
and is now president of the Mistletoe Club, and has been
its president for ten years. She is also active in Eastern
Star work.

Bichard T. Hope. Born in Wisconsin and reared and
educated in Kansas, Mr. Hope has been a resident of
Oklahoma since 1892 and is now one of the successful
and highly esteemed representatives of the agricultural
interests of Pawnee County, where he owns a well im-
proved landed estate of 160 acres, in section 24, town-
ship 20, range 16, east, he being the only white man
who has occupied the place and having purchased the
property from the man who had filed claim to the same
when this section was thrown open to settlement.

Bichard Thomas Hope was born in Bacine County,
Wisconsin, on a farm near the City of Bacine, which
was then a mere village, and the date of his nativity
was March 6, 1856. He is a son of Thomas and Mary
Ann (Turner) Hope, both of whom were born and reared
in Gloucestershire, England, where their marriage was
solemnized and whence they immigrated to the United
States in 1849. They remained in the State .of New
York about two years and in 1851 they numbered them-
selves among the pioneers of Bacine County, Wisconsin,
where the father was engaged in farming for several
years. He then removed with his family to Missouri,
where he remained one year, and in November, 1858, he
set forth for Linn County, Kansas, the devoted wife
and mother dying while enroute and being laid to rest
in the cemetery at Bose Hill, St. Louis County, Missouri.
Proceeding to his destination, Thomas Hope became a
pioneer settler in Linn County, Kansas, where he took
up Government land and instituted the reclamation of a
farm, this homestead continuing to be his place of resi-
dence until his death; he died at the age of eighty-four.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2149

In his native land he had succeeded his father in the
local public office of road builder, and there he also
followed for some time the trade of stone mason, his
activities in this trade having continued also after he
came to the United States. He and his wife were reared
in the faith of the Church of England, but about 1860
he became identified with the Spiritualist organization,
to the tenets of which he held zealously during the
remainder of his life. Prior to his marriage, in 1843, he
had made a trip to America and passed two years in
the Dominion of Canada, where he taught in the common
schools and also in Sunday school. He was a man of
strong conviction, alert mentality and impregnable in-
tegrity in all of the relations of life. He was earnest
in the support of the cause of temperance and his gentle
and appreciative ideals were shown in his surpassing love
of Nature and especially of flowers. Of his children the
eldest is John, who still resides) in Linn County, Kansas;
Edwin is a resident of Colorado, and these two children
were born in England. Sarah, the first to be born after
the immigration to the United States, died in infancy,
as did also the next child, a son; Elizabeth is the wife
of Martin Van Buren Donley, of Pendleton, Oregon;
Richard T., of this sketch, was the next in order of
birth; and George died at the age of four years.

Richard T. Hope was about two years of age at the
time of the family removal to Linn County, Kansas,
where he was reared to manhood on the old homestead
farm, in the work and management of which he con-
tinued to be associated with his father until he had
attained to the age of thirty-two years, when he en-
gaged in independent operations as a farmer in the same
vicinity. There he became a prosperous farmer and
there he continued his residence until the autumn of 1892,
when he came to Oklahoma Territory and established
himself as a farmer in Lincoln County. In 1893 he “made
the run” at the opening of the Cherokee Strip, but
failed to obtain a claim, and in the spring of 1894 he
purchased the claim which constitutes his present home-
stead farm, all of the improvements on which have been
made by him. He gives his attention to diversified agri-
culture and stock raising, and has extended oil leases on
his land. He takes loyal interest in all that touches the
welfare of the community, though never a seeker of public
office, and in politics he is an ardent socialist.

In 1888 Mr. Hope wedded Miss Kate Witchey, who was
born at Lanark, Carroll County, Illinois, on the 26th of
June, 1867, and whose parents removed to Kansas in the
autumn of the following year. She is a daughter of
Jacob and Mary (Eox) Witchey, both natives of Ger-
many. Mr. Witchey died in Kansas in 1880 at the age
of seventy, and his widow still resides in Linn County,
that state, he having been one of the pioneer farmers
of that county. Mr. and Mrs. Hope became the parents
of six children, of whom two are deceased: Byron, who

died at the age of sixteen months, and Elston, who passed
away at the age of three years. The surviving children
are: Yiola, Stanley, Harvey and Edna. Miss Viola

has been a successful and popular teacher in the public
schools of Pawnee County since 1911, and the family is
one of special prominence and popularity in connection
with the social activities of the community.

Elbert I. Haworth, now editor and owner of the
Gate Valley Star at Gate, has been closely identified
with this section of Western Oklahoma for a number of
years and before taking up the newspaper business was
a successful teacher. He is succeeding in making his
newspaper an organ of influential journalism in Beaver
County, and has all the qualifications for the successful
journalist.

Mr. Haworth was born February 12, 1889, on a farm
in Republic County, Kansas, a son of John H. and
Harriet (Baker) Haworth, both of whom were natives
of Iowa and were married in 1881. John Haworth was
born October 15, 1855, on a farm in Warren County,
Iowa, and has spent his life as a farmer and as a
minister of the Society of Friends. He is still active
as a farmer and minister and lives in Beaver County,
Oklahoma. His wife, who was born in Iowa, March 27,
1858, a daughter of John S. and Sarah (George) Baker,
was a teacher for a number of years prior to her mar-
riage, and she is also a devout Quaker in religion. They
became the parents of four children, three sons and one
daughter, namely: Ralph C., born December 27, 1882,

now engaged in farming in Lipscomb County in the Texas
Panhandle; Floyd C., born June 5, 1887, is now a mem-
ber of the regular United States army and as employed
in recruiting service; Elbert' I.; and Cora E., born
April 1, 1893, and married April 13, 1910, M. J. Keck, a
farmer in Wood County, Oklahoma, and they have a
child Zola born February 11, 1911.

Reared in the wholesome atmosphere of a Quaker
family, Elbert I. Haworth finished his education in the
Friends Academy at Ingersoll, Oklahoma. Prior to 1916
he taught seven terms in Beaver County, and during
1912-13 was a member of the County Examining Board
for Teachers. In 1913 he bought the Gate Valley Star
and is now giving all his time to its management both
in the editorial and business department. Mr. Haworth
is a member of the Society of Friends. On April 3, 1910,
in Beaver County he married Miss Zela DeGroodt, daugh-
ter of J ohn W. and Ella (Sharp) DeGroodt, natives of
Iowa. Mrs. Haworth was born August 1, 1893, in Lynn
County, Kansas. To their union have been born two
children: Elver H., born February 5, 1911; and Pauline

De, born December 13, 1914.

Thompson B. Ferguson. It lias been given to Hon.
Thompson B. Ferguson to play a large and benignant
part in the annals of Oklahoma history, and his loyal
services found their apotheosis during the period of his
admirable administration as governor of the territory,
within the borders of which he established his residence
in 1890, the year that marked the organization of Okla-
homa Territory, so that, aside from his activities in
public affairs, his is the honor of being a pioneer of this
vigorous young commonwealth. His being called to the
office of governor constitutes in itself ample voucher for
his ability, his civic loyalty and public spirit and his
strong hold upon popular confidence and esteem. In
1892, at the judicial center and now thriving metropolis
of Blaine County, he founded the Watonga Republican,
of which he has since continued the editor and publisher
and which he has made one of the representative news-
papers of the state, with wide influence in political and
general public affairs and with the best of service in the
exploiting of local interests and in formulating and
directing popular sentiment and action.

On a pioneer farm in Polk County, Iowa, Mr. Ferguson
was born on the 17th of March, 1857, and in the agnatic
line he is a scion of fine old Scottish ancestry, being a
descendant of James Ferguson, who in company with
two of his brothers, immigrated from Scotland to
America in the colonial period of our national history,
representatives of the name in later generations having
been conspicuous in connection with the development
and civic and material progress of various of the younger
states of the Union.

Mr. Ferguson is a son of Abner and Hannah (Atkin-
son) Ferguson, the former of whom was born in
Mahoning County, Ohio, in 1823, a member of a sterling

2150

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

pioneer family of that section of the Buckeye State,
and the latter of whom was a representative of a family
early founded in Indiana, in which state she was born
in 1831, her death having occurred in Kansas, in 1861,
and her husband, who contracted a second marriage ulti-
mately, having survived her by nearly forty years, his
death having occurred at Emporia, Kansas, in 1900.

Abner Ferguson, a man possessed of the strong men-
tality and sterling character typical of the sturdy race
from which he was sprung, was reared and educated in
his native state, under the conditions and influences of
the pioneer epoch in Ohio history, and as a young man
he went to Henry County, Indiana, where his marriage
was solemnized. He continued his residence in the
Hoosier State until his removal to Iowa. He became one
of the pioneer settlers in Polk County, where he obtained
government land and engaged in farming and stock
growing. In 1860 he removed with his family to
Emporia, Kansas, and shortly afterward he engaged in
agricultural pursuits and stock raising in that vicinity.
He was later identified with the same basic industries
in other parts of the Sunflower State, but he passed the
closing period of his life in the City of Emporia, as
previously noted in this context. In 1889, when Okla-
homa was first thrown open to settlement, he came to the
new territory, where he remained only a short time. He
came again to the territory in 1891, but in 1893 he re-
turned to Kansas, where he passed the residue of his
long and worthy life. He was a resident of Kansas at
the inception of the Civil war, and he represented that
state as one of the loyal and gallant soldiers of the
Union, his service, as a member of the Sixteenth Kansas
Volunteer Infantry, having covered a period of nearly
three years, within which he took part in numerous
engagements marking the progress of the great conflict
through which the integrity of the nation was preserved.
After the close of the war, in 1866, he took part in an
engagement with hostile Indians, on Powder River, Kan-
sas, and his fortune it was to be wounded at this time,
though he had escaped severe wounds during his prior
and prolonged military service in the Civil war. Abner
Ferguson was aligned as an uncompromising advocate of
the principles of the republican party, was affiliated with
the Grand Army of the' Republic, the Masonic fraternity,
and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, his religious
faith having been that of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, of which he was a member for many years, the
wife of his youth and younger manhood having likewise
been a devout member of this church. They became the
parents of five children: Emeline is the wife of Harry

Butler, of Cleveland, Pawnee County, Oklahoma, and
her husband is a prosperous farmer and dairyman of
that locality; Isaac, who became one of the substantial
agriculturists of Oklahoma, died at Skiatook, Tulsa
County, at the age of fifty-five years ; Ruth is the wife of
' Enoch Childers, a retired farmer, and they maintain their
home in the City of Emporia, Kansas, where Mr. Childers
continues his activities in the handling of blooded live-
stock; the former governor of Oklahoma, Thompson B.,
of this review, was the next in order of birth; and Mary,
who became the wife of Charles Herron, died at Sherman,
Cherokee County, Kansas, Mr. Herron being now a
resident of Crawford County, that state, where he is a
substantial farmer.

Thompson B. Ferguson gained the major part of his
early educational discipline in the public schools of
Emporia, Kansas, where he received the virtual equivalent
of a high school course, and thereafter he completed his
academic education in the Kansas State Normal School
at Emporia, in which he was graduated as a member of
the class of 1884. He put his scholastic acquirements to

practical test and use by turning his attention to the
pedagogic profession, of which he became a successful
and popular representative as a teacher in the public
schools of Wauneta and other places in Chautauqua
County, Kansas. He also did effective service as an
instructor at the teachers’ institute held at Sedan, the
judicial center of that county. He continued his
pedagogic activities in the Sunflower State until 1890,
when he identified himself fully and loyally with the
newly organized Territory of Oklahoma, with no thought
that here he would eventually be called upon to serve as
chief executive of a great and prosperous commonwealth
of the Union. In the preceding year, which had marked
the opening of .the territory to settlement, he had come
here and obtained a claim of 160 acres, on Deep Fork,
about eight miles distant from Oklahoma City. This
claim he gave to his father, and in the spring of 1892
he established his permanent home at Watonga, the
judicial center of Blaine County. He has been essentially
and emphatically one of the founders and builders of
this now prosperous and progressive little city, and here,
on the 18th of October, 1892, he established the Watonga
Republican, of which he has since continued editor and
publisher. He has today one of the well equipped news-
paper and job printing plants of Oklahoma, and the
Republican has prestige and influence as one of the
strong pioneer papers of Western Oklahoma, its circula-
tion being of representative order throughout Blaine
and surrounding counties, besides which its general 'ex-
cellence and its strong editorial utterances have given it
also a very appreciable state circulation of general order
and its friends and supporters have caused its list of
subscribers outside of Oklahoma to reach proportions by
no means insignificant. It is needless to say, by reason
of its name and the marked prominence of its proprietor
in the domain of Oklahoma politics, that the policy of the
Republican is fundamentally that of furthering the
cause of the republican party, of which Mr. Ferguson
has been and continues one of the most prominent and
influential representatives in the state.

During the entire period of his residence in Okla-
homa Mr. Ferguson has shown a vital interest in all that
has touched or tended to further the civic and industrial
development and progress of the state — both under the
territorial regime and since its admission to the Union.
He has been personally and through the columns of his
paper a leader in popular thought and action in this
vigorous young commonwealth, and his influence has
always been guided by the highest loyalty, by broad and
well fortified convictions concerning governmental af-
fairs and general public polity, and by an insistent desire
to bring the state up to the highest possible standard in
all things that make for a splendid and prosperous com-
monwealth. From 1895 to 1897 Mr. Ferguson was an
active and prominent member of the Oklahoma Terri-
torial Historical Society. In 1900 he was elected gov-
ernor of the territory, his inauguration as chief executive
taking place in the spring of 1901, and his retirement
from office occurring on the 15th of January, 1906, so
that he was the last of the territorial governors of Okla-
homa, his admirable administration having become an
integral part of the history of the state, with due record
concerning the same, so that it is unnecessary in this
connection to enter into details concerning his regime as
governor. For nearly three years, under the administra-
tion of Governor Cruce, Mr. Ferguson was the republican
member of the state election board. While a resident
of Chautauqua County, Kansas, he served four years
as a member of the board of teachers ’ examiners for
the county, and in 1899 he held a similar position in
Blaine County, Oklahoma. He attends and gives liberal

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2151

support to tlie Methodist Episcopal Church at Watonga,
of which his wife is a zealous member.

At Wauneta, Chautauqua County, Kansas, in June,
1885, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Ferguson to
Miss Elva Shartel, a daughter of the late David E.
Shartel, who was a representative farmer of that county
and who also served as county superintendent of schools.
In conclusion is entered brief record concerning the
children of Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson: Walter Scott, who

was graduated in the military academy at Wentworth,
Missouri, and who afterward completed a three years’
course in the University of Oklahoma, is now editor and
publisher of the Cherokee Republican, at the county seat
of Alfalfa County, and is well upholding the journalistic
prestige of the family name ; Rowena died at the age of
fifteen months, the family home at the time having been
at Wauneta, Kansas; Tom Shartel, who was graduated
in the Watonga High School and thereafter continued his
studies for one year in the Methodist University at
Guthrie, is now his father’s valued assistant in the office
of the Watonga Republican; Norna died at Sedan, Kan-
sas, when two years of age; and Effie was 3% years old
at the time of her death, which occurred at Watonga,
in 1899.

John Scrughan. An educator like every other pro-
fessional man must be judged by the results of his work.
For a city of its size Tonkawa has about as complete a
school system and as perfect an organization for the
efficient training of young citizens as can be found in
the State of Oklahoma. This high standard of scholastic
organization has frequently been attributed to the work
of John Scrughan, who has been superintendent of the
public schools of that city since 1910. The home of the
schools and the center of his activities is a handsome
$25,000 building, containing ten rooms, and with a
teaching staff of ten instructors, presided over by Mr.
Scrughan. The total enrollment of pupils is 425, and
there is a well organized high school and in 1914 there
were thirty-six graduates, Superintendent Scrughan
having watched over this class from its entrance into
high school until its graduation. Mr. Scrughan has
vitalized the work of the school and has gathered about
him a splendid corps of teachers. Mr. Scrughan suc-
ceeded as superintendent of the Tonkawa schools R. L.
Johnson.

John Scrughan has had a long record as an educator
beginning in country schools back in Illinois, where he
was born on a farm in Richland County, January 4, 1864.
His parents were George and Nancy Scrughan, sub-
stantial farmers and stock raisers in the Prairie State.
They occupied the same homestead in Richland County
for fifty-three years, and in that old home reared their
'five children, four sons and one daughter, all of whom
are living in Illinois except John.

His early life was divided between the farm and
country school, and he learned the lessons of industry
and honor at home in addition to the instruction of a
formal nature given in the schools. He studied at home
and completed his education in the Valparaiso Univer-
sity in Indiana. His career as a teacher began in country
schools, and later he was in the city schools in Clay
County, Illinois, and in 1907 came to Oklahoma as one
of the teachers at Coalgate. Three years later he came
• to Tonkawa to accept the superintendency and for the
past five years has largely built up the school system to
its present admirable condition.

In Clay County, Illinois, June 20, 1888, Mr. Scrughan
married Olive L. Speers, a woman of education and cul-
ture, who has been a capable assistant to him in his
work and also an admirable home maker. Her parents

were B. R. and Emma Speers. Mr. and Mrs. Scrughan
have three children: Bertha May, who is now a teacher

in the public schools at Newkirk, Oklahoma; Mabel
Agnes, a senior in the University of Oklahoma at Nor-
man; and Raymond, still in the public schools. Mr.
Scrughan is a republican in politics, affiliates with the
Independent Order of Odd Fellows and is a member of
the board of trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Isaac S. Drummond. The subject of this sketch was
born in Jefferson County, Ohio, April 28, 1836. He is
of Scotch-Irish stock, his father having been born in
Ireland. His parents died when ‘ ‘ Ike ’ ’ was very young,
and he was left to ‘ ‘ rustle ’ ’ for himself, having neither
home nor guardian. He lived among the farmer folk
in Harrison County, Ohio, earning his ‘ ‘ keep ’ ’ by doing
chores and any sort of work that a boy between eight
and eleven years of age could do.

A month before he was eleven years old he apprenticed
himself to Alexander Hall, of the Village of Great West-
ern, in Belmont County, Ohio, to learn the .printing
trade. Mr. Hall was a very prominent preacher in the
Christian Church, a writer of distinction, and a noted
debator of religious subjects. He was not yet thirty
years old, but had written several books, and was the
author of ‘ ‘ Universalism Against Itself, ’ ’ a book that did
much to curb the belief in universal salvation, regard-
less of the kind of life a man had lived.

Young Drummond served his apprenticeship of five
years with Hall, who was at that time (1848) publishing
a monthly religious magazine named The Gospel Procla-
mation. The printing office was well equipped for that
age. There were but few of the modern conveniences,
such as are found in almost all offices in these days, but a
boy had to graduate in every branch of the art, from
rolling the forms and making the rollers, to composition,
proofreading, advertising and job work, stereotyping and
wood letter cutting. Until he could show good grades
in all departments he was not considered a printer. There
were no power presses or rotary job presses in those days.

All the education young Drummond received until
after the end of his apprenticeship he “dug” out of
Mr. Hall’s library. Mr. Hall owned a fine, big library,
and he kindly granted the boy the use of it, and some-
times gave him some guidance in his reading. After his
apprentice days were over he tried for further education
at two or three advanced schools, or academies, paying
good prices for all the instruction he received. There
were no free schools in those days.

After he got his free papers he traveled to larger
towns and worked in other offices to complete his trade,
as was the rule in that age.

At the age of twenty-four years he married Miss
Rebecca White, at Brighton, Iowa. From that time on,
Drummond ’s life was very like that of the average
American. He served in the Union army during the
Civil war of ’61 to ’65. After the war lie worked in
various book and newspaper offices owned by other men;
was editor, compositor, job and ad man; then bought
and run newspapers and job offices in Iowa, Kansas,
Texas and Oklahoma.

In his newspaper work Mr. Drummond has mostly
been on the frontier, and did much to help settle the
great Southwest. He has not done much writing during
the past five years, except on special subjects for news-
papers and magazines. However, his work is not yet
done, even if he is more than four score years old.

His beloved wife died suddenly some ten years ago,
but he has six children living, namely: Franz S.

Drummond, editorial writer and printer, now located in
the State of Washington; A. L. (Link) Drummond, ex-

2152

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

newspaper man, Christian minister and lawyer, Norton,
Kansas; W. I. Drummond, chairman of the Board of
Governors of the International Farm Congress, Enid,
Oklahoma; George L. Drummond, editor and proprietor
of The Glendale News, Glendale, Oregon; Mrs. Clara
Smith, teacher of music, Beaver, Oklahoma; Mrs. Mary
L. Keith, music teacher, Protection, Kansas. All of the
children learned the printers’ trade, the girls being
expert compositors.

Frank M. Wheeler. In the wonderful oil country of
Creek County, Oklahoma, now conceded to be the biggest
producing field in the world, one of the pioneers was
Frank M. Wheeler, on whose property, now a part of
Drumright, the first well was drilled. Mr. Wheeler is a
self-made man, having spent the early years of his life
at the stonecutter’s trade prior to taking up agriculture
and securing the land upon which oil was discovered
solely through his own efforts. While he still maintains
his office at Drumright, he makes his home at Stillwater,
where li£ is connected with a number of interests and
takes an active part in civic affairs.

Mr. Wheeler was born in Ross County, Ohio, June 22,
1857, and is a son of A. J. and Elizabeth (Smith)
Wheeler. His father was a native of Ohio, and was
married in that state, the mother having been born in
Virginia and taken by her parents to Ohio as a child.
After their marriage Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler moved to
Pike County, Illinois, in 1865, and there Mrs. Wheeler
died .in 1870, when her son, Frank M., was thirteen years
old. Subsequently the father went to Texas, where he
engaged in farming, and died at Worth, in that state,
when seventy-nine years of age. Of the seven children
in the family, five were reared to maturity: John B.,

who is deceased ; Frank M. ; Everett, a resident of
Kansas City, Missouri; Ollie White, who died at the
age of twenty-two years, leaving one child; and Susie,
who is the wife of Charles Wampler, of Kansas City,
Missouri.

Frank M. Wheeler was educated in the public schools of
Ohio and Illinois, and after the death of his mother
learned the trade of stonecutter. In the winter of 1874-5
he went to Kansas, and following that worked all over
Kansas, Colorado, Utah and Arkansas, following his
trade. In 1891 he secured a claim in the Sac and Fox
country, now in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, but continued
to work at his vocation for several years more, in 1894
turning his attention to farming and stockraising. He
continued to operate his Lincoln County property until
the railroad was built through, when he disposed of his
land at a profit, and this now comprises the present
townsite of Agra. At that time he bought another prop-
erty two miles north, on which he lived for eight years,
and March 16, 1910, purchased a quarter section of land
• in Creek County, which now forms a part of Drumright.
The lease on his farm was the first in the Cushing oil
field, there was drilled the first well, and this was made
payable to Mr. Wheeler when oil began running. The
new sand taken from this well was named in his honor,
and Wheeler sand has since become famous. Mr.
Wheeler now has fourteen wells on this quarter section
of land, and at times has produced as much as 3,500
barrels daily. In recent years he platted forty acres,
known as Wheeler ’s First Addition to Drumright, a
locality which is now almost entirely built up. He is the
owner of a stock ranch of 1,200 acres, near Foraker, in
Osage County, and owns also farm and residence prop-
erties in five counties of Oklahoma. In August, 1912,
Mr. Wheeler came to Stillwater to make his home, and
his residence, at No. 232 Duncan Street, is the finest in
the city. Politically a democrat, he has not been an office

seeker, but has at all times shown an interest in the
welfare of his city and its institutions. He is a firm
believer in the value of education, and his children have
been given the best advantages available.

Mr. Wheeler was married in 1881 to Miss Hannah E.
Fritch, a native of Indiana and a daughter of B. Fritch,
and to this union there have been born nine children:
Luella May, who is the wife of Arthur Pratt, of Pot-
tawatomie County, Oklahoma; Carrie, the wife of Bert
Evans, who is superintending the operations on Mr.
Wheeler’s ranch in Osage County; Josie, the wife of
Robert Spartman, of Pottawatomie County; Maude, who
is the wife of James Weaver, of Creek County, Okla-
homa; Frank, who is employed on the Osage County
ranch; Pearl, Blanche and Birdie, who are all attending
the Agricultural and Mechanical College, at Stillwater;
and Babe.

Shirley Chapman. A veteran • Oklahoma newspaper
man, Shirley Chapman, now of Oklahoma City, is asso-
ciated with the Oklahoma Publishing Company, pub-
lishers of the Oklahoman, the Times and the Farmer-
Stockman. He has been connected with a number of
different newspapers in Western Oklahoma, and has the
distinction of having helped publish and bring out the
first paper ever issued in the Cherokee Strip.

He was born February 3, 1874, at Pleasant Hill,
Missouri, the youngest of the four children of Benjamin
Franklin and Alma W. (Welch) Chapman. His father
was born September. 27, 1832, in Vermont, was a con-
tractor and builder, and followed that business in a
number of different localities until 1889, when he joined
the first rush of settlers in Oklahoma. Going to El Reno,
he secured a claim three miles south of the city and
soon became prominent and well known in local affairs.
During the early days there he served as a justice of the
peace. His wife, Alma W. Welch, was born in Russell-
town, Canada, November 25, 1836. Of their children
the three besides Shirley were: Hermione L., who has

for many years been a successful teacher in Missouri,
Kansas and Oklahoma, and is still living unmarried with
his parents at El Reno; Alma is the wife of David T.
Slatten, a farmer of Bethany, Missouri; and Leonora,
who died in infancy.

Shirley Chapman obtained most of his education in
the public schools of Sedalia, Missouri. When fourteen
years of age he began learning the printing trade at
Wichita, Kansas, and in the following year, when he
came with his parents to El Reno, this experience opened
for him an opportunity at employment on some of the
first papers established in that city.

In 1893, with the opening of the Cherokee Strip, he
and Frank L. Grove established and printed the first
newspaper ever issued in the Cherokee Strip after the
opening. It was the Daily Enterprise of Enid. The
first copies of the Enterprise came from the press on
Monday, September 18th, two days after the opening.
After settlement there Mr. Chapman became editor and
publisher of the Waukomis Wizard at Waukomis, but
at the end of two years he sold that paper and re-
turned to his old home at El Reno. Here he was editor
of the Daily Star and Weekly Herald until 1902, and
beginning in 1905 was for four years city editor of the
El Reno Daily American. In 1915 he came to Oklahoma
City, where he has since been associated with the Okla-
homa Publishing Company. He is active in newspaper
circles, has a wide acquaintance with newspaper men all
over the state, and is one of the honored figures in
Oklahoma journalism.

Mr. Chapman is also well known for his activities in a
musical way. For a number of years he was instructor

tai

me;

]

viei
! eng
Hei
olio
' com
mea
[advi
pern
fellc
tot
enga
M

Sara

Tie

Jan

eniig

New

on a

pursu
occur;
Septe
%
Eiizal
and (
marrii
Missoi
of Le;

Hen

about

time.

accordi;

film in
iipholdi

Ttis em
N dev

the (

partners

continue

dm*
ifter ifc

January,
Osage al

City

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2153

e and leader of a band and orchestra at El Eeno, and

J has done much to organize and promote musical enter-

e tainment in El Eeno and several other cities of the state.
He is unmarried, is a charter member of El Eeno Lodge,
No. 743, Benevolent Protective Order of Elks, and is a
'> member of the Episcopal Church.

i.
){
10 ■
a-
*7
>S

KF 1

so-

ib-

er-

the

i,;.

nk ■

her

ion-

i a !

icd

cno,

and

iiis.

the

sell- |
ta
has; jj
ouri,
with

dT.
iota, I

in in
rteea
leat
a he
lened
(the

p,he
first
ir the
The

S3 01

eniig.
n aid .

s, b«t !

idle- t
editor 1
!, aid
of the \
ahoina
Okli- *

lies in

iceiiii

tractor-

Henry Clay. One of the oldest residents of the
vicinity of Bartlesville, where for many years he was
engaged in a blacksmithing and general repair business,
Henry Clay is now engaged in farming on a leased Osage
allotment, located 2% miles northwest of the city. He
came to this part of the country practically without
means, and through industry and constant effort has
advanced himself steadily to a position of financial inde-
pendence and a place of esteem in the minds of his
fellow citizens. His career is illustrative of the rewards
to be gained through honest labor and fidelity to the
engagements of life.

Mr. Clay is a native of the Empire State, born in
Erie County, February 24, 1854, a son of John and
Sarah (Crispin) Clay, natives of Lincolnshire, England.
The father was born March 18, 1819, and the mother
January 7, 1820, and not long after their marriage they
emigrated to the United States, locating first at Buffalo,
New York, in 1846. Seeking the better opportunities
offered by the West, in 1854 John Clay, who was a
farmer, took his family to the State of Iowa, where he
lived for sixteen years. In 1870 he moved on to Kansas,
locating in the vicinity of Coffeyville, where he settled
on a farm and continued to be engaged in agricultural
pursuits during the remaining years of his life, his death
occurring in July, 1882. Mrs. Clay survived him until
September, 1905, and died at Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
They were the parents of four children, as follows:
Elizabeth, deceased, who was the wife of Mr. Paxon
and was born in England; Anna, born in New York,
married Millett, and is now a resident of Kansas City,
Missouri; Henry, of this notice, and William, a resident
of Lenapah, Oklahoma.

Henry Clay was an infant when taken by his parents
to Iowa, and there his education was secured in the public
schools. He remained under the parental roof until
about the year 1875, when he started learning the
blacksmith trade, a vocation which he subsequently fol-
lowed for upwards of thirty years, at Coffeyville, Kan-
sas, and Bartlesville, Oklahoma. In partnership with
A. I. Morgan, a sketch of whose career will be found on
another page of this work, he founded the firm of Morgan
& Clay, which was at the time of its founding and for
many years afterward the only blacksmith and general
repair shop on the south side of the Carney Eiver, there
being only one store on that side of the river at that
time. Mr. Morgan was skilled in woodworking, and
accordingly took charge of the work that came to the
firm in that direction, while to Mr. Clay fell the task of
upholding the blacksmithing end of the firm’s business.
This enterprise, started in a modest way, gradually grew
and developed, attracting trade from all over this part
of the county because of the excellent manner in which
work was done and the dependable manner in which the
partners lived up to all contracts. The partnership
continued successfully and congenially until 1913, when,
by mutual consent, it was dissolved and the business,
after its long and prosperous career, was sold. In
January, 1915, Mr. Clay leased his present home, an
Osage allotment on Bar ties Creek, 2% miles north of the
City of Bartlesville. Here he is operating 180 acres of
land, on which he has good improvements, and carries
on diversified farming and stock raising. He is using
the most modern approved methods in his work, and is

making the same success in his agricultural ventures
that he attained as a blacksmith. In addition to farm-
ing, Mr. Clay continues to engage in selling farm imple-
ments, an occupation which he has carried on as a side
line for ten years. In political matters a republican,
he has long taken a keen interest in civic affairs, and
has an excellent record as a public official in the offices
of councilman and mayor of Bartlesville. He is a
charter member of the Woodmen of the World, the first
lodge organized at Bartlesville, and also holds member-
ship in the local lodge of the Independent Order of Odd
Fellows, of which he is a charter member, and the
Bebekahs of Bartlesville. During his entire career at
Coffeyville and Bartlesville he has enjoyed the esteem of
his fellow-citizens, and at the present time he has a
large number of friends who wish him success in his
new venture.

On November 6, 1893, Mr. Clay was married to Miss
Emma Foster, who was born in 1864, in Macon, Illinois,
and was fourteen years of age when taken to Kansas by
her parents, John and Jane (Gassaway) Foster, the
former born in Kentucky, April 11, 1841, and the latter
in Ohio, September 30, 1841. They were married at
Springfield, Illinois, and in 1878 moved to Coffeyville, in
the vicinity of which city Mr. Foster was engaged in
farming. He later moved to Havensville, Kansas, where
he died September 16, 1892. Mrs. Foster still survives
and makes her home with her daughter, Mrs. Alice
Skinner, at Caney, Kansas. They were the parents of
three daughters and four sons who are now living, Mrs.
Clay being the second child in order of birth. To Mr.
and Mrs. Clay there have been born two children : Hattie,
the wife of G. S. Hill, an attorney of Bartlesville, who
has three children, Lillian, Euth and George J. ; and
Sadie, the wife of Boss Spick, has one child, Emma.

Hon. Neal Wiltbank Evans. While it is usual to
speak of the pioneers pf Oklahoma as the men who
settled here about the time of the first opening in 1889,
such a distinction is hardly adequate to describe the
long residence ancT business, official and civic standing of
such men as the late Judge Evans of El Eeno. For
nearly half a century he was identified with the west
half of old Indian Territory and with the Territory and
State of Oklahoma. He was one of the hardy and
courageous men who chose the activities of the western
frontier when a cordon of military forts and establish-
ments were necessary to protect the advancing tide of
civilization and settlement. He knew and was actively
identified with the country around El Eeno since the
establishment of the military post of Fort Eeno. From
the year of statehood he gave a capable service as police
judge of the City of El Eeno.

Neal Wiltbank Evans was born at Lewis, Sussex
County, Delaware, May 20, 1844, a son of William and
Hettie (Cullen) Evans. His father was born at Balti-
more Hundred, Delaware, and his mother at Berlin,
Maryland. The Evans family, long established in Dela-
ware, is of Welsh origin, while the Cullens were English.
William Evans was a Methodist minister by profession,
and lived and died in his native state. He was the
father of four daughters and eight sons.

At the age of ten years Judge Eyans, after a brief
schooling, went to Philadelphia and had a thorough
apprenticeship in the dry goods business. . The persistency
of his character is well illustrated in the fact that he was
in the employ of one merchant in that city fourteen
years. Eventually his fidelity was rewarded by promotion
to a partnership.

It was in the year 1867 that Mr. Evans came West
with his brother Jack and with John Fisher. Under

2154

HISTORY OP OKLAHOMA

the firm name of Evans and Fisher his brother and
partner became general merchants with stores known
as post or Indian traders ’ stores at Forts Gibson,
Arbuckle and Sill in the old Indian Territory. With
this firm Judge Evans was identified until 1876, and in
that year was appointed post or Indian trader at Fort
Reno. Fort Reno, it should be explained, is distinct
from El Reno, the city. Fort Reno has been a military
post since 1876, and is still in existence as a military
reservation, being a remount station. It lies five miles
west of the City of El Reno. The City of El Reno came
into existence in 1889 after the opening of the original
Oklahoma Territory.

As post or Indian trader at Fort Reno Judge Evaus
remained for about fourteen years. With the opening
of Oklahoma to settlement and the establishment of El
Reno, Mr. Evans as an old timer and man of ability at
once became a leading citizen of the new community,
and thenceforward held a conspicuous place in the de-
velopment of the city. For several years he was pro-
prietor of a “racket store” at El Reno, and gave up
this business when seriously injured in a runaway
accident.

He was one of the original couneilmen of El Reno
and in 1907 became police judge of the city, a position
in which his service was both prompt and efficient and
in which he continued until stricken with paralysis, re-
sulting in his death on November 11, 1915. In the early
days of Canadian County he held for two terms of two
years each the position of county treasurer. Judge
Evans was always a republican in polities.

Probably no man was held in higher esteem in El Reno
and Canadian County. He had been identified with
Oklahoma nearly fifty years, and in that time had come
in contact with all the classes of its population and with
many of its most prominent characters. He became
intimately acquainted with many of the men who were
commanding officers of the various frontier posts, such
as Sheridan, McKenzie and Lawton, whose confidence he
always enjoyed, and he was likewise a friend of those
old scouts Cody, Stillwell, Clark, Morrison and Horace
P. Jones. He possessed a rare fund of information as
to incidents and history of the territory and state and
its people, and was one of the last survivors of the early
pioneers. In church faith Judge Evans was a Presby-
terian. He was one of the oldest Masons of Oklahoma,
having taken the Master’s degrees in early life, and
being a life member of the lodge back in his native
state. He was a Knight Templar and also a member
of the Mystic Shrine.

In 1868 Judge Evans married Miss Sallie Hague, who
was born in Philadelphia. She possessed many excellent
qualities of heart and mind and as his helpmate gave
him a courage sufficient to surmount the many obstacles
in their pioneer life in Oklahoma. Mrs. Evans died in
1894, and her death was an irreparable loss to her
husband and two surviving daughters. Two of the chil-
dren died in childhood, and the daughters now living are :
Hettie, wife of Judge W. A. Maurer of El Reno; and
Mary, wife of Rev. Archibald Cardie, D. D., pastor of
the First Presbyterian Church of Burlington, Iowa.

Hon. Gustavus Adolphus Ramsey. Representative in
the fifth legislature from Bryan County, Gustavus
Adolphus Ramsey is one of the older American citizens
in Oklahoma, and has been prominent as a farmer and
stockman in the old Choctaw country for many years.
He became a factor in politics before the success of
the statehood movement, and has represented both his
party and the people in various commissions and offices.
His home is at Colbert. Having come from Texas into

the Choctaw Nation in early days, Mr. Ramsey brought
many ideas on agriculture and stock raising that were
of value to the natives, and during the twenty-eight
years of his residence there has been one of the most
conspicuous in the upbuilding of that region.

Gustavus Adolphus Ramsey was born in Pittsylvania
County, Virginia, July 24, 1857, a son of John C. and
Judie Ramsey. His father was descended from natives
of Scotland who settled in Pennsylvania before the
Revolution and later participated in that war as resi-
dents of Virginia. John C. Ramsey brought his family
out from Virginia to Northern Texas in 1866, making the
journey with wagon and team, and from Fannin County,
the place of his first settlement, subsequently removed
to Grayson County. Gustavus A. Ramsey was nine years
of age when he came to Texas, and on account of the
disturbed conditions of society in the South during war
times and the years immediately following had little
opportunity to go to school, and acquired the most satis-
factory part of his early training while in Grayson
County. At the age of twenty-one he went to Fort Sill,
Oklahoma, then a post on the frontier, and spent two
years as a freighter. In 1886 he crossed the Red River
and located in what is now Bryan County, Oklahoma,
and thenceforth identified himself with farming anil
stock raising. In recent years Mr. Ramsey has special-
ized in Duroc hogs, and has taken some premiums on his
animals.

His first noteworthy participation in polities was in
1905 when selected as a member of the executive com-
mittee of fourteen by the Statehood Convention to
assist in getting legislation from Congress admitting
Indian and Oklahoma territories to statehood. He sat as
a delegate in the convention at Ardmore that selected the
first democratic national committeeman for Indian Ter-
ritory. For some time he has been president of the
Democratic Club at Colbert and manager for his precinct
in behalf of prohibition in campaigns involving that
subject. Governor Lee Cruce appointed him a member
of the State Board of Agriculture that was created in
1913, as a result of an initiatory act submitted to the
people. Mr. Ramsey represented the State Board of
Agriculture at the National Farmers Congress in Wash-
ington in November, 1913. He resigned his seat on the
board January 6, 1915, to take his place as representative
in the fifth legislature, following his election in Novem-
ber, 1914. In the legislature Mr. Ramsey served as
chairman of the Committee on Charities and Corrections,
and a member of committees on education, insurance,
relation to the Five Civilized and other Indian tribes, and
general agriculture. His interests were chiefly in mea-
sures affecting agriculture, and it was his thorough and
long experience in that subject that has given his service
special value to the law making body. He was author of
a bill prohibiting the operation of pool and billiard halls
for hire, and of a bill accepting the provisions of the
Smith-Lever law enacted by Congress relating to co-
operation with the National Government by the state in
farm demonstration and extension work.

Mr. Ramsey married, December 24, 1891, Miss Amanda
Potts, granddaughter of Benjamin Love, one of the
prominent Choctaws who once represented his tribe be-
fore the department in Washington. Mrs. Ramsey is
related to the Choctaw family of Colbert, that have
long been conspicuous in the old Choctaw Nation. Mr.
aud Mrs. Ramsey have a daughter, Mabel, aged sixteen,
now finishing her second year in the literary department
of Baylor College at Belton, Texas.

Mr. Ramsey is a member of the Baptist Church, and
clerk, deacon and Sunday school superintendent, and
was a member of the first Baptist general convention of

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2155

old Indian Territory. He is affiliated with Lodge No. 80,
Ancient Tree and Accepted Masons at Colbert, having
filled the chair of master, and is also affiliated with
Lodge No. 75, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, at
Colbert, and has been officially honored in that order,
and has been representative from the Colbert lodges
in the grand lodges of both the Masons and Odd Fel-
lows. Mr. Ramsey is a member of the Farmers Institute
of Bryan County, and of the National Farmers Edu-
cational and Co-operative Union. He was the first
president of the First National Bank of Colbert. Mr.
Ramsey was appointed a member of the reception com-
mittee to receive President Wilson at MuSkogee, in
April, 1915, during the Southern Commercial Congress.

K. L. Colley, M. D. The leading representative of
the medical and surgical profession in the community
of Big Heart since 1907 has been Doctor Colley. Doctor
Colley is an eastern man of old Virginia colonial family,
and came to Oklahoma after a thorough training and
with a generous equipment for his chosen vocation.
Doctor Colley has securely established himself in the
esteem of the people of Osage County, has a large and
profitable practice, and has that faculty which enables
him to make friends wherever-he goes.

Born at Birchleaf, Virginia, September 14, 1877,
Doctor Colley is a son of Richard J. and Mary E. (Hill)
Colley, both of whom were born in the Old Dominion
State. His father died in 1913 at the age of sixty-nine
at the old home at Birchleaf, where the mother still lives.
The Colleys were of Seotch-Irish stock, and the family
was settled in Virginia before the Revolution. Richard
J. Colley spent his life as a farmer, and during the war
between the states was in the Confederate army, and
many of his relatives gave up their lives in the struggle.

One of a family of nine children, four sons and five
daughters, all of whom are still living, Doctor Colley
grew up in Dickenson County, Virginia, had the environ-
ments and influences of a Virginia farm, and was edu-
cated in the local schools. He finally went to Kentucky
and entered the University School of Medicine at Louis-
ville, from which he was graduated M. D. in 1907.
Soon after his graduation he moved to the new State of
Oklahoma, and has since been in active practice at Big
Heart. Doctor Colley has a special diploma representing
his study and experience in the treatment of diseases
of children, but spends his time in the general practice
of medicine and surgery. Doctor Colley rendered notable
service at Big Heart during the cyclone of 1911, when
he was the only medical man capable of assuming the
sudden responsibilities devolving upon him as a result
of that calamity. Three persons were killed during the
storm, and sixty wounded, and he was the first to bring
medical aid to the sufferers, and carried thirty-nine of
the wounded and injured to the Tulsa Hospital on a
I special train.

Politically Doctor Colley is also well known in his
home community and state, and is now a member from
Osage County of the State Democratic Committee. He
belono-s to the County and State Medical societies, and
is affiliated with the Masonic Order, the Knights of
Pvthias and the Benevolent and Protective Order of
| Elks.

On July 18, 1912, he married Miss Ertle Swift. Mrs.
| Colley was born in Oklahoma, and her father, James A.

Swift, was one of the pioneer settlers. To their marriage
■ have been born two children : Elander and Beatrice.

Henry W. Sitton. Elected representative of Stephens
County in the State Legislature, Mr. Sitton proved a
most zealous and efficient member of the lower house

during the fifth general assembly, in which he introduced
and ably championed a number of wise and important
measures. He is engaged in the practice of law at
Duncan, the judicial center of Stephens County and
through his sterling attributes and effective services he
has gained secure place as one of the representative
members of the bar of the southern part of the state.

Mr. Sitton was born near Houston, Texas County,
Missouri, on the 12th of May, 1874, and is a son of
James and Sarah R. Sitton, the former a representative
of an old and influential family of the South, where
his father and grandfather were prominently identified
with the iron industry at Birmingham, Alabama. James
Sitton removed from Alabama to Missouri at the time
of the Civil war, and later he removed with his family
to Northern Arkansas. His wife is a native of Georgia.
Her maiden name was Wilson and she is a descendant of
the early settlers of Virginia. Of the children of James
and Sarah R. Sitton Henry W. was the youngest in order
of birth ; George W. is a farmer in the vicinity of St.
Joe, Arkansas; Cicero is" engaged in the mercantile busi-
ness at Pyote, Texas; William is a successful farmer and
stock grower in Stephens County, Oklahoma, and re-
sides near Comanche; James P. is a farmer in Okfuskee
County, this state; Mrs. Nancy McClain resides near
Calico Rock, Arkansas, her husband being a farmer by
vocation; and Mrs. Mary Russell is the wife of a pros-
perous farmer residing near St. Joe, Arkansas.

Henry W. Sitton was a child at the time of the family
removal to Arkansas and as his parents were in very
modest financial circumstances he became dependent upon
his own resources in acquiring his liberal education. He
was enabled to attend, with more or less regularity, the
public schools of Northern Arkansas until he had at-
tained to the age of thirteen years, and later he pro-
vided the means necessary to defray the expenses in-
cidental to the completion of a course in high school.
He left the Harrison School in 1891 and for the ensuing
three years was a student in the Valley Springs Academy
in Boone County, Arkansas, where he finally received a
scholarship that admitted him to Hendrix College, at
Conway, Arkansas. In this institution he prosecuted
higher academic studies during the years 1894 and 1895,
and thereafter he entered Mountain Home College, at
Mountain Home, that state, in which institution he was
graduated in June, 1897, and from which he received
the degree of Bachelor of Science. In the same year
he was elected president of Big Flat Academy, at Big
Flat, Arkansas, and he continued the executive head of
this institution four years. In 1900 Mr. Sitton was
appointed county examiner of Baxter County, where-
upon he returned to Mountain Home. While incumbent
of this office he held also a position as member of the
faculty of Mountain Home College, where he served in
turn in the chairs of higher English and higher mathe-
matics.

In 1904 Mr. Sitton established his residence at Co-
manche, Indian Territory, where he engaged in the prac-
tice of law, for which work he had prepared himself
through private study of assiduous order and through
technical reading in the office and under the preceptorship
of the law firm of Horton & Smith, at Mountain Home, Ar-
kansas, where he was admitted to the bar in 1901. He
continued his residence at Comanche until the admission
of Oklahoma to statehood, in 1907, and on the 15th of
May, 1908, he was appointed deputy county attorney of
Stephens County, this preferment leading to his removal
to Duncan, the county seat, where he has since maintained
his residence. In 1910 Mr. Sitton was elected county
attorney and was re-elected to that position in 1912,
and in the last election there came to him a most grati-

2156

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

fying evidence of popular confidence and approval, in
that he received the largest majority ever given to any
candidate for county office in that county — 1,624 votes
out of a total voting strength of approximately 1,800,
and his opponent having been D. A. Bridges, who was
also his opponent in the 1910 election. Concerning his
administration as county attorney the following consis-
tent estimate has been given : “He was among the most

active officials of the State in conserving the suppression
of crime, especially in the enforcement of the prohibition
law, and he succeeded in breaking up one of the most
obnoxious and thoroughly organized bands of horse
thieves that had ever infested that section of the state.
He was punctilious and indomitable in his efforts to
foster law and order, and malefactors in Stephens County
gained a wholesome fear of him.”

In the primary election of 1914 Mr. Sitton was nomi-
nated by a plurality of 1,000 votes, in a strongly con-
tested election, and as candidate for representative of
his county in the State Legislature the ensuing popular
election gave to him a most gratifying and significant
majority, his political allegiance being given to the
democratic party. In the fifth legislature Mr. Sitton
was chairman of the committee on criminal jurispru-
dence, and a member of each of the following named
committees also : Legal advisory, appropriations, con-
gressional redistrieting, public-service corporations,
public buildings, constitutional amendments, retrench-
ment and reform, revenue and taxation, and state capitol.
He urgently championed amendments to the judicial
code in the matter of avoiding useless litigations; he
introduced an amendment in repeal of the law requiring
county treasurers to notify taxpayers of the impending
delinquency of their taxes, this action being based on
the Supreme Court ruling which made such an amend-
ment virtually imperative; he introduced a bill provid-
ing that in all civil cases in which a jury is demanded,
the demand shall be made within three days after the
issues at law are joined, thus eliminating the holding
of jurymen during the trial of cases not demanding a
jury and enabling the judge to so arrange his docket
that all jury eases shall be tried at the beginning of
the term and the venire then be discharged. Mr. Sitton
manifested also a lively interest in the deliberations
relative to amendments to the primary election law and
the matter of preferential primaries. A distinguished
honor was conferred on him by the fifth legislature be-
fore adjournment, in that he was unanimously selected
to aid the house managers in the impeachment trials of
A. P. Watson, corporation commissioner, and A. L.
Welch, insurance commissioner.

In his home city of Duncan Mr. Sitton is past chan-
cellor commander of Mistletoe Lodge, No. 117, Knights
of Pythias; is master of Duncan Lodge, No. 60, Ancient
Free and Accepted Masons; and affiliated with Duncan
Chapter, No. 20, Eoyal Arch Masons. He is a member
of the Duncan Commercial Club, holds membership in
the Stephens County Bar Association and the Oklahoma
State Bar Association, and both he and his wife are
zealous members of the Christian Church.

At Mountain Home, Arkansas, on the 12th of Novem-
ber, 1903, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Sitton
to Miss Staeye Baker, daughter of John T. Baker, a
representative merchant of that place. Mrs. Sitton was
graduated in the department of elocution and expression
in Mountain Home College and later was a teacher of
elocution in Big Flat Academy, at the time when her
husband was principal of that institution. Mr. and Mrs.
Sitton have four children: Frances Elizabeth, Mary
Louise, Ellen Virginia, and Rebecca Jean.

David S. Schuber. Few men have lent more practical
encouragement to the agricultural and grain interests of
Alfalfa County than has David S. Schuber, of Byron,
general manager of the Byron Alfalfa Mill and Elevator
Company. Coming here in 1913, he bought his present
business and since that time has been identified with the
commercial, industrial and civic interests of his adopted
community, and has proven himself a valuable and helpful
citizen. Mr. Schuber is a man of industry and enter-
prise; otherwise, he could not have gained his present
standing in the business world, for his father died when
he was still a lad, and he has always been compelled to
depend upon his own resources to gain for him the things
that he has wanted in life.

By birth a Russian, Mr. Schuber was born January 3,
1871, a son of David and Lizzie (Eckhart) Schuber, who
were born in Russia of German parents. The family
came to the United States in 1878, when David S. was
seven years of age, and located on a farm in Kansas,
where the father continued to be engaged in agricultural
operations until his death, which was caused by the
explosion of a lamp at his home in Russell County, Kan-
sas, in 1883. The mother survived until 1903 and died
on a farm in Marion County, Kansas, to which she had
removed following the death of her husband. Mr. and
Mrs. Schuber were the parents of four sons and three
daughters, namely: Adam, who is deceased; David S. ;

Mollie; Henry; Mary; Annie, who is deceased; and
Samuel.

David S. Schuber was reared on the family farms in
Russell and Marion counties, Kansas, was brought up to
industry and honorable dealing, and reared to appreciate
the value of hard work and thrift. In the meantime he
attended the public schools, his education being limited
to the branches offered by the country schools, but being
a lad of retentive memory and an apt scholar he obtained
a good training, which has since been added to by
observation, reading and coming into contact with men
and affairs. In 1892 Mr. Schuber left Kansas for Okla-
homa, being one of those who sought land in the opening
of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Reservation, April 21st.
He was successful in securing a homestead, locating on
Government land in Blaine County, and there proved up
on his tract and developed a good farm, with substantial
buildings and many improvements. Of this he was able
to dispose at a good figure in 1901, when he decided to
try his fortunes in a mercantile venture, at Ferguson,
Oklahoma. While this enterprise proved satisfactory, he
saw a broader field in the grain business, and accordingly
disposed of his interests in the store to enter upon a
career as a miller, continuing in the same line at Fer-
guson until 1913, when he came to Byron, which has
since been his place of residence and the scene of his
business success. When he came here Mr. Schuber pur-
chased the plant of the Byron Alfalfa Milling Company,
and here he has been engaged in the manufacture of
alfalfa meal and other products. He has since estab-
lished an elevator, in connection with which he purchases
and handles grain of all kinds, but principally wheat, on
a large scale, shipping to all points. The extent of his
operations may be seen in the fact that he has already
shipped, more than 40,000 bushels of grain in a year from
Byron, thereby contributing in no small way to the busi-
ness importance and prestige of this thriving little Okla-
homa community. Mr. Schuber is also the owner of the
only hotel at Byron, the Commercial Hotel, which is
managed by Mrs. Schuber, who has built up a large
business and won the patronage of the traveling public
by the homelike manner in which the hostelry is arranged
and the many comforts prepared for the guests.

Mr. Schuber was married December 8, 1892, in Marion

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2157

County, Kansas, to, Miss Lizzie Adler, who was born in
Russia, September 20, 1876, and came with her parents
to the United States in 1884, they being Jacob and Lizzie
(Schlotthauer) Adler, now residents of Marion County,
Kansas. Six children have been born to this union:
Hanna, Emanuel, Lida, Elsie, Jacob and Evelyn. Mr.
Sehuber is a popular member of the local lodge of the
Independent Order of Odd Fellows. A republican in
politics, he has been too closely devoted to business
affairs to engage actively in the public arena, but has
never refused his support to any movement which would
advance the welfare of his community or the civic, moral
or educational betterment of its people.

George E. Ellison has the distinction of having-
opened the first merchandise store at Guymon, Oklahoma.
He is now manager of the Star Mercantile Company
there. In many ways during the last fifteen years his
name and activities have been closely identified and
associated with the growth and prosperity of that com-
munity. As a merchant he has made his business a
reliable service to a constantly growing circle of patron-
age, while as a citizen his part has been equally public
spirited and nothing affecting the welfare of Guymon
has passed without his consideration and helpful support.

He was born February 7, 1878, at Coatsburg, Illinois,
a son of Henry and Irene (Guymon) Ellison. He was
one of two sons, and his brother Arthur E. was born at
the same place in Illinois May 17, 1880.

In 1879 the family moved to Kansas, and he completed
his education in the public schools of Topeka and Liberal.
While living at Liberal he had his first experience in
merchandising, and was also the first cashier of the First
National Bank of that town.

Mr. Ellison was just twenty years of age when the
Spanish-American war broke out. He enlisted in the
famous Twentieth Kansas Regiment, commanded by
Colonel, now General, Fred Funston. He went out as
principal musician, and was with the regiment in its
Philippine campaign. Mr. Ellison had marked talent for
music as a boy, and has always been extremely interested
in musical affairs.

It was in 1901 that he located at Guymon, Oklahoma,
opened the first store, there, and has kept at the forefront
in the progress of the community. While an active
republican, and liberally supporting the party, he has
never sought any office for himself. Mr. Eliison is a
thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason and a member
of the Mystic Shrine.

On June 25, 1902, in Texas County, Oklahoma, he
married Miss Carrie Lee Cain, daughter of Zach and
Thena (Smith) Cain. Mrs. Ellison was born in Virginia
May 25, 1882. They have four children, all daughters:
Irene, born August 17, 1903; Helen, born July 5, 1904;
and Gaynette and Dolores, twins, born July 8, 1908.

Robert Long. After a varied experience in the states
of Texas, Kansas and Missouri, Mr. Long came to
Oklahoma in 1892 and became one of the pioneers in
the present Pawnee County at the time when the Cherokee
Strip was thrown open to settlement, in the following
year. He here obtained a homestead claim and from a
beginning of most modest order he has pressed forward
in worthy achievement until he has gained secure status
as one of the representative agriculturists and stock
growers of the county, his well improved landed estate
being situated in the vicinity of the Village of Jennings,
which is his postoffice address. His life has been one of
consecutive application and he has so availed himself of
opportunities afforded in connection with industrial en-
terprise in Oklahoma that he has gained substantial

prosperity, the while he is significantly appreciative of
and loyal to the state of his adoption.

Mr. Long was born in the State of Tennessee, on the
5th of May, 1845, and is a son of John E. and Catherine
(Hawser) Long, both natives of Pennsylvania and both
of sterling German ancestry, the respective families
having been founded in the old Keystone State in an
early day, and both the paternal and maternal grand-
parents of the subject of this review having used the
German language exclusively. The parents of Mr. Long
were children at the time of the removal of the respective
families to Tennessee, where they were reared to ma-
turity and where their marriage was solemnized. In
1850 they removed from that state to Jersey County,
Illinois, in which state the father devoted his attention
very effectively to agricultural pursuits. He was born
on the 10th of October, 1819, and attained to venerable
age, the closing period of his life having been passed in
Carroll County, Missouri, to which state he removed
about the year 1884, his death having there occurred in
July, 1907. In Tennessee he had followed the trade of
shoemaker and after his removal to Illinois he not only
became a farmer but also worked at the carpenter ’s trade.
His wife, who was born in 1822, died in Illinois, on the
12th of November, 1862. Of their children the eldest is
Mrs. Jane Rankin, who maintains her home at Carroll-
ton, Missouri; Mrs. Sarah E. Dampkey is a widow and
resides in Madison County, Illinois; Robert, subject of
this sketch, was the next in order of birth; Jonathan H.,
who was born November 18, 1847, was a resident of the
city of East St. Louis, Illinois, at the time of his death,
on the 15th of August, 1910; Mrs. Catherine MeCanney
died in the State of Kansas; Mary J. is the wife of
Louis Tigner, of Madison County, Illinois; William H.
is a resident of Edwardsville, that county; and Joseph
maintains his home in Montgomery County, that state.

Robert Long was a lad of five years at the time of
the family removal from Tennessee to Illinois, where he
was reared to adult age under the sturdy discipline of
the farm. He availed himself of the advantages of the
common schools of Jersey County and when he was six-
teen years of age the family removed thence to Mont-
gomery County, where he grew to manhood and where
he cast his first presidential vote. As a lad he was a
great admirer of the distinguished Illinois statesman,
Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, and he was a lad of about
fifteen years when the "little giant” was made the
independent democratic candidate for President of the
United States, in 1860.

Mr. Long continued his association with agricultural
industry in Illinois until 1879, when he made his way to
Texas and established his residence in Parker County,
where he had the distinction of being the first to plant
cotton and thus initiate a profitable line of enterprise in
that section, though he did not remain to witness the
advancement made, as he returned to Illinois in the fol-
lowing year. There he remained until 1882, when he
located in Carroll County, Missouri, where he raised one
farm crop and then removed to Stoddard County, that
state, where he remained during one summer. For the
ensuing six years he was engaged in farming and stock
growing in Cherokee County, Kansas, in which state he
continued to maintain his home until 1892, when he came
to Oklahoma Territory and made ready to avail himself
of the opportunity offered for securing government land
at the opening to settlement of the Cherokee Strip. On
the 8th day of March, 1894, he established his residence
on his present homestead farm, which comprises 160
acres of excellent land and which is eligibly situated
at a point 4% miles distant from the Village of Jennings.
He has reclaimed the major part of his farm to cultiva-
tion, has made excellent improvements of a permanent

2158

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

order and is one of the successful agriculturists and
stock raisers of Pawnee County, even as he is a citizen
who has secure place in popular confidence and esteem.

Mr. Long was aligned as a supporter of the cause of
the democratic party until the national election of 1876,
since which time he has been a staunch advocate of the
principles and policies for which the republican party
stands sponsor, though he has in later years manifested
a distinctive appreciation of certain of the tenets of the
socialist party. When Mr. Long established his home
on his present farm his tangible assets in initiating
operations were represented in two cows, and in the
early period of his residence in the new country he
encountered a. full share of pioneer hardships, his suc-
cess eventually having been specially advanced through
the negotiating of oil leases on his land.

In the year 1867, in Madison County, Illinois, was
solemnized the marriage of Mr. Long to Miss Catherine
Judson, who was born in that county, on the 9th of
May, 1846, the great loss and bereavement of the life
of Mr. Long having come when his devoted wife and
helpmeet was summoned to the life eternal, her death
having occurred on Lis present homestead farm, on the
2d of November, 1905. Of the children the eldest is
Charles M., who has the active management of his
father’s farm, the maiden name of his wife having-
been Bertha Marple, and their one child being a son,
Myrle Wilson. Mary Jeannette is the wife of William
W. Sims, of Mannford, Creek County, Oklahoma, and
they have three children: Creta May, Emma and Gil-

ford. Albert is a successful representative of agricul-
tural industry in Pawnee County. He wedded Miss
Emma Bell and they have four children : Clifford,

Philip, Robert and Otis. John, the fourth child, of the
subject of this sketch, died on the 25th of December,
1908, at the age of twenty-six years, and James died
at the age of seven years, in Missouri.

Raymond A. Graddy. The year 1915 finds the thriv-
ing little City of Watonga, judicial center of Blaine
county, signally favored in having as the superintendent
of its public schools so able an instructor as the
popular young citizen whose .name introduces this
paragraph and who was elected to his present position
in the autumn of 1914, his effective administration
assuring his continuation in service so long, practically,
as he will consent to retain the incumbency.

Mr. Graddy was born in Franklin County, Illinois, on
the 31st of December, 1889, and is a son of George W.
and Emma (Whiffen) Graddy, the former of whom was
born in the State of Indiana, in 1851, and the latter of
whom was born in White County, Illinois, in 1852. The
parents passed the closing years of their lives in Frank-
lin County, Illinois, and in death their devoted com-
panionship was not long severed, the father having
passed away in 1891, and the mother having been sum-
moned.to the life eternal in the preceding year. George
W. Graddy was reared and educated in the old Hoosier
State and as a young man he established his residence
in Franklin County, Illinois, where he became a pros-
perous farmer and stock grower, where his marriage
was solemnized and where he and his wife passed the
residue of their lives, both having been earnest members
of the Baptist Church, and he having been a republican
in his political proclivities, the while he was affiliated
with the Masonic fraternity and the Independent Order
of Odd Fellows. Of the children the eldest is Nora E.,
who resides at Canyon City, Colo., the widow of Yirgil
Hayes, who was a farmer by vocation ; Lolle is the
wife of William J. Thorpe, and they reside in the City
of Des Moines, Iowa, where Mr. Thorpe is local manager
for the Rumeley Company, the extensive manufacturers

of farm machinery; Thomas is a prosperous farmer in
Posey County, Ind.; Susie died at Mew Haven, that
state, when nineteen years of age; Clinton is engaged
in the lumber business at Dudley, Missouri; and Ray-
mond A., of this review, is the youngest of the number.

The original American progenitors of the Graddy
family immigrated to the new world, from Ireland, in
the colonial era of our national history, and became
pioneers of Kentucky, from which historic old common-
wealth went the early representatives of the name in
Indiana.

Raymond A. Graddy found the period of his child-
hood and early youth compassed by the benignant con-
ditions and influences of the home farm, and after avail-
ing himself of the advantages of the local schools of
his native county he entered the high school at Marion,
Williamson County, Illinois, in which he was graduated
in 1905. Thereafter he completed a two years’ course
in the Illinois State Normal School at Normal, 111.,
and his ambition for higher academic training was not
satisfied until he had continued his studies two years
in Valparaiso University, Indiana, and one year in the
Southern Illinois College, at Carmi, 111., in which
institution he was graduated as a member of the
class of 1912 and from which he received the degree of
Bachelor of Arts. Since that time he has taken effective
post graduate work in the great University of Chicago.

During the school year of 1911-12 Mr. Graddy was
principal of the high school at Marlow, Stephens County,
Oklahoma, to which state he had come prior to his
graduation in the college mentioned above. During the
autumn of 1912 and the ensuing spring he served as
principal of the high school at Cleveland, Pawnee
County; and the school year of 1913-14 found him the
successful and popular principal of the high school at
Norman, Cleveland County. Since the autumn of 1914
he has retained the superintendency of the public
schools at Watonga, Blaine County, and it may con-
sistently be said that his career as a teacher in the
Oklahoma schools has been marked by consecutive ad-
vancement and by such scholastic and executive ability
as to give him prestige as one of the representative
figures in the educational circles of the state, the while
his personal popularity in each of the fields in which he
has labored has been of unequivocal order. At Watonga
he has under his supervision three school houses and a
corps of eighteen teachers, the enrollment of pupils show-
ing an aggregate of 800.

Mr. Graddy is found aligned as a staunch supporter
of the cause of the republican party, and he is essen-
tially progressive and public-spirited in his civic attitude,
with specially deep interest in all that pertains to the
educational affairs of the state of his adoption. Both
he and his wife hold membership in the Christian Church,
in which he holds the office of deacon, and he is affiliated
with the Watonga lodge of the Independent Order of Odd
Fellows, as well as with the Delta Sigma Phi college
fraternity. He has identified himself fully with Okla-
homa, with the intention of here maintaining his perma-
nent home, and he was formerly treasurer of a company
identified with the oil industry in this state.

At Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1914, was solemnized
the marriage of Mr. Graddy to Miss Ina Rose Hastings,
daughter of Albert W. Hastings, a well known citizen of
Oklahoma City. Mr. and Mrs. Graddy are popular
factors in the leading social life of Watonga, and both
are zealous in connection with the affairs of the local
Christian Church.

Edward Swengel, superintendent of the Mekusukey
Academy located near Seminole, Oklahoma, was born at
Neoga, Cumberland County, Illinois, March 4, 1873. His

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2159

parents, George and Sarah Swengel, came from Indiana
to Neoga, Illinois, about 1866. His father was a pro-
gressive and prosperous farmer and both parents were
very much interested in churches and schools and the
upbuilding of the community in which they lived. They
were members of the United Brethren Church and were
very careful to see that their five sons had educational
advantages and Christian influences. George Swengel
died when his son Edward was thirteen years of age.

The latter had his early training in the public schools
of Illinois, and also had the advantage of courses in the
United Brethren College at Westfield, Illinois, and Austin
College at Effingham, Illinois. His early years were
divided between teaching in the rural schools of Illinois
and working a farm. He was elected principal of the
schools at Dieterich in his native state, and as editor
and owner of the Dieterich Gazette got a taste of news-
paper work which was repeated after he came to Okla-
homa.

When he arrived in Tulsa in the spring of 1902 he
found the town just beginning to grow, and with a
population of not more than 2,000 people. In the fol-
lowing September he was appointed principal teacher in
the Wealaka Indian Boarding School near Tulsa, and
was soon afterwards made superintendent of that school.
After two years at Wealaka he was promoted to the
superintendeney of the National Boarding School at
Wetumka, a capacity in which he served three years.

While superintendent at Wetumka Mr. Swengel bought
the land adjoining the site of the school and several
years later when the school was discontinued he bought
the school land and buildings. This land now com-
prises one of the fine farms in the Canadian Biver bot-
tom, and in point of fertility and improvement it is one
of the best farms in Eastern Oklahoma. Mr. Swengel
also bought a half interest in the Wetumka Gazette and
filled the chair of editor for some time. His interest in
the raising of Poland China hogs and Hereford cattle
on his farm required so much time and attention that
he sold his interest in the paper. After five years of
practical farming he accepted the principalship of the
Capitol Heights School at Holdenville, Oklahoma, and
later was promoted to the principalship of the Central
School in the same city. In September, 1914, he was
tendered the principalship of Armstrong Male Academy
at Academy, Oklahoma, and from that place was pro-
moted to superintendent of the Mekusukey Academy
December 16, 1915.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Swengel are deeply interested in
the education of Indian children. He is now beginning
his eighth year in the Indian service. Mekusukey
Academy, of which he is superintendent, has a capacity
of 100 Indian children with fifteen employees. This
school is conducted like a big home for children, and
they remain there nine months of the year. All the
pupils are required to take the literary course, while
the girls are instructed in domestic science and art and
the boys in agriculture and manual training. Every
effort is made to make these students useful men and
women. The school is situated on a farm of 320 acres
on one of the most beautiful and picturesque spots in
Eastern Oklahoma. No other one factor has done so
much for the uplift and welfare of the Seminole Indians
as the Mekusukey Academy.

[ For several years prior to his entering the Indian
services in 1914, Mr. Swengel was secretary of the
Hughes County Farmers Institute, and in that capacity
and as a practical farmer and far-seeing educator has
devoted much time and money to the encouragement of a
better system of farming, better livestock and better
seeds for this section of Oklahoma. Upon the advent of
statehood he was elected representative of Hughes

■ Vol. V— 26

County in the first State Legislature. In that session he
gave particular attention to laws concerning agriculture,
public schools and taxation. Mr. Swengel is a lifelong
democrat and though a man of positive ideas on political
questions is tolerant and liberal with people who hold
different views. His influence has been worthily directed
to maintain the purity and integrity of official adminis-
tration, and he has ever declined to support any man
for office he thought incompetent or unworthy. It is a
part of his creed that the future success of the party
depends upon the uprightness of its leaders.

Mr. Swengel is a Master Mason, and was trustee of
Wetumka Lodge when its hall was built, and he assisted
in the supervision of that work. For many years he
has been affiliated with the Modern Woodmen of
America and was clerk of his camp several years at
Dieterich, Illinois. Mr. and Mrs. Swengel are active
members of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

In ancestry Mr. Swengel is of German stock on his
father ’s side, while from his mother he received the
qualities of Scoteh-Irish-. On September 10, 1893, at
Paradis4, Illinois, he married Lula B. Morrison, daugh-
ter of G. C. and P. A. Morrison. Her father was a
successful stock buyer and farmer near Neoga, Illinois.
Mrs. Swengel has been not only the guardian of the
destinies of the home but also a factor of constant en-
couragement and inspiration to Mr. Swengel in his
career. She is a woman of fine education, and in addi-
tion to the public schools of Illinois which she attended
she was a student in the United Brethren College at
Westfield and Austin College at Effingham, the game in-
stitutions which Mr. Swengel attended. They have one
bright and attractive daughter, Ruth Louise, now six
years of age.

Oscak K. Petty, vice president and active manager
of the Farmers State Bank of Hominy, Mr. Petty has for
several years been 'closely identified with the general
commercial enterprise of Hominy. The successful posi-
tion of the bank is in a considerable degree due to his
personality and ability as financial manager, and he has
furthermore shown a ready interest and public spirit in
promoting every enterprise for the upbuilding and de-
velopment of his section. The Farmers State Bank of
Hominy was chartered and opened for business March 18,
1912, and on May 10, 1913, occurred a reorganization by
the present owners. W. S. Crowe is president, Mr. Petty
is vice president, O. L. Barlow, cashier, and the other
directors are Percy Dixon and Mrs. Addie Drummond.
The capital stock is $25,000, surplus and profits $4,000,
and its aggregate resources now place it among the
leading institutions of the kind in Northeastern Okla-
homa.

The vice president of this bank comes of a fine old
Tennessee family, and was born at Hamburg in that state
March 6, 1884, a son of William G. and Margaret A.
(Perkins) Petty, both of whom were natives of McNairy
County, Tennessee, his father born September 6, 1841,
and his mother in 1866. They are still living at Ham-
burg. His father has been a farmer, physician, merchant
and banker, is now president of the Planters and Mer-
chants Bank of Hamburg, and gives most of his time
to the handling of his extensive financial interests. He
was graduated from the Kentucky School of Medicine
and took post-graduate work in the New York schools,
but for several years has been retired from his pro-
fession.

One of a family of thirteen children and the oldest of
the nine still living, Oscar K. Petty grew up in Tennessee,
graduated from a local collegiate institution in 1901, and
then became associated with his father in merchandising
up to 1904. After attending a college in St. Louis for a

2160

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

time, he first came to Hominy in 1905, where he served
as an expert accountant for M. F. Fraley.

In 1907 Mr. Petty married Miss Blanche Henrietta
Drummond, daughter of the late Fred Drummond, one
of the pioneer traders of the Osage country and an active
factor in the Farmers State Bank at tiie time of his
death. The life of Fred Drummond, who was one of
Hominy’s leading citizens, is sketched on other pages.
After his marriage Mr. Petty returned with his bride to
Tennessee, and spent two years with the Hamburg Mer-
cantile Company. Eeturning to Hominy in 1909, he
became actively identified with the Hominy Trading
Company, and was with that concern until 1913, when
he took part in the reorganization of the Farmers State
Bank and has since been its vice president and active
manager.

Mr. Petty is a thirty-second degree Scottish Bite
Mason, has been a member of the Mystic Shrine since
1906, and is also affiliated with the Eastern Star, the
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and the Knights
of Pythias and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.
He is active in the Christian Church and is now superin-
tendent of its Sunday school. His politics are democratic.
He served three years on the local school board and was
a member of the city council two years. Mr. and Mrs.
Petty have four children: Drummond, Helen Claire,

Blanche and Margaret. The oldest was born in Tennes-
see, while the three other children claim Hominy as the
place of their nativity.

I. O. Diggs, Stillwater, Oklahoma, has been editor and
publisher of The Advance-Democrat since 1900, and post-
master at Stillwater since February, 1914. As postmaster
of this important office of the second class, Mr. Diggs has
# been eminently effective and universally satisfactory.
But it is as editor of The Advance-Democrat that
Mr. Diggs has made his impression on the people of
Oklahoma and especially of Payne County.

The location of the A. & M. College at Stillwater-
makes that city the center of considerable interest in
Oklahoma, and in the intellectual life of that college
community a very significant part has always been played
by The Advance-Democrat and its editor, Mr. Diggs. In
fact he has made The Advance-Democrat known and
respected as a fine, strong, clean exponent of all that is
best in community welfare.

Mr. Diggs is a recognized leader in the councils of the
democratic party in Payne County and in Oklahoma.
He has served as chairman of the county organization
and been repeatedly elected as state committeeman. His
paper has always been a virile exponent of the principles
of the democratic party.

Irvin Owings Diggs was born at Arrow Bock, Saline
County, Missouri, June 5, 1873, and is a son of William
Bailey Diggs and Cynthia Emeline (Morris) Diggs.

William Bailey Diggs was born at Yorktown, Virginia,
June 9, 1827, and Cynthia E. Morris was born at Dan-
ville, Missouri, August 11, 1836. William Bailey Diggs
came to Missouri as a yound man established his resi-
dence in St. Louis and there attended school. He was
married to Cynthia E. Morris in Montgomery County,
Missouri, where she had been born and reared. There-
after they lived for many years in Saline County where
he was a very successful farmer.

William Bailey Diggs died at Arrow Bock, Saline
County, Missouri, November 2, 1912, at the hale old age
of eighty-five years. He was ever public spirited. He
was a member of the Southern Methodist Church, lived
a hearty and a noble life and spent time and money
for the upbuilding of the church and the betterment of
humanity. He was a staunch democrat, influential in
local affairs, and commanded the respect and esteem of

his fellow men. His wife Cynthia Emeline still survives
him (in 1916) and is hale and hearty at the age of eighty
years. Of their nine children all but one attained to
years of maturity and seven of them are now living
(1916). The names of the children of William Bailey
Diggs are: Wirtley Marvin, Nora Jane, Esther Catherine,
Laura, William Thomas, Bascom, Watson, Irvin Owings,
Seth Morris.

I. O. Diggs is descended from a fine old Virginia fam-
ily which can trace its ancestry back to good blood in
England. The name now spelled Diggs was spelled
Degge (Digges). William Bailey Diggs, the father of
I. O. Diggs, was a son of Jesse Diggs who served in the
War of 1812. Jesse Diggs was the son of Augustine
Degge, the son of Simon Degge, the son of Capt. John
Degge, who according to the William and Mary Quarterly
is directly descended from Sir Simon Degge of England,
who was justice for Staffordshire of the inner temple at
London, one of His Majesty’s council.

The Virginia family which began with Capt. John
Degge still holds a very ancient coat of arms described
in Burke’s General Armory. The names of important
persons called “Headrights” are given at the foot of
land patents, and the name of Capt. John Degge is
found in the land office records at Bichmond as one who
got a patent in 1678 for 1,800 acres for importing
thirty-six persons.

I. O. Diggs got his early training on the home farm
and in the public schools of his native county. After
finishing the public school he pursued higher academic
studies in The McMahan Institute at Arrow Bock, Mis-
souri, and in the state normal at Warrensburg, Missouri.
At twenty-four years of age he began his career as a
newspaper man, by purchasing, in partnership with his
brother, Bascom Diggs, the Arrow Bock Statesman, of
which his brother is still the editor and publisher. In
1898 I. O. Diggs sold his interest in this paper and for
the two following years he was engaged in publishing a
weekly paper at Hartville, Missouri. He then went to
Arizona for some months, and from Arizona he returned
for a time to his old home in Missouri.

In 1900 Mr. Diggs came to Stillwater, Oklahoma Terri-
tory and engaged in the newspaper business, to which
he has given his talent until he added the duties of
postmaster in February, 1914.

Mr. Diggs was married to Miss Malinda Blanche Wise
June 24, 1903. Mrs. Diggs had been reared and educated
in Oklahoma where her parents had established their
home when she was a child and where they spent the
rest of their lives meriting enduring appreciation and
respect for their honored part among the pioneers of the
state.

Mrs. Diggs’ father, Levi Wise, was born August 2,
1833, near Louisville, Kentucky, and died February 27,
1908. Mrs. Diggs’ mother, Alice (Wheeler) Wise, was
born January 3, 1853, at Liberty, Missouri, and died
June 14, 1908, at Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Mrs. Diggs graduated from the Oklahoma A. & M.
College in the third graduating class of that institution,
in 1898. She was a successful and popular teacher in
the public schools of Oklahoma until the time of her
marriage.

Mrs. Diggs . has unusual talent and typical southern
culture. She is gifted and trained in public speaking
and won the entire series of Demorest medal contests,
silver medal, gold medal, grand gold medal, and diamond
medal, which entitled her to a diploma for proficiency in
oratory. Mr. and Mrs. Diggs have one daughter, Cyn-
thalice Io, born April 20, 1910. Both Mr. and Mrs. Diggs
are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South,
of which he has always been an official member and a
most helpful supporter, and in which she has been

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2161

always a spiritual helper. Mrs. Diggs is also strong
and active in the social organizations and public spirited
agencies of the community.

Mr. Diggs’ most important social service has been
through the high moral tone and excellent quality of
his paper and tnrough the things that he has stood for in
the file of the community and the state. His paper has
always been an able exponent of the principles of the
democratic party. He has also used his pen always for
the ideals which promise the largest measure of human
welfare. Whatever is evil he has opposed fearlessly.
Whatever is good he has advocated at whatever cost.
His courage and his devotion to human welfare was nobly
and heroically manifested when before the state had a
law prohibiting the liquor traffic he through his own
efforts and seif sacrifice and great material loss gave
to his own county effective prohibition. Dor that sacri-
ficial service and for an ideal life of absolute integrity
many will praise and appreciate him always as a fine,
strong, noble, manly man.

William Jourdan Whiteman. A conspicuous figure
in business and civic affairs in the old Choctaw Nation
and in later years around Goodwater and Idabel has been
William Jourdan Whiteman, a resident of Oklahoma
( since 1893.

He was born in Red River County, Texas, three and a
half miles northeast of Clarksville on November 3, 1869
a son of David C. and Mary E. Whiteman, who now have’
their home at Haworth, Oklahoma, aged respectively
seventy-nine and seventy-five years.

His first business experience was gained as clerk for his
father at the age of eleven years in 1880. For schooling
he attended Whiteman’s Chapel and the Annona schools
and later took, a course in the Little Rock Commercial
College at Little Rock, Arkansas. His diploma from that
school is dated June 3, 1890.

Coming to the old Choctaw Nation of Indian Terri-
tory in 1893, the following year he began his independent
commercial career at Goodwater, his home ever since
and where he is now president of the Whiteman Mer-
cantile Company, dealers in general merchandise.

1 With a genius for merchandising and general lines
of business, Mr. Whiteman has acquired numerous in-
fluential interests in his section of the state. He is
identified with stores at Goodwater, Jadie and Haworth,
with cotton gins at Goodwater and Haworth, owns farm-
> ing interests in different parts of McCurtain County, has
| been a director since organization of the First National
Bank of Idabel, and is director and president of the
| First National Bank of Haworth. He is also a member
of the Haworth Mercantile Company, the Haworth Pub-
f Ashing Company, the Southern Oklahoma Abstract Com-
; pany of Idabel, and of several other concerns.

On December 19, 1894, he was appointed postmaster
at Goodwater, and has filled that office continuously to
the present time, a period of twenty-two years. At one
time Mr. Whiteman was a member of the Rejl River
‘Rifles, a volunteer company of the Texas militia, and
with it he attended annual encampments at San Antonio
and Austin.

Mr. Whiteman was a member of the first grand iurv
of McCurtain County after statehood. He has served
as a member of the school board and is now president
of the McCurtain County School Board Association,
which was recently organized. Politically he is a repub-
lican and is now republican nominee for representative
from McCurtain County.

He was also actively identified with Choctaw national
politics.., He drew up the bill which was presented by
McCurtain to the Choctaw Legislation in
1898, forbidding citizens of that nation to sell pine

timber from their reserve lands. He thus became an
active ally in the movement for the conservation of
the natural resources by the Choctaw people. In 1904 he
was a delegate to the notable convention at Tuskahoma
that nominated Thomas Hunter for governor of the
nation. This brought on the famous feud between the
Hunter and McCurtain factions, finally ending when the
military authorities compelled the Hunter people to
vacate the national capital in favor of McCurtain.
Mr. Whiteman lived during that most interesting period
of Oklahoma history when the tribe passed from their
old forms of government to those set up by the new
state, a period in Indian annals of equal importance to
the migration of the tribes to the Indian Territory.
When Mr. Whiteman came to Goodwater in 1893, though
it was one of the oldest Indian settlements, very few
white men lived in that region. It was due to Mr. White-
man ’s influence that a postoffice was established there,
and he was the first and only incumbent to date of
the office of postmaster.

Mr. Whiteman is prominent in Masonry, having filled
nearly all the offices and having been worshipful master
for five years of Goodwater Lodge No. 148, Ancient Free
and Accepted Masons, and its secretary for seven or eight
years; is also a member of Garvin Chapter of the Royal
Arch Masons; belongs to Indian Consistory of the thirty-
second degree Scottish Rite at McAlester, and to the
Bedouin Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Muskogee. His
church is the Methodist Protestant.

On August 2, 1896, at the residence of Judge H. C.
Harris in Bokhoma County in the Choctaw Nation, he
married Mattie J. Harris, daughter of Judge Henry C.
and Margarette E. Harris. Judge Henry C. Harris was
a member of the Choctaw tribe of Indians and one of the
most distinguished figures for many years. He had
founded the Harris ferry on Red River, one of the oldest
and most historic crossings of that stream, had been
sheriff of his county, royalty collector and senator, and
as a member of the Legislature was author of the bill
creating Wheelock Academy in what is now McCurtain
County. At the time of his death he was serving as
supreme judge of the Choctaw Nation. Judge Harris
was a nephew of Peter P. Pytehlin, who was once a
governor of the Choctaws and assisted in making the
Choctaw treaty with the United States Government.
Judge Harris was also related to the Garland and Fulsom
families, prominent in Choctaw affairs. President Grover
Cleveland married a member of one branch of the
Fulsom family.

Mr. and Mrs. Whiteman are the parents of seven chil-
dren: Magie E., who married W. L. Barrick; Mary L.,
who married Carl S. Prewett; Henry A.; Beatrice,
David C., W. J., Jr. and Bessie A., all of whom are still
unmarried.

Hon. Joseph Jerome Jones. In a long, active and
varied career, Joseph Jerome Jones has carried on
activities in various states of the Union and has in-
vaded the fields of law, real estate, farming and politics,
in all of which he has won success and reputation. Of
recent years agriculture has received the greater part
of his attention, aside from his labors of a public
character, and during fifteen years Ms home has been
at or near Sapulpa.

Mr. Jones was born April 3, 1864, at Cowden, Shelby
County, Illinois, and is a son of Samuel and Martha
(Rhodes) Jones. He traces his ancestry back in a
direct line to the year 1192, and in this country to 1631,
when the founder of the family, a native of England
and an uncle of John Locke, the great English phi-
losopher, settled at Woburn, Massachusetts. Mrs. Martha
(Rhodes) Jones was a direct descendant of Rev. George

2162

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Whitefield, who was born in Gloucester, England, in 1714,
in youth joined the Wesleys, was ordained preacher in
1736 and in 1738 came to the American settlement of
Georgia. He became chaplain of the first colony of
Georgia, was one of the greatest evangelists the world
has known, founded the Calvinistic Methodists, and
died in 1770 at Newburyport, Massachusetts. Joseph
Jerome Jones is also a blood relative of two American
presidents, John Adams and John Quincy Adams. Samuel
Jones was born in Knox County, Ohio, in 1834, and as
a young man went to Shelby County, Illinois, where he
was married, his wife having been born there in 1837.
They passed the remaining years of their lives on a farm
in Shelby County, the father dying in 1881 and the
mother in 1905. They were the parents of five chil-
dren, of whom four are living, a daughter being
deceased.

Joseph Jerome Jones attended the public and high
schools of Cowden, Illinois, and at the age of seventeen
years left the homestead farm and went to Valparaiso
(Indiana) University, where he spent three years. His
education was so far advanced, however, that, while
continuing his studies, he taught school at intervals for
four years in Illinois. His law studies also overlapped
his career as a teacher, and he was finally admitted
to the bar in 1890, in his native state. During the next
ten years Mr. Jones practice in the courts of Illinois,
Nebraska, Iowa, Utah and Oklahoma, residing at various
points in those states, and in 1900 located at Sapulpa,
where he carried on a successful practice until the time
of statehood, when he gave up his practice to give his
attention to real estate and investments, in which he had
become largely interested. Still later he embarked in
farming, and at the present time he has large and
valuable landed holdings in Creek County. In January,
1916, he located at Tulsa, where he is engaged in the
abstract business, being president of the Oklahoma
Abstract Company.

Mr. Jones was a republican until 1912, in which year
he cast his fortunes with the newly-organized pro-
gressive party. His public service has been of great
practical value to his constituents, and his fearless in-
dependence, both of speech and political action, has
sometimes brought him into conflict with certain leaders,
while decidedly raising him in public estimation. He
served as mayor of Sapulpa, until his resignation, and
was also city attorney, from which position he likewise
resigned. In 1910 he was elected to the State Senate and
served one term of four years. In this capacity he
was known as one of the most serviceable members of
the upper house of the Legislature, ready and logical
in debate and at the same time alive to all the practical
demands of his district and industrious in pushing for-
ward all needful legislation. He still holds membership
in the Creek County Bar Association, and for twenty-five
years has been a member of the Independent Order of
Odd Fellows.

Mr. Jones was married in 1894 to Miss Charlotte M.
Paxton, who was born near Tama, Tama County, Iowa,
where she resided until her marriage, daughter of Thomas
Paxton, whose neighbor for forty-two years was Hon.
James Wilson, ex-secretary of agriculture. Four chil-
dren have been Horn to Mr. and Mrs. Jones, namely:
Jerald J., born October 9, 1895, who is now a student at
Notre Dame University, South Bend, Indiana; Quelma,
born January 4, 1900; Xerma, born December 24, 1902;
and X, born January 21, 1905.

Bion F. Cole. To the material success and broad
industrial influence of the Live Stock Daily News, one
of the most valuable and important of the progressive
publications of the State of Oklahoma, Mr. Cole has

contributed much through his effective policies and
services in the capacity of advertising manager, and
he is consistently to be designated as one of the repre-
sentative figures in the domain of newspaper enter-
prise in this favored commonwealth.

Bion Franklin Cole was born at Liberty Mills, Wabash
County, Indiana, on the 1st of May, 1857, and when
he was three years of age the family removed to
North Manchester, in the same county, where the home
was established at the time of the inception of the
Civil war. The father, George E. Cole, manifested his
patriotism by promptly enlisting in defense of the Union.
He became a second lieutenant in the Forty-seventh
Indiana Volunteer Infantry, and sacrified his life in
the cause. He was killed in the final engagement at
Champion ’s Hill, Mississippi, and his body ' was taken
by the Confederates, who believed it to have been that
of one of their own officers and who gave it burial as
such, the location of the grave never having been dis-
covered by the members of his family. Lieutenant Cole’s
parents were born in England and upon coming to the
United States established their home in Pennsylvania.
In the old Keystone State was solemnized the marriage
of Lieut. George E. Cole to Miss Mary E. Baper, in
1843, • his wife being a daughter of Adam Baper, a
descendant of one of the sterling old German families
of Pennsylvania, and finally they removed to Indiana,
where the venerable wife and mother still resides, her
home being in the fine little City of Goshen, Elkhart
County, and her mental and physical powers being re-
markable, in view of the fact that she is nearing the
age of four score years and ten. Of the six children
Bion F., of this review, was the fourth in order of
birth, and all save one of the number are still living.

The devoted and widowed mother was left to care for
her five young children and soon after the war had
closed it became practically imperative for the older
sons to contribute their quota to the support of the
family. Bion F. Cole, when a lad of nine years,
was taken into the home of a farmer in Wabash County,
Indiana, his compensation being comprised in his recep-
tion of his board and clothing. Concerning this unduly
strenuous period of his life the following pertinent
statements have been written and are worthy of per-
petuation, as indicating the conditions and influences
under which a strong and resourceful character was
developed :

“This foster-father proved anything but a kind em-
ployer, the boy being assigned to such work as cutting
large logs by handling one end of a cross-cut saw, plow-
ing new ground, husking corn, chopping wood, etc., and
in the meanwhile being afforded no school privileges.
At the end of two years family friends took action and
brought about a dissolution of the agreement under which
the boy was bound, and he was returned to his mother’s
home at North Manchester, where he was able to attend
school one year. When his mother contracted a second
marriage and removed to Albion, Noble County, Indiana,
young Cole was hired out to a kinsman of his stepfather,
but here his lot proved even less favorable than under
former conditions. He was compelled to work early
and late and when weather was unpropitious or there was
nothing else for him to do he was set to clearing off
dead timber and other work more onerous than he had
done for the farmer to whom he was originally bound
out. From Albion he accompanied his mother and step-
father on their removal to Goshen, Indiana, and after
working for a time in a manufacturing establishment
he was there able to enter upon an apprenticeship in
the office of the Goshen Times, owned and published by
William Star. He completed a four years’ apprentice-
ship and the discipline in this connection justified the

1 tli
ai
co
lev
at
ca:

wi!
Mi
of
pul
tie
pul
reci
uad
wor
devi
pap
lusi
vaui
pub!
le i

deta

edit!

iugi
Mr.
last
said
bate,
the li

tie p

trie p
Api
closer
las bi
"0.
Mr. C
appeal
femes
Persia.
Bloom]
lew ve
society
lad pi
stages'
staff, i
effeetiv
makeup
umpire
lication
Burling
tie cel
editor v
served a
this com
late Bob
and lut
time of
leaving

accepted
leading (
round a

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2163

statement that the service of this order in a newspaper
and printing office is equal to a liberal education. 1 oung
Cole bad an alert mind, was ambitious and persevering
and made rapid advancement in acquiring knowledge oi
the intricacies and mysteries of the ‘art preservative of
all arts.’ In those days the ‘printer’s devil’ was the
common pack-horse of the office and his duties comprised
everything from sawing four-foot cord wood to standing
at a press during the daylight hours, after which he
carried the papers to subscribers in the evening.”

At the completion of his apprenticeship of four years,
within which his maximum salary was $3.50 a week,
Mr. Cole obtained a position with the great Chicago lirm
of Band, McNally & Company, then one of the greatest
publishing concerns in railway maps and schedules in
the United States and still one of the most important
publishing houses in the City of Chicago. Here the
reception of a stipend of $12 a week while working
under instructions seemed to the young printer a
wondrous financial stride, but in the meanwhile he had
developed a distinct appreciation of and liking for news-
paper work, and through the influence of representative
business men of Chicago he was enabled to make ad-
vancement in this field of enterprise. By the well-known
publisher of the Chicago Times, the late Wilber F. Story,
he was sent to Springfield, the capital city of Illinois,
where he profited much through observing the various
details of the state governmental work and where he
edited for the Chicago Times a column under the head-
ing of ‘ ‘ Rambling Musings. ’ ’ When he left Springfield
Mr. Story gave him a command or admonition which he
has ever retained as his guide in newspaper work. Story
said to him: ‘‘We want news, not a story. To illus-
trate, in case of a big fire give us simple facts — the cause,
the loss, the amount of insurance if any, the owners of
the property. Make it brief. ’ ’ The policies thus implied
made Wilber F. Story one of the foremost newspaper-
men in the United States, and his counsel has been im-
measureably valued by Mr. Cole, who recalls that eccen-
tric personality with much of appreciation.

Apropos of the further advancement of Mr. Cole in his
chosen field of endeavor the following succinct account
has been given:

‘ ‘ On his return trip from Springfield to Chicago
Mr. Cole stopped at Bloomington, Illinois. The place
appealed to him especially on account of its beautiful
homes and stirring business. There he met H. R.
Persinger, who had just started a society paper called the
Bloomington Eye, and he joined Mr. Persinger in the
new venture, which was virtually the initiatory step in
society journalism west of New York. The enterprise
had proved so promising and successful in its early
stages that Mr. Cole was offered a position on its editorial
staff, and his technical knowledge likewise came into
effective play through his serving as compositor and
makeup man. From this experience young Cole was
inspired to continue his association with society pub-
lications, and after an interval of two years he went to
Burlington, Iowa, where he assumed a position with
the celebrated Burlington Hawkeye, of which the
editor was at that time Hon. Frank Hatton, who later
served as postmaster general of the United States. In
this connection Mr. Cole formed the acquaintance of the
late Robert J. Burdette, one of the greatest paragraphers
and humorists of the West at that time and at the
time of his recent death a clergyman in California.
Leaving Burlington in the winter of 1883-4, Mr. Cole
accepted a position on the Rocky Mountain News, the
leading daily paper of Denver, Colorado. Being an all-
round man he was soon assigned to detached duty as
makeup on the city and state directories for Denver,
Pueblo, Leadville, and Colorado Springs, and within a

short time thereafter, at the suggestion of John Arkins,
owner of the News, he was assigned to service in the
mining camps of Colorado, to report for the mining page
of the Sunday editions of the Rocky Mountain News,
the silver-mining excitement and operations having then
been at their zenith in that state. In those days the
present mode of illustrating newspaper articles was un-
known, but young Cole injected illustrations of the
various mining fields in connection with his articles, and
these attracted attention throughout the entire country.

‘‘Returning to Denver after six months passed in the
mining camps of the mountain fastnesses, Mr. Cole
found awaiting him a position on the Denver Republican,
where he formed the acquaintanceship of the illustrious
and loved Eugene Field, later with the Chicago Daily
News, and of such satirists as O. H. Rothiker, Will
Yieher and others of the world’s greatest newspaper
writers. ’ ’

Mr. Cole remained in Denver until going to Des
Moines, Iowa, where he again became associated with
Persinger, whom he assisted in the establishing of the
Des Moines Mail and Times. With this paper he con-
tinued to be identified seven years and he then purchased
the Grand Island Times, at Grand Island, Nebraska, and
in connection with the editing and publishing of this
paper he first became actively concerned with political
affairs. He made his paper a success and a power in
politics in Nebraska. Through his paper and per-
sonal influence he opposed the nomination and candidacy
for the United States Senate of Hon. George W. E.
Dorsey, one of the strongest republicans in the state, and
supported the populist nominee, Senator Kemm, who was
victorious at the polls and who defeated Dorsey by an
appreciable majority. Mr. Cole had been a delegate to
the republican state convention and the article which
he wrote for his paper upon returning from the con-
vention was entitled “Dorsey’s Money Did It,” this
leading editorial having become the slogan of those
opposing Dorsey in the succeeding campaign, which was
a most spirited one.

In 1891 Mr. Cole assumed the position of traveling
representative and salesman for the Western Newspaper
Union, with the service of which he continued to be
identified fourteen years, during the last four of which
he was manager and made a record for being the best
producer of business the organization ever had upon the
road. He introduced the business of this corporation in
Oklahoma and never thereafter lost a paper among the
hundreds that were established within the period directly
succeeding the opening of the territory to settlement.
He assisted William Jennings Bryan in the establish-
ing and launching of The Commoner, and his wide and
varied experience hadi definite influence in furthering
the phenomenal and almost instant success of this note-
worthy paper.

In July, 1909, Mr. Cole established his residence in
Oklahoma City, where he assumed control of a syndicate
of ten county papers designated as the Suburban List,
and founded also the Live Stock Exchange, a weekly
paper. He made the ventures definitely successful and
after disposing of his interests in the same he became
the valued incumbent of his present responsible position,
that of advertising manager of the Oklahoma Daily Live
Stock News, which has a wide circulation throughout the
state and the broad usefulness and value of which have
been significantly fostered through the effective methods
and policies which he has evolved. Mr. Cole is con-
sistently to be considered one of the leading newspaper
men of the West, his acquaintanceship is specially large
and his manifold activities and broad mental ken have
made him a person of great versatility-and resourceful-
ness, the while his steadfastness and genial individuality

2164

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

iiave gained to him troops of friends in both business
and social circles.

In the City of Denver, on the 14th of June, 1882,
Mr. Cole wedded Miss Jessie F. Miller, daughter of
Samuel P. and Emily W. (Swan) Miller, formerly of
Des Moines, Iowa. Mrs. Cole was summoned to the life
eternal on the 10th of January, 1900, and is survived by
her only child, Holland Ralph Cole, who was born
October 28, 1884. At Lincoln, Nebraska, on the 4th of
June, 1903, was solemnized the second marriage of
Mr. Cole, when Mrs. Ida (Vanstrum) Dillon, of that
city became his wife. They have no children.

Greenwood McCurtain. Of the names that have
figured most conspicuously in the history of the Choctaw
Nation from its removal to Indian Territory until the
tribal relations were dissolved and the nation was
merged into the State of Oklahoma, none has enjoyed
more of the worthy distinctions of private and public
honor than McCurtain. One of the finest counties in
the southeastern part of the state bears the name of the
family as a permanent tribute to their valued citizenship,
and it was the lasting distinction of the late Greenwood
McCurtain to have been elected the last principal chief
or governor of the nation, and was the. executive head in
winding up its tribal affairs, and he continued to enjoy
the honorary title after statehood until his death. He
was a leader among the Tuskahoma or progressive party
in Indian politics.

In the early years of Indian Territory the home of the
McCurtains was near Port Smith, Arkansas, in what is
now LeFlore County, Oklahoma. Greenwood McCurtain
was born in that locality in November, 1848, but for
many years had his home in what is now Haskell County,
and in that county at the Sans Bois Cemetery he was
laid to rest after his death on December 27, 1910.

The name McCurtain is of Scotch or Irish origin,
though Governor McCurtain was almost a fullblood
Choctaw. His father Cornelius McCurtain was born in
Mississippi and was a member of the Choctaw tribe and
married a fullblood Choctaw woman, Miss Belvin.

Green McCurtain, as he was most familiarly known,
grew up on the frontier, a part of his youthful expe-
rience coinciding with that desolating period of the
Civil war. In a business way he was chiefly successful
as a stock raiser, and he was also identified to some
extent with mercantile and trading interests.

However, it was in his public relations that he most
thoroughly impressed his influence upon the life of the
Choctaw Nation. One of the greatest services he ren-
dered in behalf of his people, and in which he attracted
the attention of the United States Government, was in
the office of Choctaw National Treasurer. He served two
terms of two years each as treasurer of the Choctaw
Nation and during that time the Federal Government
paid through him $2,000,000 to the Choctaws. He dis-
tributed this vast sum to his tribesmen, the Government
requiring no bond of him as its agent. He was twice
chosen to represent the Choctaw tribe as its delegate at
Washington, but resigned during his second term.

Mr. McCurtain ’s first position of importance was as_ a
member of the national board of education from his,
the first, district. He was ever a friend and ardent
supporter of education among his people. He was later
elected to the position of district attorney, wherein he
distinguished himself as a public prosecutor and an
official who vigorously enforced the law.

In 1896 he was elected governor of chief of the
Choctaw Nation, and two years later was re-elected to
that high office. Under the law he was not eligible to
election a third time, so he retired after four years of
careful and conscientious administration of the national

affairs. In 1902 Governor McCurtain was again elected
principal chief after a spirited contest in which he was
opposed by an anti-statehood candidate, who was aided
by the national republican party. Two years later he
was elected governor for the fourth time, and thereafter
he was retained in the office by Congress and the general
government until his death. His service of twelve years
constituted the longest individual service in that office,
and only death severed his official relations with his
people.

Above all else, his fidelity to his people should be
longest remembered and most closely associated with
his name and character. It was said of him tnat he
was “first an Indian and then a democrat, but there
came a time when he believed the democratic delegation
in Congress was unfriendly to his people, and then he
became, and died, a republican in politics. ’ ’

In religious matters he was a Baptist and he died
in that faith at his home at Kinta, at the age of sixty-
two. Governor McCurtain was twice married. By his
first wife he was the father of one child, D. C. McCurtain,
a lawyer and now a resident of Spiro. By his second
marriage there were four daughters and one son.

David Cornelius McCurtain. One of the important
phases of the statehood movement in Oklahoma and
Indian Territory was the convention of August, 1905,
at Muskogee, which met for the purpose of providing
for a government of the Indian country and for drafting
a constitution for a single state comprising approximately
what was then Indian Territory. As a result of the
labors of this convention there was adopted what will
always be known in history as “The Sequoyah Constitu-
tion.” The temporary chairman of this convention was
D. C. McCurtain, a son of Governor McCurtain of the
Choctaw Nation, and at that time as now a prominent
leader among his people and one of the able lawyers of
the state.

This representative of the Choctaw Nation was born
at old Scully ville near Spiro, Oklahoma, January 29,
1873. He was the son of Greenwood and Martha A.
(Ainsworth) McCurtain. His mother was a white
woman and a native of Mississippi.

After getting his primary education in the national
school near his father’s home, he continued his educa-
tion at Roanoke College in Virginia, and in 1895 grad-
uated from the Kemper Military School at Boonville,
Missouri. Taking up the study of law, he first entered
the University of Missouri and finished his legal studies
at Columbian University in Washington, D. C. On re-
turning to Indian Territory he forthwith began the
practice of law and took his place as a leader among his
people. In 1898 he was elected district attorney for the
First District of the Choctaw Nation, and re-elected in
1900, but resigned to accept his appointment as clerk
of the Citizenship Commission. After one year he re-
signed as clerk, and in 1901 was chosen a delegate to
represent the Choctaw Nation at Washington. For this
post his ability and training as a lawyer and his inti-
mate knowledge of the Choctaw people and their needs
proved exceptional qualifications. He continued as the
Choctaw delegate at Washington until 1904, when he
returned to Indian Territory and became probate attor-
ney for the Choctaws. In 1906 he resigned that office
to become again a delegate in the interest of the
Choctaws at Washington, and represented his people
before the national government until statehood.

In October, 1907, James R. Garfield, then secretary
of the interior under Roosevelt, tendered him the position '
of attorney for the Choctaws, and he remained in that •
position, together with his associate in the practice of
the law, until 1912.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2165

Mr. McCurtain was a resident of McAlester from
1900 to 1914, and in December of the latter year re-
moved to Poteau, and later to Spiro, where he is now
living, engaged in the practice of law independently.
While a resident of McAlester he filled out an un-
expired term, by appointment, as mayor of that city.
He is a democrat, a thirty-second degree Mason of the
Scottish Kite, a member of the Benevolent and Pro-
tective Order of Elks, and belongs to the Presbyterian
Church.

In 1896 he married Miss Katherine N. Mitchell, a
Choctaw woman. They have four living children:
Ewart Preston, Greenwood Mitchell, Jackson Haskell and
Martha Elizabeth McCurtain.

E. B. Brewington, D. 0. The leading representative
of the school of osteopathy in Kay County is Doctor
Brewington, who has conducted a very successful prac-
tice at Tonkawa for the past fifteen years. He is one
of the men who has brought osteopathy to an equal
standing among the older schools of medicine, and is
himself a graduate of the pioneer school of osteopathy,
the Doctor Still Institute at Kirksville, Missouri.

A resident of Oklahoma since 1901, Doctor Brewing-
ton was graduated in osteopathy in 1899, standing among
the first in his class. He was born near Monticello,
Missouri, September 23, 1861, and was the son of a
farmer and stock man, Capt. David Brewington, now
deceased. His father made an excellent record as a
soldier in the Union army during the Civil war, and
died at the age of fifty-seven. He was a citizen who
commanded the high respect of all who knew him, and
possessed many splendid qualities of heart and mind.
The mother, whose maiden name was Miss E. Smith, a
daughter of Kice Smith, is now living at Caddo, Okla-
homa. His father was a republican in polities, and a
very active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
and was also affiliated with the Masonic fraternity.
There are five sons: E. M., a farmer and stock man at

Caddo; Dr. E. B.; C. M., of Caddo; Dr. O. M., now well
established in practice at Wichita, Kansas; and M. R.,
a farmer and stock man at Caddo.

Doctor Brewington spent the early years of his life
on a farm, gained an education in the public schools, and
has been an industrious and energetic citizen since early
youth. For several years he was engaged in business
in Kansas, and finally gave up merchandising in order
to enter the school of osteopathy at Kirksville founded
by tfie eminent Doctor Still, an institution which more
than any other fact has made Kirksville known all over
the country as a medical center. In 1901 Doctor Brew-
ington came to Oklahoma to assist his brother, Dr. O. M.,
who was at that time living in Grant County, and from
there moved to Tonkawa, where he has since been the
chief representative of his particular school in medical
circles.

In 1884 in Ellis County, Kansas, Doctor Brewington
married Miss Daisy Lowe. Four children have been
born to their union. Doctor Brewington is affiliated
with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. As a
citizen as well as a physician he has supported all
those movements planned for the benefit of his com-
munity, and is always mentioned among the leading
citizens of that town.

Richard S. Burns. Varied activities as an early
homesteader, a farmer and citizen in Dewey and Blaine
counties, have served to make the name of Richard S.
Burns well known and highly respected in this section
of the state, and at the present time he is identified
with public service as postmaster at Canton. Mr. Burns
has spent the greater part of his active career in the

West, is thoroughly familiar with the conditions in this
section of country, and has always been a man of hope
and enthusiasm concerning the future development and
prosperity of Oklahoma in particular.

The Burns family to which he b.elongs originated in
Germany, and settled among the pioneers of the old
State of Kentucky. His grandfather, Jacob Burns, was
born in the year 1799, and probably in Washington
County, Kentucky. Anyhow, that county was his home
when he was very young. He died there in 1881. As a
boy he had given some active service as a soldier in
the War of 1812, while the rest of his long life was
spent as a farmer.

Richard S. Burns, the Canton postmaster, was born
April 21, 1861, at Willisburg, Washington County,
Kentucky. His father, S. N. Burns, was born in the
same county in 1832 and died there in 1877. His life
was spent as a farmer and he belonged to the Baptist
church and the Masonic fraternity. He married Mary A.
Cheatham, who was born in Washington County in 1836
and died there in 1881. 'There were three children : L. H.
lives at Decatur, Illinois; the second is Richard S.;
and Elizabeth, now deceased, married Jerome Trent, who
is a merchant in Washington. County, Kentucky.

From the time he was sixteen years of age Richard S.
Burns has taken care of his own fortunes in the world.
In the meantime he had attended public schools in
Washington County, and at Perryville, Kentucky, re-
ceived the equivalent of a modern high school education.
On starting out for himself he made a living for several
years by teaching school. In 1888 he moved West and
spent a year on a farm near Hutchinson, Kansas, and
thus combined the vocation of teaching with that of
farming for several years. From Kansas Mr. Burns
moved to Oklahoma in March, 1897, and acquired a home-
stead of 160 acres near Fountain in Dewey County.
That farm has been his home ever since, though his
activities and interests are well diversified. His home-
stead is located a half a mile south and ten miles west
of Canton, in Dewey County.

During 1907 Mr. Burns served on the State Board of
Agriculture for Oklahoma. On September 16, 1914, he
was appointed postmaster at Canton, and has since
given his principal time and attention to the duties of
this office. His farm is in Little Robe Township, and
he has been a member of the school board of that town-
ship. Mr. Burns is a democrat, a member of the Baptist
Church, and can always be found as a supporter of all
public spirited movements in his community.

While living in Kentucky in 1884 he married Miss
Mattie Sale, whose father, the Rev. R. Sale, was a
Baptist minister. To their marriage have been born
five children: Mary A. is the wife of L. L. Murray, and
they live on their farm in Dewey County, Oklahoma;
Lucy L. married W. F. Bussing and they have a farm
at Fonda, Oklahoma; R. S. is a pharmacist at Dumright,
Oklahoma; R. H. is the active manager of his father’s
farm; and Ernest is assistant postmaster at Canton.

Clarence W. Kerfoot is an Oklahoma pioneer and
during the twenty-five years spent in this state has
touched with his enterprise a great variety of under-
takings. He helped to start things in a business way in
several localities at the» successive openings of the old
Oklahoma Territory. He was a homesteader in the
Cherokee Strip. In the past fifteen years his home and
activities have been centered at Shawnee, where he is
now at the head of one of the largest real estate
offices and has been a prime factor in developing Shawnee
real estate.

Mr. Kerfoot is of Kentucky and Virginia lineage.
Back in the old Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where

2166

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

liis ancestors lived, the old family estate is still known
as the Kerfoot homestead. His great-grandfather was
Samuel Kerfoot, who with two brothers, John and
William, came over from Dublin, Ireland, in 1777, and
reached American shores in time to participate with the
patriots in the war of the Devolution. All three of
these brothers were in Washington’s army in the final
campaign against Cornwallis and were present at the
surrender at Yorktown. Afterwards these brothers were
associated with some surveying and western land proposi-
tion of General Washington, and in return for their
services they received grants of land in the beautiful
Shenandoah Valley. Samuel Kerfoot died in that valley.
The grandfather was also named Samuel Kerfoot and
was born in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and died
in Hardin County, Kentucky, before Clarence W. Ker-
foot was born. He was an early settler in Hardin
County, owned a large farm, one of the finest in the
state, at Long Grove, Kentucky.

It was in Hardin County, Kentucky, that Clarence W.
Kerfoot was born September 9, 1866, and his father
Jesse L. Kerfoot was born in the same county in 1835,
and is still living there at the venerable age of eighty
years. It has been his home all his life, and besides his
work as a farmer he has -loyally served as a minister
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. He is now
retired. He is a member of the Masonic fraternity and
in politics a democrat. Jesse L. Kerfoot married Mattie
Williams, who was born in Hardin County in 1845 and
died there in 1899. The four children are: Annie, who
lives at Louisville, Kentucky, is the widow of E. C. Crist,
a contractor and builder; Clarence W. ; Melvin H., who
is a farmer and stock man in Hardin County; and Clitus,
who graduated M. D. from the Louisville Medical College
and is now practicing medicine at Prague, Oklahoma.

Growing up on the old Hardin County homestead,
Clarence W. Kerfoot had liberal advantages both at
home and in school. He attended the common schools,
a private school at Millerstown, Kentucky, and in 1885
finished his senior year in the high school at Horse
Cave, Kentucky. The first twenty-three years of his
life were spent on his father’s farm.

In 1888 he went out on his own account and bought
a farm of 100 acres in Hardin County, and after
cultivating it for two years sold out. Then on October
10, 1890, he arrived at El Eeno, Oklahoma, in the sec-
ond year after the original opening. At El Eeno he
remained as clerk in a grocery store until 1892. With
the opening of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe reservations
he made the run and established one of the first grocery
stores at Cloud Chief. However, he soon sold out, and
returning to El Eeno was again connected with a local
grocery establishment till September, 1893. With the
opening of the Cherokee Strip he went in as a home-
stead claimant, and secured 160 acres twelve miles
east of Enid. He made this the scene of his activities
for six months and then sold out to advantage.

Since that experience Mr. Kerfoot ’s activities have
embraced a wider and more general scope. With his
cousins, George and John Kerfoot, each of whom put in
$1,100, he helped establish a wholesale dry goods busi-
ness at El Eeno. He was identified with that establish-
ment until he sold out in 1899. In March, 1900, he
came to Shawnee, and since then his influence has been
a potent factor in the upbuilding of this central city of
Oklahoma. He and his cousins, George H. and M. M.
Kerfoot, bought the Mammoth general dry goods store,
situated at the corner of Main and Bell streets. George
H. Kerfoot is now manager of this large emporium, one
of the best dry goods stores in the state. At the close
of 1900 Clarence W. Kerfoot sold his interest in this
store, and then opened the Kerfoot-Wayland wholesale

grocery, with which he was actively identified until
1906. This is now a branch of the Williamson, Halsell,
Frazier Wholesale Grocery Company, in which Mr. Ker-
foot is still a stockholder.

In recent years Mr. Kerfoot has bought and sold a
number of merchandise stocks, but primarily has been in
the real estate business as a developer and property
owner on his own account. His offices are in a building
which he owns at 112 East Main Street. On Ninth and
Union streets he owns a block of land 100x140 feet, on
which are three substantial buildings, one of them
recently completed. He also owns a comfortable home
at 327 North Union Street, and a number of city lots.
As a farmer he is proprietor of 120 acres one mile
from Maud, but has sold all the other farm property
which at different times he has owned in this state.

In politics Mr. Kerfoot is a democrat, is a member
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and is
affiliated with Shawnee Lodge No. 657, Benevolent and
Protective Order of Elks. On October 28, 1898, at
El Eeno, he married Miss Anna Eichardson. Her father
is David Eichardson, a farmer in Mead County, Ken-
tucky. Mr. and Mrs. Kerfoot have two interesting
children. Mary Weldon, who was born October 21, 1900,
has shown brilliant scholarship, and is now combining
the junior and senior years of work in the Shawnee
High School, and will complete the regular four-year
course in less than three years. She is especially pro-
ficient in history. C. W., Jr., born September 30, 1909,
is now in the first grade of the public schools.

T. S. Chambers. One of the pioneers of the Cherokee
country, T. S. Chambers has for more than twenty years
been actively identified with Kay County, was one of
the builders of the first railway line in that section of
the state, and is now giving- an excellent administra-
tion to the duties of postmaster at Tonkawa. He re-
ceived his appointement to this office during the Wilson
administration on August 1'8, 1913. Tonkawa is one of
the thriving little cities of Northern Oklahoma, has
a population of about 2,000, and was first settled in
1896. The postoffice is third class, and the personnel of
its official staff are: T. S. Chambers, postmaster; E. K.
Ferguson, assistant postmaster; and three rural carriers,
P. J. Devore, E. L. Johnson and H. S. Chambers.

T. S. Chambers was born in Clay County, Indiana,
October 31, 1868, and has had a life filled with activities,
from school teacher to postmaster. He is a man of
great breadth of mind, vigorous in the handling of
business affairs, and has been a constructive factor in
the life of Kay County. His father, T. Chambers, was
born in Ohio, and was a successful farmer. He married
Sarah Eckert, also a native of Ohio. Her father died at
the age of seventy:two and the mother at seventy-one.
They were the parents of the following children : L. P., a
resident of California; O. L., a farmer; T. S.; F. G., a
farmer; H. N.; Anna Ballinger, a widow living at
Ponca City; H. S., in the service of the postoffice at
Tonkawa; Edna V. Thomas of Tonkawa; and Dennis D.,
of Junction City, Kansas.

T. S. Chambers spent his early youth on an Iowa farm,
and acquired a substantial education. For about ten
years he was engaged in the work of teaching school,
largely in Sumner County, Kansas. He received part
of his education in Guthrie Center, Iowa, and also at-
tended a college.

Mr. Chambers made the run into the Cherokee Strip in
September, 1893, and succeeded in staking out a claim
for himself. He then took the lead in securing better
transportation facilities for the county, and was secretary
and treasurer of the old Southwestern Eailroad Company,
which constructed the first railway line in the county.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2167

This road was subsequently sold to and is now a part of
the Frisco System. It was Mr. Chambers who went
to New York and succeeded in interesting capitalists,
who took the bonds of the proposed road, and he also
secured a large part of the right of way. For four
years Mr. Chambers was an active factor in the develop-
ment of the oil and gas resources about Tulsa.

At Perry, Oklahoma, in October, 1906, he married
Miss Edith Ferguson. Mrs. Chambers has spent most of
her life in Oklahoma, and completed her education in
Norman. Her father, D. K. Ferguson, is now assistant
postmaster at Tonkawa. To their marriage have been
born two children : Eoland S. and Eobert Glen.

Mr. Chambers is a thirty-second degree Scottish Eite
Mason and also a Knight Templar and Shriner. In
politics he has long been an influence in the democratic
party in his section of the state, and in 1912 was a
delegate to the Baltimore Convention which nominated
the great statesman and scholar, Woodrow Wilson, and
is one of the enthusiastic supporters of that Presi-
dent, whose administration bids fair to take rank as one
of the most notable in the country’s history.

J. Bert Foster. The position of J. Bert Foster in the
City of Chandler is one both of prominence and in-
fluence. He is city clerk and superintendent of water-
works, and is also president of the state firemen’s asso-
ciation of Oklahoma. During the twenty years he has
lived in the town no one has been more actively and
public spiritedly useful in boosting the resources and
development of that thriving Oklahoma city. His popu-
larity is as great as his usefulness, and he has that
excellent faculty of making and retaining strong friend-
ships. In both his private business and in public affairs
he has shown intelligence, hard common sense, and an
ability to meet all the exigencies that come up during
the routine of responsibility.

J. Bert Foster has lived in Lincoln County twenty-
three years, having come to Oklahoma from DesMoines,
Iowa. He was born in Decatur, Illinois, July 18, 1872,
of a family noted for honesty and integrity. His father
was Sam T. Foster, a native of Ohio, and of Scoteh-
Irish ancestry. He was married in Illinois to Jane
Stevenson, who was born in Pennsylvania of an old
family of that state. . Sam T. Foster died at the age
of fifty-three, after an active career as a farmer. In
politics he was a democrat, and once served as sheriff of
Moultrie County, Illinois. He was affiliated with the
Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

J. Bert Foster, who was one of two children, was
reared and educated in Illinois and at Des Moines, Iowa,
and as a young man learned the cigar maker’s trade.
He followed that occupation as a workman until remov-
ing to Chandler, when he founded one of the first cigar
factories in this part of Oklahoma. Mr. Foster was mar-
ried in Chandler to Miss Ella Mills, who has spent most
of her life in Oklahoma and received her education in the
Sac and Fox schools. They are the parents of one son,
J. Bert, Jr. Mr. Foster is affiliated with the Inde-
pendent Order of Odd Fellows and the Modern Wood-
men of America and has passed the different chairs in
these lodges. He is affable, courteous, and everyone
who has business at the office of the city clerk or with
the superintendent of the waterworks plant is impressed
both with his efficiency and his genial manner.

Hon. Maxwell Sloan Blassingame. By patient and
conscientious work and consistent study during the first
half of his term as a member of the State Senate,
Senator Blassingame established himself in the esteem
and confidence of his colleagues, thereby laying the
foundation for the honor that was conferred upon him

at the beginning of the regular session of the Fifth
Legislature. With little or no opposition he was chosen
chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus, by virtue
of which position he was majority leader of that body
in the Fifth Legislature. The first half of his senatorial
career was filled with efforts toward constructive legisla-
tion and party harmony, and the experience gained
qualified him for both legislative and political leader-
ship in the second half. Senator Blassingame has spent
many years in Oklahoma Territory and State, and in his
home town of Sallisaw was a prominent newspaper editor
and publisher.

Maxwell Sloan Blassingame was born March 29, 1874,
in Murray County, Georgia, and represents some fine
old southern stock. His parents were W. G. and Mar-
garet (Anthony) Blassingame. His father, now living,
at the age of seventy-seven, with his son in Sallisaw, is a
veteran of the Confederate army, in which he served
with distinction as a lieutenant. He was born in Georgia
and descended from ancestors who were among the
earliest settlers of the Carolinas. The Blassingame fam-
ily left South Carolina and removed to Georgia in 1870.
On his mother’s side Senator Blassingame is descended
from Germans in Saxony who became pioneer Americans
in Pennsylvania and later in the Carolinas. The various
generations of the Blassingames in America have been
among the foremost people of their communities in
political, social, church and military life. Dr. William
Fields, a cousin of W. G. Blassingame, and Thomas
Bowen, a nephew, represented Pickens County in the con-
vention that framed the present constitution of South
Carolina. Doctor Fields was one of the few democratic
members of the House during “reconstruction days” in
that state, and later of the Senate, during which time
Thomas Bowen Served in the House. The Bowens were
among the leading families of the state during more
than one generation, and now have distinguished repre-
sentatives in South Carolina and Texas. Samuel E.
Fields, a double cousin of Doctor Fields and another
cousin of Senator Blassingame ’s father, once served as
state senator from the Forty-third Senatorial District of
Georgia.

Senator Blassingame has been largely the architect of
his own fortune, and has had few favors in life which
he did not earn. As a boy he attended the short-term
rural schools of his home county, later was a student in
the Coosawatee Institute at Decora, Georgia, in the
Fairmount College at Fairmount, and also in the N. G. A.
College af Dahlonega, Georgia. In 1893, in order to earn
money to complete his college education, he came out to
McGregor, Texas, and by the sweat of his brow in cotton
fields labored early and late until his savings were suf-
ficient for his ambitious purpose. He then returned to
Georgia, entered Fairmount College as a student under
George S. Fulton, one of the ablest, best-known and most
loved professors of his day, and subsequently attended
the N. G. A. College.

About sixteen years ago Senator Blassingame came out
to Oklahoma, locating in Washita County. There he
taught in the public schools, and for four years was a
member of the county board of examiners, during the
administration of County Superintendent J. S. Norton.
While teaching a subsequent term at Spiro he pur-
chased the Sallisaw Gazette, and when school was out
took charge of the paper and plant. That year, 1906,
he organized the Democrat Publishing Company at
Sallisaw, which bought and consolidated the papers and
plant of the Gazette and the Star. He continued in
charge of the new publication, the Star-Gazette, until
1912, when he sold it to Alexander & Hentzel.

Senator Blassingame ’s activity in polities began in his
early youth, and in Oklahoma with statehood, and

2168

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

reveals many of the interesting facts in local political
annals since that time. He was secretary of the first
democratic central committee of Sequoyah County, which
was created by the constitutional convention in 1907,
and for two years was a member of the democratic state
central committee from Sequoyah County. Many times
he has represented his county in state conventions of
the democratic party and when delegates were selected
to attend the Baltimore convention which nominated
Woodrow Wilson, ’now President, he was chosen, by
acclamation, secretary of the convention, perhaps the
largest and most representative body of democrats ever
assembled in the state. In the City of Sallisaw he has
served- as a member of the city council and the board
of education. His election to the State Senate came
in 1912. In the Fourth Legislature Senator Blassin-
game was chosen chairman of the senate committee on
printing. During that session he had the honor of
nominating Robert L. Owen to succeed himself in the
United States Senate. With that nomination one func-
tion of the State Legislature was probably abolished for
all time, since Senator Owen was the last of Federal
senators to be elected by the Oklahoma Legislature. The
honor was especially gratifying to Senator Blassingame
in view of the fact that MrS. Owen is a niece of George
S. Fulton, the beloved tutor of Senator Blassingame in
Georgia. Besides the chairmanship of the printing

committee, Senator Blassingame in the fourth session
was a member of the committee on banks and banking,
and had much to do with the preparation and passage of
the banking act which inaugurated a new era in financial
affairs in the state. He was co-author with Senator
Pugh of Anadarko of a law compelling public officials
and their employes to file with their claims against the
public treasury receipts received for the money spent.
During the session lie also labored assiduously as a
pronounced supporter of the administration of Governor
Cruce, opposing some of the notable and wholly unneces-
sary investigations of that period and seeking to prevent
prolonged legislative sessions.

In the Fifth Legislature Senator Blassingame was
chairman of the democratic caueas, and proved himself a
worthy and commendable leader of his party.

For his success in life Senator Blassingame bestowed
much credit upon his wife, a woman of distinctive culture
and leadership in woman’s affairs in her home city, and
representing a prominent southern family. Before their
marriage, which occurred July 10, 1902, Mrs.. Blassin-
game was Miss Judith Bertena Byrd, of Fairmount,
Georgia. The Byrd family has been prominent in many
important undertakings for several generations in
Georgia, in Virginia and in Oklahoma. William Byrd,
of whom Mrs. Blassingame is a lineal descendant,
the most prominent of the family, was a member of the
King’s Council in Virginia in colonial days, and some
of his conspicuous achievements were the laying out of
the principal cities of Virginia, including Richmond,
and establishing the boundary line between Virginia and
North Carolina. He is said to have possessed the largest
library and was one of the most learned men in all the
colonies. Mrs. Blassingame is an active leader in church
and social circles, and possesses a genuine affability and
an ever-present desire for service that has won her
esteem among all classes, and among her elders in par-
ticular. Senator and Mrs. Blassingame have two chil-
dren: Ruth Fern, aged thirteen: and Maxwell Sloan, Jr.,
aged eleven. Another son, William Byrd, died at the
age of seven months. Six brothers and sisters of Senator
Blassingame live in various states of the South, South-
west and Middle West.

Senator Blassingame is a member of the Baptist
Church at Sallisaw, is affiliated with the Masonic lodge

and the Knights of Pythias lodgt, ix that town, being
a past chancellor in the latter. He is a member of the
Sigma Nu college fraternity, No. 7, at Dahlonega,
Georgia, which was one of the original chapters of that
fraternity in the United States. Senator Blassingame is
a member of the Sallisaw Hunting and Fishing Club, of
the Sallisaw Commercial Club, of the Oklahoma Press
Association, and of the Oklahoma Board of the National
Red Cross Society, an honor conferred upon him by the
governor of the state.

Jacob Johnson, who became closely identified both in
business and marriage with the Indian tribes of Kansas
and Oklahoma, was born in Washington, District of
Columbia, March 2, 1823, and died May 8, 1911, on his
wife’s allotment 2% miles west of Shawnee, Oklahoma.
One of his children is Mrs. Emma D. Goulette of Shawnee.

William Johnson, his father, was born in England in
1771. From about the age of twelve he followed the
sea until he retired as captain at sixty-five. His death
occurred in Washington, District of Columbia, in 1859.
He was a man of excellent education, and was a com-
municant of the Episcopal faith. He made his home
in Frederick County, Maryland, till about 1815 when he
removed to Washington. He was mayor of the national
capital, sometime between the years 1824 and 1859.

Barbara Miller, who became the wife of William John-
son, was born in Ohio April 21, 1782, but her home for
many years was at Middletown, Frederick County, Mary-
land, where many of her blood connections are still found.
In- the early days of Washington Barbara Miller con-
ducted a dairy whose products supplied the homes of
Washington people for a number of years.

Though his early home and training were in the East,
the real life of Jacob Johnson was identified with the
western frontier and its people. His literary education
was acquired in Washington schools. At the age of nine-
teen he was earning his own way, being first employed
in the District of Columbia navy yards, with his
brothers, unloading produce and freighting by boat from
the Carolinas.

The turning point of his life came in 1849 when he
went to the California gold fields with a Government
caravan, though not in the Government employ. After
prospecting a year, he sold his mines and came home for
a short visit. On going back to California he learned
that the purchaser of his property had struck gold, had
sold out and had left the fields wealthy.

On this second trip to California Jacob Johnson estab-
lished a general store. His stock of groceries, mining
implements, etc., were freighted from Omaha, Nebraska,
in caravans, each trip requiring three to four months.
Flour then sold from thirty to forty dollars a barrel;
granulated sugar was a distinct luxury, maple sugar
being the staple, while whiskey was the only article that
was cheap. While freighting Mr. Johnson gave and
sold produce to the Indians, and in that way he laid the
foundation of a strong friendship which ever afterward
existed between him and the red men. After con-
ducting his store and wagon trains three or four years,
he made his second visit home, going to his twin brother
Henry in Baltimore, where many of his relatives now live.

His next experience in the West was a trip to Wash-
ington and Oregon, following the Lewis and Clark trail
most of the way. His occupation of fishing and trapping
acquainted him witfi these territories as few white men
ever came to know them. With his trapping products
he made three or four annual trips to New York.

Next he was one of the engineering party that sur-
veyed the present boundary line from the Rio Grande to
the Gulf of California, after the new treaty establishing
the line was made with Mexico in 1853. This concluded,

tli

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2169

aid tM
ersvar®
i c®

ye®!

botlei;

iohW
j i?asl;:
rl to*
\\f"S

products

tlat B»

jraade t
;allisl>«

: I ’ ' I ' i '■ i'1’1

he came to Kansas, still a territory, and with his youngest
brother as cook conducted a very successful restaurant at
Indianola.

It was at Indianola that his destiny became linked by
marriage with the Pottawatomie tribe, and a number
of years later his family was among the 1,400 who
separated from the prairie band of the Pottawatomies
in Kansas and located on the thirty mile square in
Oklahoma in 1872. At Indianola Mr. Johnson met and
in 1856 married his Indian-Prench wife, Sophia Jarveau
(Shovo), who had just returned from school at St.
Mary’s, Kansas.

Sophia Johnson, a three-quarter blood Pottawatomie,
whose given Indian name is ‘ ‘ So-pe, ’ ’ was born at Council
Bluffs, Iowa, in 1840. Her paternal grandfather Jarveau
came direct from Prance, and his father, and then he, for
years engaged in the fur trade for the Indians with the
Hudson Bay Company. Her maternal grandfather Ches-
haw-gan and wife were fullbloods and prominent mem-
bers of the Menominee tribe. Her paternal grand-
mother was a fullblood Pottawatomie Indian from Mich-
igan. All her ancestors were among those Indians, to
whom our United States Government treated then ceded
to them what is known in history as the Northwest Terri-
tory, created by the Ordinance of 1787.

Her father, Louis Jarveau, whose name the “Great
White Father ” changed to Vieux on his rolls, was a half-
breed Pottawatomie of Michigan who met and married
Sha-note (Charlotte), daughter of Ches-haw-gan while
in Michigan. After their marriage, about 1830, they,
with Ches-haw-gan, wife and son Po-mom-ke-tuck or
“Peter the Great’’ moved to what is now Milwaukee,
Wisconsin. Here Madaline and Jake were born to the
young couple. Louis and family left Milwaukee about
*1834, going to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he was elected
tribal chief of the Pottawatomies. The family lived
there between eighteen and twenty years. During that
time Ellen, Margaret, Bachel, Sophia and Louis were
born.

The next move was to Indianola, Kansas, near Topeka.
Here Sophia’s grandfather and family lived about six
miles’ from them, in bark wigwams, till they saw how
houses were built. At Indianola, in addition to his ex-
tensive farming and stock raising, Louis “Vieux” con-
tinued helping the Indians in their business affairs and
in their times of sickness and need, generally. This
kind of home life was excellent training for Sophia and
the other six children, as each child was required in turn
to assist in every line of work from the cooking, sewing
and care of the smaller children, to milking and maple
tree tapping. A good old negro, “Uncle Charlie,” not
a slave, lived in Jarveau ’s family for years, cooking for
both hired hands and the family, also helping with the
housework generally.

Prom Indianola Sophia was taken in a wagon to St.
Mary ’s, Kansas, to attend school. While here her eyes
became weak so she was compelled to discontinue her
studies at the age of thirteen. Thus she had only four
or five years of literary training. While she always
lived the life of the citizen Indian, her mother Charlotte
lived the camp life until her marriage to Louis Jarveau.
Measured by the standards of the time, the Jarveaus
were wealthy folk. Sophia often tells about her mother ’s
silk and broadcloth Indian dresses, furs, the hired serv-
ants, etc. The Indian dress waist those days was what
is known as the middy blouse now.

Upon her return from St. Mary’s, Sophia met Jacob
Johnson, a white American restaurant proprietor, whom
she married three years later. The next year, 1857, her
mother Charlotte Jarveau died. The father then moved
to Vermillion and kept the toll bridge over the Kansas
River. Louis “Vieux” married again while here, then

moved to Louisville, Kansas, where he lived and farmed
until his death in 1872. His death was deeply mourned
by hundreds, and to this date his descendants are never
without welcome or friends when among those who knew
him.

Now to resume the career of Jacob Johnson. After
the death of his brother, Andrew, at Indianola, he
removed to Vermillion, where he was toll bridge collector
for his father-in-law. Prom Vermillion the family moved
in 1861 to Rossville, Kansas, not far from Louisville,
where Louis Vieux had his home. There Jacob Johnson
spent eleven years engaged in farming, raising corn,
wheat, cattle and hogs. He had gone to Oklahoma a
short time before his father-in-law died.

After locating temporarily at Sacred Heart, Oklahoma,
Mr. Johnson’s family moved to Pleasant Prairie, now
Beyers, about 1873. There he owned a general store.
Not long afterward his large herd of cattle was stolen
in a bunch. This, with his generous western disposi-
tion for assisting his fellow men by the too generous
extension of credit, ruined him financially. He returned
to Sacred Heart in 1876. Eighteen seventy-eight found
the family at Salt Creek near Sacred Heart. Here he
built a small temporary log house where he expected to
wait until it was decided where the Pottawatomies would
take their allotments of land. This year at Salt Creek
favored Mr. Johnson financially. He and his boys
farmed, raising corn, hogs and cattle principally.

Better home comforts were found in the roomy rented
house, splendid orchard and stock accommodations at
Greenhead in 1879, on the Pettifer’s place, where the
older boys did the farming. The chief crops were corn,
cotton and beans. Had the wild deer, hogs, turkeys,
quail and prairie chickens not been so plentiful, the
family would have been in hard straits for meat that
year, since negroes stole most of the large drove of
domestic hogs.

While at Greenhead the oldest son, Richard, left home
to become mail carrier between Sac and Pox and Red
Pork, now known as Sapulpa. There being no bridges,
he often risked his life swimming the swollen streams
of Deep Pork. The oldest daughter Rachel found em-
ployment at the Friends Mission, which was located near
the now Shawnee, Pottawatomie and Kickapoo Indian
School near Shawnee. The next older boy Lawrence
remained home, while the next three in age, James,
Sarah Ann and Andrew, entered the Friends Mission as
pupils. Here James died.

In 1883 the family moved to Kickapoo near what is
now McLoud, until a two-roomed log house was built
on the wife’s present allotment. This house remained
there until 1913 when the site was covered with a new
barn. Mrs. Sophia Johnson in her declining years, on
her allotment 2% miles west of Shawnee, resides in a
neat five-room frame cottage, built and originally fur-
nished by her educated children.

Mr. Johnson joined the Friends Church at old £}haw-
neetown when Franklin Elliott and wife were mission-
aries from 1879 to 1884. His wife, baptized and raised
a Catholic, united with the Friends Church also, but re-
turned to her original faith after his death. “Grandpa
and Grandma Johnson,” as they were affectionately
called, made a wide circle of acquaintances and friends
in their locality, and business men knew them as people
of the highest honesty and integrity. In his earlier days
Jacob Johnson belonged to the Masonic lodge, but
pioneer life forbade a continued active relationship.

Twelve children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Johnson.
The first two, Seraphine and Jacob, died at Vermillion,
Kansas, Seraphine at the age of four and Jacob when
an infant. Richard, born at Vermillion, Kansas, Feb-
ruary 26, 1860, died a bachelor January 22, 1889.

2170

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Rachel, whose allotment home is at Norman, was born
at Rossville, Kansas, May 2, 1863, and married in 1881
John Wall (white) and about 1892 married Jim Hale
(white). Loren, born at Rossville, January 31, 1866,
married December, 1896, Florence Wooford (white),
and has his home near Shawnee. James, born at Ross-
ville in 1868, died in 1884. Sarah Ann, born at Ross-
ville March 14, 1870, married April 7, 1896, J. D.
Goulette (Indian), and she died at Shawnee November 2,
1909, her allotment being at McLoud. Andrew, born at
Rossville August 11, 1872, is single, and has his allot-
ment at McLoud. Ida, born at Pleasant Prairie, now
Beyers, Oklahoma, April 29, 1874, has her allotment at
Teeumseh, and married Ben Bollman (white). Emma,
born at Sacred Heart, Indian Territory, March 31, 1876,
married January 28, 1912, J. D. Goulette, and has allot-
ment at Teeumseh. David, born at Salt Creek, Indian
Territory, November 16, 1878, has his allotment at
Teeumseh, and married Kate Pansier (white). Kath-
erine, born at Greenhead January 19, 1882, married
Charles Craig (white), her allotment being at Shawnee.

John T. Hats. Among the men who composed the
early bar of Kiowa County were several who brought
to their practice an experience and ability gained by a
number of years of court and office practice in other
states, and of these John T. Hays, who located at
Hobart in 1903, has continuously maintained the repu-
tation to which his previous training entitled him. Mr.
Hays had practiced a number of years in Kentucky be-
fore moving to Oklahoma and is one of the best known
members of the Oklahoma State Bar Association.

Born in Knox County, Kentucky, in February, 1861,
John T. Hays is descended from an Irish family of
that name which established its home in Virginia prior
to the War of 1812, and one or more of the name par-
ticipated on the American side in that conflict. His
father, Joseph C. Hays, was born in Knox County,
Kentucky, in 1834, and died at Winchester in that state
October 30, 1902. He was a farmer and stock raiser
and in 1898 moved from Knox County, Kentucky, to
Boone County, Missouri, and that was his home the rest
of his life, his death having occurred while on a visit to
Winchester, Kentucky. During the war between the
states he was a Confederate soldier under General
Morgan one year, and was taken prisoner at Cumber-
land Gap, but made his escape. He was a member of
the Christian Church, and a democrat in polities. Joseph
C. Hays married Minerva N. Bain, who was born in
Knox County, Kentucky, in 1837, and is now living at
Columbia, Missouri. Their children were: Alexander,

who died in infancy; John T. ; Arah, who died at the
age of thirty-five, the wife of Thomas Gilbert, who is
now a farmer at Lawton, Oklahoma; J. Smith, an at-
torney at Winchester, Kentucky; James M., also an
attorney, practicing at Okmulgee, Oklahoma; Thomas B.,
a farmer at Hobart; William, who was a physician and
surgeAn and died at Highlands, North Carolina, at the
age of thirty -five; Ora, who married F. A. Henninger,
a jeweler at Columbia, Missouri; and Mrs. Mary Eliza-
beth Spillman, wife of a farmer at Harris, Kentucky.

John T. Hays grew up in his native county in Ken-
tucky, where he attended the public schools and spent
the first eighteen years of his life on his father’s farm.
He had a varied experience of self help and effort for a
number of years before gaining admittance to the legal
profession. Three years were spent as a teacher at
Barbersville, Kentucky, where he was principal of the
public schools, and one year at Williamsburg, Kentucky.
For nearly four years lie was a student in the Agricul-
tural and Mechanical College at Lexington, and during
1888 was a student in the law department of Vanderbilt

University at Nashville, Tennessee. He had already
pursued a private course of study in the law, and was
admitted to the bar at Franklin, Kentucky, September
9, 1888. Thus Mr. Hays has had an active career as a
lawyer for more than a quarter of a century. His first
practice was at Barbersville in Knox County, Kentucky,
and his practice, continued from 1888 to 1903, brought
him into relations with not only the local but the state
and federal courts. In 1903 he came to Hobart, Okla-
homa, about two years after the opening of the Kiowa
and Comanche reservation and has since enjoyed an in-
creasing civil and criminal practice.

A service which has brought his name into prominence
among legal circles throughout the state was as a
member of the State Code Commission, which revised,
annotated and codified the laws of Oklahoma. He is a
member of the County, State and American Bar Asso-
ciations, and in 1910 was a member of the council of
the state association and is now a member of its com-
mittee on uniformity of laws.

His law offices are in the Starns Building on Fourth
Street in Hobart. For several years he has served as a
member of the Hobart School Board and has thus as-
sisted in the construction of the school buildings and
has promoted the general advancement of local educa-
tional facilities. He is a member of the Christian
Church, is a democrat in polities, is affiliated with Lodge
No. 108, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, at Barbers-
ville, Kentucky, and also with Barbersville Chapter,
Royal Arch Masons.

In 1897 at Barbersville Mr. Hays married Miss Lucy
J. Tye. She is a daughter of the late George W. Tye, a
farmer at Barbersville. To their marriage have been
born four children: Howard Homer, who died when six

years of age; Howell Edmond, now in the freshman
class of the Hobart High School; Russell Randolph and
Helen Hortense, both students in the grammar schools.

Providence Mounts. One of the oldest lawyers in
point of continuous service at Frederick is Providence
Mounts, who was an attorney of mature experience and
well tried ability when he located there more than ten
years ago, and has since developed a profitable business
as a lawyer and has made himself a factor in the growth
' and development of the town.

A Texan by birth, Providence Mounts was born at
Denton, Denton County, February 25, 1872. The Mounts
family came originally from France, settled in Virginia,
moved at a later date to Kentucky, and the grandfather,
Providence Mounts, was born in Virginia about 1804,
went as a pioneer to Texas and died at Denton about
1876. William H. Mounts, father of the Frederick
lawyer, was born in Virginia in 1832 and died at Denton,
Texas, in 1889. He went out to the latter state about
1850 and became identified with the farming, stock
raising and mercantile interests of North Texas from
pioneer times onward. As a democrat he took much
interest in the party and in local affairs, and the family
has always been one of prominence in Denton County.
He served as an elder in the Presbyterian Church and
his family were reared in the same faith. During the
early days along the Texas frontier he participated in
several engagements with the Indians. William H.
Mounts married Miss Mattie Haynes, who was born in
Mississippi in 1838 and died at Denton, Texas, in
January, 1914. Their children were: R. M., who is a

stock raiser at Hereford, Texas; Emma, who lives at
Denton, and is the widow of Dr. C. Lipscomb; Ena,
who married Frank A. Tompkins, in the real estate and
insurance business at Corpus Christi, Texas; Providence;
John H., a merchant at Frederick, Oklahoma; Sena,
wife of W. W. Wright, a farmer and stock man at

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2171

Denton; and Alice, wife of Clarence Cockrell, who is in
the electrical business at Dallas, Texas.

Providence Mounts obtained his education from the
public schools of Denton, and was a student for a time
in the high school, and spent one year at the Agricultural
and Mechanical College at Bryan, Texas, before entering
the law department of the State University. In 1893 he
was graduated LL. B., and was thus equipped for
practice in a profession at the age of twenty-one. Re-
turning to his old home town of Denton for the next
eleven years he was marked as one of the rising attor-
neys of the Denton County bar, and during that time
served both as city attorney and county attorney. Since
1904 he has looked after a growing general civil and
criminal practice with home at Frederick, Oklahoma.
His offices are in the Stinson-Mounts Building on Grand
Avenue, of which he is a part owner.

In politics he belongs to the dominant party in
Oklahoma, is a member of the Presbyterian Church, and
was formerly identified with the fraternal orders of the
Knights of Pythias, the Independent Order of Odd
Fellows, the Woodmen of the World and the Mystic
Circle. At Denton in 1896 he married Miss May Mat-
lock, daughter of the late Dr. W. R. Matlock, a well
known Denton physician. They have one daughter,
Barbara Lee, who was born at Denton July 25, 1905.

Hon. Frank Carpenter. So far as known Represen-
tative Frank Carpenter is the only member of the
Legislature who participated in three successive land
openings of the original Oklahoma. Mr. Carpenter has
been identified either with the State of Kansas or with
Oklahoma more than thirty years, and for nearly fifteen
years has been one of the most progressive and success-
ful farmers in what originally was the Kiowa and
Comanche Indian country. He was sent to the Legis-
lature as representative from Caddo County, and his
home is at Bridgeport.

Frank Carpenter was born in Erie County, New York,
in 1852, and in his pioneering followed the example of
his ancestors, who in that relation were identified with
several zones of settlement beginning with the early
Atlantic coast. His parents were William and Julia
(Foote) Carpenter. His father was at one time mayor
of the City of Buffalo, New York. The ancestry goes
back to the first settlement on Sherman Isle, now Prince
Edward Island, the title to which is believed to be in
the Carpenter family to this day, although the papers
that would establish such a claim were lost by one of
the Carpenters in Lake Erie. Mr. Carpenter’s mother
is a member of the historic Foote family, from which
came Commodore Foote, one of America’s naval heroes,
and Dr. Luman Foote, a noted pioneer minister of the
Episcopal Church in Michigan. In the earlier lines of
the family one of the most prominent connections was
Governor Bradford, the first executive of the Massa-
chusetts Colony.

When Frank Carpenter was sixteen years of age his
father moved to Michigan, and for his common school
education he attended the schools both of New York and
Michigan, and began making his own way in the world
as clerk in a wholesale and retail grocery house in
Charlotte, Michigan. He remained with that firm for
seven years, then became identified with farming and
lumbering in Michigan. In 1882 the family removed to
Marion County, Kansas, where he took up farming and
also engaged in stock raising.

As a resident of the neighboring State of Kansas
the opening of the original Oklahoma appealed with
special strength to Frank Carpenter, who was a member
of the great throng of people who on April 22, 1889,
awaited the signal fired at high noon and made the great

rush into Oklahoma to get public lands. He was on
horseback, and rode for forty miles until reaching a
homestead in what is now Deer Creek Township of
Oklahoma County. Mr. Carpenter remained two years
to prove up his claim, and then returned to Kansas,
where in the meantime he had kept his former farm and
livestock. The Oklahoma homestead was relinquished
to his brother Henry. In 1893 Mr. Carpenter joined
the second throng of people seeking public land in
Oklahoma, making the run into the Cherokee Strip.
Having already held a claim in Oklahoma, he assisted
his sister and an uncle in obtaining land, and they
settled in Payne County. Mr. Carpenter remained there
four years, and again returned to his Kansas farm.
When the Kiowa and Comanche Indian reservation was
opened in 1901, he went a third time among the land
seekers, but this time instead of the race and physical
contest engaged in the lottery by registering for claims
at El Reno. He was unsuccessful in the drawing but
bought land in what afterwards was known as Caddo
County. There he established his first permanent home
in Oklahoma, and has been identified with that locality
ever since.

The first office through which Frank Carpenter served
the people of Oklahoma was as county assessor of Caddo
County, to which he was appointed by Governor Cruce in
1912. At the end of the same year he was elected to the
office for a two year term. In 1914 he was elected a
member of the Legislature, and at the beginning of the
fifth session was appointed chairman of the Committee
on State and School Lands and a member of committees
on Appropriations, Public Roads and Highways, Prac-
tice of Medicine and Mines and Mining. He was one
of the authors of a bill making an appropriation for
rewards for bank burglars and was a joint author of a
bill correcting the practice of false statements made to
merchants by their patrons. He was chairman of the
Farmers Caucus in the Legislature and interested in
legislation particularly tending to improve farm con-
ditions. Mr. Carpenter has proved a stimulating factor
in the Legislature, and has favored a short and busy
session, has opposed his influence to the introduction of
many useless bills, and has cared little for changes in
legislation save those that were vital to the commercial
and industrial welfare of the state. He was a supporter
of most of the policies of Governor Williams, but avoided
being an extremist on economy.

Mr. Carpenter was married at Florence, Kansas, in
1883, to Miss Annie Arnold, who died nine months after
the wedding. January 15, 1893, he married Miss Flora
Wagner of Florence, Kansas, who died in April, 1908.
The three children of this marriage are: Charles, a

graduate of the Bridgeport High School and now com-
pleting his junior year in the Agricultural and Mechani-
cal College at Stillwater; Edward, completing his fresh-
man year in the Agricultural and Mechanical College;
and Mrs. Eris Shacklin, a graduate of the Bridgeport
High School and wife of a farmer near Bridgeport.
Mr. Carpenter was married January 22, 1913, to Mrs.
Annie L. Sharp, whose home was in the State of Wash-
ington and whose father was a Polish count in banish-
ment in America. Mr. Carpenter has three brothers and
two sisters : Henry lives on the original Carpenter

homestead in Oklahoma County; Edward is a farmer at
Muskogee; W. H. was for a number of years prosecut-
ing attorney of Marion County, Kansas, and now one
of the leading land owners of that state; Mrs. H. S.
McDonald is the wife of a retired druggist and capitalist
of Kansas City; Miss Emma Carpenter lives with her
brother at Bridgeport.

Mr. Carpenter is not a member of church, lodges,
clubs or associations, and instead of such -associations

2172

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

lias devoted himself to improving his farm and live-
stock and properly rearing his family. Liberal but con-
servative, he is one of the leading citizens of his county.
He has never used tobacco or liquor in any form, and
his sons are following his example in that respect.

C. O. White. When Mr. White first became identified
with the community of Wynona in Osage County about
five years ago, it was in the capacity of a teacher. He
was already a well qualified lawyer, and in a short time
his practice demanded his entire attention, and as the
only local attorney in that part of the county he has
proved himself master of the situation and has handled
an extensive practice, particularly the settling of estates
and in questions affecting the land titles both in Osage
and adjoining counties.

An Ohio man, Mr. White was born at Montpelier in
Williams County May 30, 1877, a son of I. M. and
Lavina (Weitz) White, the former a native of Williams
County and the latter of Lucas County, Ohio. Mr.
White’s maternal grandfather, Adam Weitz, was born
in Germany, came when a young man to Pennsylvania,
and was married there to Miss Yager, after which he
became an early settler on a farm in Williams County,
Ohio, where both he and his wife died. Adam Weitz in
earlier years was a stone cutter by trade. The paternal
grandfather was Joseph White, also a native of Penn-
sylvania, and he married Miss Barelaw of that state,
but of Welsh parentage. Joseph White was a cabinet
maker by trade but spent most of his active life as a
farmer in Williams County. I. M. White and wife are
still living at Montpelier, Ohio, being retired from the
farm. Their three children are: Alice, wife of George

W. Farlee of Williams County; Myrtle, wife of Alva
Shankster of Williams County; and C. O.

C. O. White lived at home with his parents in North-
western Ohio until he was about twenty-two years of
age. In the meantime he had graduated from the
Montpelier High School, and prepared for work as a
teacher in the Tri-State Normal at Angola, Indiana.
His services were employed in several schools in Ohio,
and he paid most of his expenses through law school
and university either by teaching or by traveling on
the road during vacation. In 1902 he entered the law
department of the Ohio State University at Columbus,
and was graduated in law in 1908. In June, 1909, Mr.
White arrived in Oklahoma, and spent a few weeks in
normal training at Bartlesville until getting a certificate
as an Oklahoma teacher. Por three years both he and
his wife taught school at Wynona, and he then engaged
in practice of the law, but interrupted that to take
charge of a school at Osage, but after four months
resigned his position and returned to his law office in
Wynona. His business as a lawyer developed rapidly
after he opened his office, and it was owing to the de-
mands upon his personal attention that he was obliged
to resign school work at Osage. In addition to his large
practice as the only attorney at Wynona, Mr. White is
owner and manager of the Wynona Telephone Exchange
and is secretary and attorney for the Wynona Bealty
Company and handles considerable real estate on his
own account. He has been interested in every local
enterprise since he established his home at Wynona, and
has effected a number of important oil leases in this
district.

In politics he is a republican, and took an active in-
terest in politics even during his minority. He is a
member of the Methodist Church. In June, 1908, Mr.
White married Miss Ida Backus at Hillsdale, Michigan.
Mrs. White was born in Kansas May 13, 1885, but when
about four years of age her parents returned to Ohio,
and she was afterwards sent as a student to Hillsdale

College in Michigan, of which institution she is a grad-
uate. She was engaged in teaching school part of the
time with her husband, until four years after her mar-
riage. Mr. and Mrs. White have two sons, John Henry
Isaiah, born at Wynona May 19, 1914, and Wesley
Leonard, born at Wynona June 17, 1916.

E. B. Wood. As superintendent of the public schools
of Newkirk, Professor Wood occupies one of the most
responsible posts in the educational system of the state.
He has an enviable record as an educator, having spent
about thirteen years in the schools of Kay County. He
has been identified with the schools at Newkirk for the
past four years, and his administration must be given
credit for the construction of the splendid new building
for the schools in 1914, costing for building and fur-
niture about $50,000. It is one of the most modern and
best adapted buildings for school purposes in the state.
On the first floor are five classrooms and a gymnasium,
with seven rooms on the second floor. The staff of
teachers includes twelve in number, with four in the
high school which is a highly organized department and
sends its graduates direct into the colleges and the uni-
versities. The principal of the high school is A. J.
Walter. The enrollment in the high school is about 115,
and altogether there are 382 pupils. During his four
years at Newkirk Mr. Wood has built up the schools in a
highly creditable manner, and judged by results alone
his position is among the first of -Oklahoma school
managers.

E. B. Wood was born on a farm near Winfield, Kansas,
August 14, 1873. His father, Warren Wood, was a New
York State man and during the Civil war served as a
soldier in the Union army. He married in Norton
County, Kansas, Jennie Hatcher. She was born, reared
and educated in Kansas. There were four children,
three sons and one daughter.

Professor Wood was reared in Kansas, had the disci-
pline of a farm as well as the advantages of public
schools, and after attending country schools entered the
Winfield High School and in 1898 was graduated from
St, John’s College in Kansas. For the past thirteen
years he has been connected with the public schools of
Kay County. He spent two years at Kildare, and two
years in the Tonkawa schools, two years in the Newkirk
grade and four years as principal of the high school,
before accepting his present post as superintendent of
the schools of the entire city.

Mr. Wood was married June 5, 1901, to Effie Burke, a
young woman of cultured mind and many happy social
qualities. Her father was William Burke. They have
two sons: Warren and Harold. Professor Wood is a

republican in polities, and is affiliated with the Knights
of Pythias.

Ralph P. Stanion has been connected with the
United States Indian Service continuously for seventeen
years, and in this long period is contained a service that
for usefulness and faithful discharge of duty is rarely
surpassed. His effective labors in connection with the
Government’s wards have been of a nature which have
made him one of the most valued men in the service,
and at the present time he occupies one of the most
responsible positions therein, the superintendency of the
Pawnee Indian Agency.

Mr. Stanion was born at Ithaca, Tompkins County,
New York, May 12, 1875, and is a son of James H. and
Harriet L. (Parsons) Stanion. His father was born in
England, October 30, 1839, and as a youth of eighteen
years emigrated to the United States, settling at Ithaca,
New York, where he was married to his first wife, who
died leaving two children. Later he married Harriet L.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2173

Parsons, who was born in Connecticut, June 21, 1845,
and they became the parents of four children. When
the Civil war came on, Mr. Stanion, who had become a
loyal citizen of his adopted country, enlisted in Company
D, One Hundred and Thirty-seventh Begiment, New
York Volunteer Infantry, with which organization he
later veteranized, serving throughout the period of the
war and receiving his honorable discharge at its close
with the rank of orderly sergeant. He was in numerous
important engagements and at the sanguine battle of
Kenesaw Mountain received a wound which incapacitated
him for several months. He always maintained his
interest in his old army comrades, and until the close
of his life was active in the Grand Army of the Be-
public. As a business man Mr. Stanion was engaged in
the manufacture of carriages, wagons and buggies, and
won gratifying success through industry and honorable
business methods.’ An Episcopalian, he was observant
of church obligations, and reared his children to respect
their religious duties. Politically he was a republican,
and served several terms as tax collector of this city.
His death occurred at Ithaca, August 25, 1914, Mrs.
Stanion having passed away there February 11, 1908.

Balph P. Stanion was a resident of Ithaca until 1898.
He secured his early education in the public schools of
that city, following this by attendance at Georgetown
University, from which he was graduated in law in 1905,
with the degree of Bachelor of Laws, and two years later
was admitted to practice in the courts of Oklahoma, but
has never followed his profession as a calling. In the
meantime, in 1898, Mr. Stanion had successfully passed
the Civil Service examination for the position of
teacher in the Indian Service, and began his duties at
Pine Bidge, South Dakota. Subsequently, he was sent
to the Fort Shaw (Montana) Indian School, in 1903,
and in 1904 went to the General Land Office at Wash-
ington, District of Columbia, as clerk, and it was while
thus engaged that he pursued his college course. Later
he was sent to Darlington, Oklahoma, as superintendent
of the Bapahan Indian School, then to the Bosebud
Indian School in South Dakota, as superintendent, and in
1909 to Otoe, Oklahoma, as superintendent of the agency.
There he remained until 1914, when he came to Pawnee
as superintendent of the Pawnee Indian Agency. Mr.
Stanion is a republican, stands high in Masonry, being
a Shriner and a member of the Consistory at Guthrie,
and is an adherent of the faith .of the Episcopal Church,
in which he was reared.

On January 31, 1900, Mr. Stanion was married to
Miss Lillian Carter, who was born at Syracuse, New
York, and to this union there have come four children:
Elizabeth Lillian, born at Pine Bidge, South Dakota;
Balph Carter, born at Bochester, New York; James
Henry, born at Washington, District of Columbia; and
Charles Parsons, born at Bosebud, South Dakota.

Edwaed Milton Washington. In the local campaign
for the election of county officers in Hughes County, in
1914, Mr. E. M. Washington supplied much spice and
vigor in his candidacy for the newly-created office of
court clerk. Mr. Washington at that time- was clerk of
the County Court, but by an act of the Legislature in
1913, the offices of county clerk and clerk of the District
Court were to be consolidated, resulting in a new office,
known as court clerk, the incumbent of which should
perform the duties of clerk of both the County Court
and the District Court.

The actual qualifications of Mr. Washington for the
position to which he aspired were unquestionable. He
had been a resident of the county for many years, had
a successful business record, and had proved capable and
efficient in every position of trust to which he had been

called. Especially convincing to the voters was the fiscal
record of his administration as county clerk. This rec-
ord showed that from receipts of something more than
$7,000, all the expenses of the office, including salaries,
were paid, and a surplus turned over to the county treas-
urer of over $3,000.

With all these solid facts behind him he could well
afford to introduce some of the amenities into the cam-
paign, and one of these which attracted special atten-
tion was a speech in which he said that the people of
the United States had elected George Washington the
first President of the United States, and consequently
why should not the people of Hughes County elect E. M.
Washington the first court clerk. The people answered
this question by electing him by a substantial majority,
and he has justified their confidence and so far in his
administration has been able to realize the ideal ex-
pressed in his promise to the people that he would do
his full duty, would assume the responsibilities of the
office without delegating them to a deputy, and would
do all in an official capacity that any one man should
reasonably be expected to do.

Edward Milton Washington is a native of Missouri and
was born near Portland, Callaway County, October 5,
1875, a son of Lewis E. and Marian (Bryan) Washing-
ton. His father was born at Lexington, Kentucky,
August 12, 1835, and was a son of Edward S. Washing-
ton, a native of Virginia, who came to Missouri in 1849,
and followed farming and stock-raising in Callaway
County until his death at the age of seventy-seven. The
Virginia branch of the family was closely related to the
Washingtons of whom the most conspicuous representa-
tive was President George Washington. Lewis E. Wash-
ington spent most of his life in Missouri as a farmer
and merchant, was for four years county clerk in that
state, and he died at the home of his son in Holdenville,
Oklahoma, February 3, 1914. He wras an active democrat
in politics. His wife was born December 10, 1855, near
Portland, Missouri, in the s(ime house in which E. M.
Washington first saw the light of day, and she died there
in July, 1909. Her family was related to the Bryan
of which William Jennings Bryan is the most notable
representative. E. M. Washington was the first of six
children, the others being: Lottie L., of Tulsa; W. D.
Washington of Ashfork, Arizona; Vera A., wife of B. B.
Williams of Stigler, Oklahoma; Lewis E., Jr., of Tulsa;
and Bettie M., who died in infancy.

Edward M. Washington spent the first eighteen years
of his life on the old farm in Callaway County, Missouri.
He finished his education in that well-known institution
of higher training, Westminster College at Fulton, Mis-
souri. A little more than twenty years ago, in 1894, he
came to Indian Territory and located at Eufaula in Au-
gust of that year, and for ten years applied himself
assiduously to his duties as a druggist and for three
years was bookkeeper in the Eufaula National Bank.
In 1907 Mr. Washington came to the east side of Hughes
County and at Lamar was engaged in the mercantile
business for five years.

On January 1, 1913, he was appointed clerk of the
County Court and from that office he entered upon his
duties in 1914 as the first court clerk of Hughes County.
He has been a democrat all his life and among other
positions was city treasurer of Eufaula three years and
city recorder two years. He is active in the Methodist
Episcopal Chuch South, is a thirty-second degree Scot-
tish Bite Mason, being affiliated with the Indian Con-
sistory No. 2 at MeAlester and with the Lodge and Eoyal
Arch Chapter at Holdenville. He is also a member of
the Modern Woodmen of America.

On October 19, 1898, Mr. Washington married Miss
Catherine Simpson. Mrs. Washington was born at

2174

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Eufaula, Oklahoma, August 3, 1878, a daughter of John
D. Simpson, an Oklahoma pioneer from Kentucky, who
was married in Oklahoma to Susan A. Crabtree Morris,
a widow. Mrs. Washington has a little Indian blood in
her veins, being a one-sixty-fourth blood Creek. Mr.
and Mrs. Washington have four children: Marion M.,
Sue, E. M., Jr., and George.

John H. Brennan, of Bartlesville, is a prominent
lawyer of Oklahoma. As attorney for many of the great
oil and gas companies operating in the state he has han-
dled a great volume of litigation.

Mr. Brennan is the general counsel for the great nat-
ural gas pipe-line interests and oil interests of the allied
companies known as the Wichita Natural Gas Company,
Wichita Pipe Line Company, Quapaw Gas Company, Em-
pire Gas & Fuel Company and Indian Territory Illumi-
nating Oil Company, operating in the several states of
the Southwest.

These interests are known as the Doherty & Company
interests.

Mr. Brennan was born at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in Sep-
tember, 1861. Largely by his own efforts he gained a
liberal education, attending the Wisconsin Normal
School and the University of Wisconsin. Admitted to
the bar in 1884, he was engaged in general practice in
Wisconsin for a number of years. While a resident of
Wisconsin he was retained by the Foster Estate of Rhode
Island to look after its interests involved in the noted
Foster lease on the Osage Reservation in Indian Terri-
tory, which he handled from Wisconsin from 1902 to
1906, when he came to Oklahoma to be more closely
identified with it.

Hon. Charles Martin, who in 1915 took the post of
mayor of Hominy, has long been identified with business
affairs in the Southwest, is a civil engineer by profes-
sion who helped construct several of the railroads pene-
trating Oklahoma, and in the handling of large tracts of
land and the improvement of real estate has performed
a notable service in Osage County.

Born in the rugged mineral section of Southern Mis-
souri, at Pilot Knob, April 18, 1868, he is a son of D. F.
and Emily (Franks) Martin, the former a native of
Tennessee and the latter of Missouri. His father was
long prominent in public affairs in Missouri, served as a
major in a Missouri regiment with the Confederate
army throughout the war, later .became sheriff and tax
collector in Iron County, and was also Circuit Court and
Probate judge of Howell County. He died at Piedmont
in Wayne County, Missouri, in October, 1901, at the
age of sixty-nine. His wife, who was reared at Arcadia,
Missouri, died at Elkhart, Indiana, in 1913, at the age
of sixty-nine. The father was a democrat and while' liv-
ing in Howell County gained the public offices already
mentioned against a normal republican majority, and in
all his political life was stronger than his local party.
There were five children: George, who died at St. Louis
in June, 1914; Charles; May, wife of George J. Williams
of Elkhart, Indiana; Virginia, wife of T. M. Polk of
Wayne County, Missouri; and Jessie, wife of J. W.
Story, who is a presiding elder of the Methodist Epis-
copal Church South, living at Claude, Texas.

Charles Martin was reared in the counties of Iron,
Wayne and Howell, in his native state, and obtained his
education by self-efforts, though he attended district
schools for a time and, was also under the instruction of
W. D. Vandiver of St. Louis, for two years. He left
home at the age of fourteen, and his first regular em-
ployment was in the train service of the Iron Mountain
& Kansas City Road, now a part of the Frisco System.

He was an active railroad man from the ages of nineteen
to twenty-eigiit, and then engaged in mereuandising.

At the age of twenty-eight he was married at Siloam
Springs, Missouri, to Miss Hallie R. Goodin, who was
born in Missouri. Mr. Martin soon afterwards engaged
in railroad construction work as a civil engineer, and in
that capacity was connected with the building of several
lines in the Southwestern country. His last work was as
assistant engineer in locating the route of the Missouri,
Kansas & Texas from Coffeyville, Kansas, to Oklahoma
City, which was finished in 1902. In that year he located
in Hominy, spent two years with the Osage Allotment
Commission, and for six months was with the Townsite
Commission. This commission platted five towns in
Osage County. Since then Mr. Martin has been largely
engaged in the leasing of pasture lands for Texas cattle
men. In 1911 he assisted in organizing the Farmers
State Bank at Hominy and later became its vice presi-
dent. His business is now largely general real estate
and townsite promotion, with John L. Freeman as part-
ner, under the firm name of Martin & Freeman. They
leased 40,000 acres of land from William Blair of Tulsa
each year. In a public way Mr. Martin has been active
for a number of years, being an independent democrat.
For several years he served as police judge, and in 1915
was elected to his present dignity as mayor. In Masonry
he has taken thirty-two degrees of the Scottish Rite and
is a member of the Mystic Shrine, is a member of the
Presbyterian Church. In association with Mr. Freeman
he has constructed a number of fine residences at Hominy,
and his own home is one of the attractive bungalows of
the town. He has built most of the homes on Price
Avenue and several blocks along the west side.

Mrs. Elizabeth Perkins, of Pawhuska, is a member
of the celebrated Chouteau family, which so far as his-
torical records go was the first white family to locate
in what is now the State of Oklahoma. Thus Mrs.
Perkins, who carried in her veins the blood of those en-
terprising French traders whose names are so intimately
linked with the early history of the City of St. Louis as
well as with Oklahoma, and also of members of the
Osage Tribe, is one of the most interesting women of
the state.

Quite recently in an article that appeared in local
papers the editor of this standard history of Oklahoma
called attention to the fact that Salina is the site of
the first white settlement in Oklahoma. There in 1796
a trading post was established by the Chouteaus of St.
Louis. The Chouteau brothers were mere lads when they
were brought to St. Louis at the time of the first settle-
ment in 1764. They had grown up in the Indian trade
and for many years had a practical monopoly of that
of the Osage Tribe, the members of which were several
times as numerous as they are now.

In 1795 Manual Lisa, a Creole Spaniard, secured from
the Spanish governor general of the Province of Louisi-
ana an exclusive concession or monopoly of trading with
the Indians of the valley of the Missouri and those of all
its tributaries. As the Osage Indians spent most of their
time in the valley of the Osage River and as the Osage
River was a tributary of the Missouri, it followed that
the Chouteaus would lose the lucrative business which
they had built up among the Osages. However, there
was nothing to prevent the Chouteaus from trading with
the Osages at any place outside the watershed of the
Missouri. Accordingly the members of this enterprising
firm busied themselves in inducing a large part of the
Osages to move over and settle in the valleys of the
Neosho (or Grand) and Verdgris rivers in Southern
Kansas and Northern Oklahoma. The establishment of
the trading post in the valley of the Grand River, in

now,

itilli

which

fepla

on tie
Dal ro
liiillii
He ye;
Hat se
W stc
ind tl
Min
frier fc
[rowino

f tie'
frontier
Wii ri<
Hoiih

winded
nrposes
Hie! is

lenity fr
it marie
ft was

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2175

it.

151

ihe

rice

iber ;
his-

cate l
Mis. '
ea-

itely I
is as '
tie j
a of

local
homa :
te of 5
1196
)i St.
i they
..•tie-
trade !
[that
. coral

1 from
Louisl-
I® with
e of all
iftleia
> Osage
ed that!

5 erf

r, tea

ignitl
of tie
•rprisio?
t of the
j of the-
Southen
nett of
giver, in

Mayes County, on the present site of the Town of
Salina, followed shortly afterward. The selection of this
site was doubtless influenced by its proximity to the
Saline Springs which made the manufacture of salt

P°Theleestablishment of a trading post in this remote
wilderness brought a retinue of hunters, trappers, trad-
ers, clerks and other employees to live there. Probably
most of these were Creole French, from Canada, Louisi-
ana and the French settlements in Illinois, Missouri and
Arkansas, but there were doubtless several who were o±
Spanish or Anglo-American antecedents. In common
with the customs of the time many if not most of these
contracted matrimonial alliances with women of the
Osage Tribe. So it is not improbable that there were
several families who were prominent residents of the
post from the date of its establishment. Prior to 1820
a number of the half blood French Osage offsprings of
this community at the Chouteau trading post settled a
few miles lower down the valley on the opposite side o±
the Grand River in the vicinity of the mouth of Chouteau
Creek. The location of this French-Osage settlement was
probably the consideration which most influenced Rev.
Epaphrus Chapman in selecting the site for the estab-
lishment of the Union Mission, located about seven miles
southeast of the Town of Chouteau in 1820.

At some time subsequent to 1815 the Chouteau trad-
ing post passed into the possession of Col. Auguste P.
Chouteau and his brother Paul. Colonel Chouteau con-
tinued to make his home at this place until his death,
which occurred in the winter of 1838-39, though a large
part of his trading operations had been transferred to
other points after steam navigation was introduced upon
the Upper Arkansas as far as Fort Gibson. Washington
Irving visited Colonel Chouteau here in the fall of 1832,
having brought letters of introduction from the kinsmen
of the latter in St. Louis.

Shortly after the death of Colonel Chouteau the body
of the Cherokee Tribe of Indians migrated to the Indian
Territory and the site of the Chouteau trading post hav-
ing been included within the limits of the Cherokee
Nation, the property passed into the hands of Lewis
Ross, a brother of Chief John Ross. After the death
of Lewis Ross it was acquired by the Cherokee tribal
government and it then became the seat of the Cherokee
Orphan Asylum. The last of the log buildings of the
Chouteau trading post was said to have been destroyed
during the Civil war. No vestige of any of them remains
now, though several uneven places in the ground are
still noticeable, together with a few fragments of rock
which were probably left when the remains of ruined
fireplaces and chimneys were carted away. The site was
on the edge of the second bottom just north of the origi-
nal road to the ferry. It was in a thicket until the
building of the Missouri, Oklahoma & Gulf Railroad in
the year of 1912. One noticeable feature was the fact
that several ailanthus trees were growing where the post
had stood. This species is not a native one in Oklahoma
and there are no other specimens growing in the sur-
rounding country. Another noteworthy fact was that
prior to the building of the railroad the fleur-de-lis was
growing wild in and about the thicket, a mute reminder
of the loyalty of the French people of the western
frontier to la belle France. As already stated, the rail-
road right of way occupies a part of the site of the
■Chouteau trading post. Fortunately, the rest of it is
included in the south end of the block reserved for park
purposes when the town site was platted and opposite
which is the depot location. This will afford an oppor-
tunity for the people of Oklahoma to place a monument
■or marker upon the site of the old trading post.

It was in the locality of the old trading post that Mrs.

Vol. V— 27

Perkins’ father, Legess Chouteau, spent many of his
years. He was born in Missouri, but was educated at
the old Hominy Mission. Legess Chouteau’s mother was
a full blood Osage, while his father was one of the
French traders of that name. The elder Chouteau had
been appointed a United States Indian agent in 1826,
and died on the Grand River in the home that, as already
stated, subsequently became the orphanage for the Cher-
okee Indians.

Legess Chouteau died at Pawhuska when about sixty
years of age. For many years he served as a Government
interpreter for the Osage Tribe. He also accompanied
the nine full blooded Osage scouts who were engaged by
General Custer to trail “Sitting Bull’’ and his band in
the Northwest, and for six months he acted as interpreter
between the scouts and the general. He had become an
interpreter soon after leaving school, being first employed
in that capacity by the American Fur Company in Mis-
souri. While the Osages were living in Southern Kansas
Legess Chouteau helped to hew the logs for the building
of the first Catholic Mission, now St. Paul, Kansas.

Legess Chouteau was twice married, having eight chil-
dren by his first wife and two by the second. The chil-
dren of the first mariage were: Mary Ellen Foraker;
Joseph; Charles; Augusta Donavan, who is still living in
Osage County; Lewis; Elizabeth, now Mrs. Perkins;
Gesso; and Palisia. All these are now deceased except
Mrs. Donavan and Mrs. Perkins. The two children of
the second marriage were : Mrs. Lena Robinson, who lived
at Adamson, Oklahoma; and Henry, of Pawnee County.

Mrs. Perkins grew up among the Osage Tribe and has
many interesting associations with this section of Okla-
homa. She first married John Ross. By that union there
were four children, both sons dying young, while her two
daughters still living are: Emma, wife of Clement de
Noya of Osage County, and Ella, wife of C. C Haven of
Osage County. Mrs. Perkins for her second husband
married John Kilbie. There are also two children of this
marriage: Coene, wife of William Leesey of Osage
County; and Earl, of Chautauqua Springs, Kansas.

In September, 1895, Mrs. Kilbie became the wife of
Dr. S. W. Perkins. Doctor Perkins was born near "Van
Buren, Arkansas, March 1, 1858. After the war his
parents located in the Cherokee Nation, and he grew
up in Northern Oklahoma and Southern Kansas, but
since 1884 has been a resident of Osage County. In
1886 he graduated from the dental department of the
University of Michigan, and soon afterwards began prac-
tice in the Osage country, and continued the active work
of his profession until 1900. Since then he has employed
his time in looking after his extensive ranching and
real estate interests. Doctor and Mrs. Perkins have a
fine farm of 480 acres five miles west of Pawhuska.

John McMullen. In the office of municipal com-
mission of highways and public improvements in the City
of Bartlesville, the metropolis and judicial center of
Washington County, Mr. McMullen has found ample
scope for the effective manifestation of his progressive-
ness and public spirit and he is one of the valued and
popular officials of this vigorous and important city. He
has been prominently identified with operations in the oil
fields of this section of the state and has been concerned
with this line of enterprise since his youth, his experience
having been wide and varied and having touched various
states in the Union.

Mr. McMullen was born at Batavia, Genesee County,
New York, on the 31st of July, 1871, and is a son of
Maurice and Catherine (Canbell) McMullen, both like-
wise natives of the old Empire State, where the former
was born in Niagara County and the latter in Wyoming
County. The father died at Arcade, Wyoming County,

2176

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

in 1907, at the age of sixty -five years, and his widow still
resides at that place, in which her birth occurred.
Maurice McMullen was prominently concerned with oil
operations in the fields of Pennsylvania for a number of
years and his activities in this line likewise extended into
his native state. He was an energetic and duly success-
ful business man and resided for varying intervals at
different places in the State of New York, including
Olean, Batavia and Arcade. He represented his native
commonwealth as a gallant soldier of the Union in the
Civil war, in which he served as a member of Company
L, Eighth New York Heavy Artillery. He was with this
command about two years, participated in a number of
important battles, and his regiment was a part of the
Second Army Corps under General Hancock, being in
front of Petersburg at the time of the surrender of
General Lee. Mr. McMullen participated in the Grand
Review of the victorious but jaded troops in the City of
Washington at the close of the war and in later years he
perpetuated his interest in his old comrades through his
active affiliation with the Grand Army of the Republic.
His political allegiance was given unreservedly to the
democratic party and he was a man who commanded
the respect and esteem of all who knew him. Of the four
children the subject of this review is the eldest: Maurice
J. is a resident of Drumright, Creek County, Oklahoma;
Elizabeth is deceased; Mary Jane is the wife of Walter
J. McCormack, a farmer near North Java, Wyoming
County, New York.

John McMullen acquired his early education in the pub-
lic schools of New York and Pennsylvania, his parents
having removed to Butler County in the latter state when
he was a child and his father having become a prominent
figure in oil operations in that district. As a youth Mr.
McMullen was thus enabled to acquire practical experi-
ence in connection with the oil-producing business, and in
1893 he went to the oil fields of Indiana, where he became
associated with his uncle, Prank Campbell, and others in
the oil-producing enterprise. In October, 1898, he went
to Los Angeles, California, and after being identified
for some time with oil operations in that section of the
Golden State he made his way to the oil fields of Wyom-
ing and became associated with the American Consoli-
dated Oil Company. In 1903 he was identified with the
same line of enterprise at Chanute and other points in
Kansas, and the following year recorded his arrival at
Bartlesville, Oklahoma, where he found requisition for
his services as an expert in the oil fields of this, locality,
his activities having extended also into the celebrated oil
fields of Texas. He has thus kept in close touch with
the development of the various new fields of the West
and may well be considered an authority in practical
details of oil production.

Mr. McMullen has never deviated from the line of
strict allegiance to the cause of the democratic party
and has been an active worker in its ranks. In 1913
he was elected to his present responsible office of com-
missioner of highways and public improvements in the
City of Bartlesville, and he has been indefatigable and
circumspect in the discharge of his executive functions.
Prior to assuming this office he has served two years
as deputy sheriff ox Washington County.

Mr. McMullen is a prominent representative in Okla-
homa of the time honored Masonic fraternity, in which he
has received the thirty-second .degree of the Ancient
Accepted Scottish Rite. His ancient craft affiliation is
with Bartlesville Lodge, No. 284, Ancient Free & Ac-
cepted Masons, of which he is past master, and he is
past patron of Bartlesville Chapter, Order of the Eastern
Star, with which his wife likewise is affiliated. He has
been specially active in the affairs of the York Rite
bodies with which he is identified and is at the present

time, 1915, representative of the same before the Con- I
necticut Grand Lodge.

In October, 1905, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. 1
McMullen to Mrs. Nettie Adkins, who was born in I
Indiana and who is a daughter of Nathan and Oetavia H
Lounsbury. Mr. and Mrs. McMullen have no children
but Mrs. McMullen has one daughter by her previous
marriage, Oetavia Adkins, who is a member of the
home circle.

George C. Priestley. One of the best known and
influential men in all Oklahoma is George C. Priestley,
whose home since 1904 has been in Bartlesville. Mr. JJ

Priestley is primarily an oil man, an industry with
which he became acquainted in Western Pennsylvania '
while growing to manhood. His mature years have
brought many distinctions and achievements. A few °

years ago he was regarded as the largest individual oil [J

operator in Oklahoma, and possibly the largest in the
United States. He has helped to build and operate many ?
miles of electric railway lines in the Southwest, and has
recently concluded improvements and extensions which
make the system of waterworks at Bartlesville the best in J

the state for a city of the size. His financial and busi- 01

ness connections are numerous, and his name is one of *

national prominence in politics. He became identified jf

with the progressive movement in the summer of 1912, j

and was made chairman of the finance committee of the ,/

national progressive party.

George C. Priestley was born at Houlton, Maine, June llle

10, 1862. He is of Scotch ancestry. His grandfather, “

George Calvin Priestley, was born in Scotland in 1802, j,

was a graduate of the University of Edinburg, and came
to America late in the ’20s. He was an engineer by f,011
profession, and was a prominent man both in Maine and f,
other sections of the United States. During the !
threatened war around the Maine-Canada boundary he ,™
was employed to locate many of the defenses erected by w,,|
the United States near the boundary. The trouble was L™
finally settled by arbitration. He became identified with ari
the lumber business, and during the ’60s was in the I™'
service of Jay Cook in the construction of the Union |iM!
Pacific Railway, and lost heavily in the memorable ?.°°
“Black Friday” of 1873. He was also engaged in trad- ,
ing with the Indians along the western frontier, and 111 ete
spent his last years in Minnesota, where he died in 1884, ?tss 1
and was buried at Brainerd in that state. He was the j1 J®
father of one son and two daughters.

George C. Priestley is a son of George C. and Mattie j™ 81
(Pollock) Priestley, both of whom were born in the We?al
State of Maine. His father lived in Maine until the t81ar‘
Civil war and then entered the service of the Union army f? cre
as a private in the Fifteenth Maine Regiment and con- eI®
tinued a soldier until the close of the war. He then Seon
moved to the oil fields in Western Pennsylvania, and be- ®re8l
came prominent in the oil well supply business during 11
the early history of that industry. In 1873 he suffered r*f
a fracture of his skull and was practically an invalid ■
for many years and died from the effects of the accident
in 1892 at Pleasantville, Venango County, Pennsylvania. “W
His widow continued to livp in Pennsylvania until her
death in 1911. She was the mother of five sons and three- !fl?lier
daughters, George C. being the oldest child.

Mr. Priestley spent his early life in Pennsylvania, ,*■ f
and left school when a mere boy to take up practical I*,®!
affairs. He was employed in a store at Pleasantville, and l ls &
one of his first employers was the late Sam Q. Brown, at
one time president of the Tidewater Oil Company, a ®IP: G
subsidiary organization of the Standard Oil. Mr. <ll:iii:i:ir
Priestley soon got into the oil business, and oil has been
a study with him for many years, and he is familiar with- ■ • W,
all phases, producing, refining and marketing. FromJ,re (hi

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2177

Pennsylvania he moved to Bartlesville in 1904, about the
time the Oklahoma oil fields were coming into prominence,
and operated on an extensive scale until 1909, when he
sold some of his most valuable holdings to an English
syndicate. However, he has continued to be interested
in the industry, though many other concerns have taken
much of his time. Mr. Priestley bought and recon-
structed the waterworks system of Bartlesville, and dur-
ing the past eighteen months has spent $100,000 in
improvements. The Bartlesville Waterworks Plant repre-
sents an investment of $250,000. Mr. Priestley was also
president of the local stock company which constructed
the Maire Hotel at Bartlesville, at a cost of $135,000, a
handsome five-story hotel building that would be a credit
to a city twice the size. This hotel was constructed by
local citizens for the good of the town and not as an
investment. Mr. Priestley has also been a director of
the Union National Bank at Bartlesville since its reor-
ganization. This bank has total resources, according to a
statement of March, 1915, of nearly $1,200,000, and
its deposits aggregate more than $1,000,000. M. F.
Stillwell is president, and all the other officers and direc-
tors are well known and substantial men in south-
western financial affairs. Mr. Priestley acquired a ma-
jority of the stock in this institution, and brought about
the reorganization.

He is also president of the Union Traction Company of
Kansas. This company has fully 100 miles of electric
lines in operation, connecting Coffeyville, Independ-
ence, Cherryvale and Parsons. These roads were built
by Mr. Priestley associated with eastern capitalists. Mr.
Priestley has been a power for good at Bartlesville in
conriection with various local betterments, particularly
the upbuilding of schools and churches. He is chairman
of the board of trustees of the Presbyterian Church.
Fraternally he is a Mason, and a member of a number
of clubs, societies and civic organizations. The only
political office he ever held was that of treasurer of
Warren County, Pennsylvania. He is one of the largest
realty holders in Oklahoma and Texas. During the
Spanish-American war he very materially assisted General
Wood.

Mr. Priestley ’s political career has been one of dis-
interested service. He is a practical and successful busi-
ness man, and has always believed in the square deal
in political life. He came into national prominence
during the campaign of 1912, when he upset the republi-
can machine in Oklahoma and gave Boosevelt his first
delegate to the national convention. Colonel Roosevelt’s
remark, ‘ ‘ Oklahoma turned the trick, ’ ’ gives Mr. Priest-
ley credit for starting the movement which resulted in
the practical disorganization of the republican party at
its convention of that year. Mr. Priestley entered that
convention as a republican of the progressive type, and
later was one of the many who repudiated the actions
of the convention leaders and brought about the organiza-
tion of a new party. Mr. Priestley resigned as national
committeeman of the republican party for Oklahoma on
August 1st, and soon afterwards was made national
committeeman of the progressive party, and became a
member of its executive committee and was then made
chairman of the finance committee.

Mr. Priestley was married in 1885 to Miss Ruland
(of Pennsylvania. They are the parents of five children :
Lillis B., who is associated with his father in business;
Hazel, wife of Paul R. Johnson of Bartlesville; Bessie, at
home; George C., Jr., connected with the Union Oil
Company of Tulsa; and Helen, at home.

B. W. Key. If there is one firm name that means
[more than any other to the old timers of Western Okla-
homa as well as to the present generation, it is the York-

Key Mercantile Company. In the days when this
organization sold supplies to ranches and cattle men all
over the Southwest, the company had a highly developed
organization for supplying goods to all points, whether
on the railroad or not. In later years the company’s
business is almost entirely confined to lumber and build-
ing material. The present headquarters of the York-Key
Mercantile Company are at Woodward, Oklahoma, but
the company maintains a number of branch yards all
over the Southwest.

The junior member of this firm is B. W. Key, who
was born in Alabama and has been associated with this
firm for thirty years. He first became identified with
the firm of York-Parker-Draper Mercantile Company.
Under this title the company carried on an exceedingly
extensive business, handling supplies for cattle men and
ranchers and maintained several branches in Western
and Southern Kansas, during which time he came to
know all of the old ranchers and cattle men in the
Panhandle of Texas and Western Kansas and Oklahoma.
In a few years Mr. Key had risen to a partnership in
this firm. He was a very business-like and astute young
man, a hard worker, could be relied upon to make every
promise good, and for many years the people of Okla-
homa as well as elsewhere have looked upon him as one
of the foremost business men. After the deaths of
Messrs. Parker and Draper, he became a full partner
to F. B. York and the present firm style of York-Key
Mercantile Company was originated. It has been a very
successful business, and has done a great deal to develop
many of the towns of the Southwest. Although Mr.
York died December 19, 1915, he, too, like Mr. Key,
will always be remembered for his many notable achieve-
ments and as a grand, good man — and this is said by
the writer of this sketch, who knew him well for almost
half a century and knew him to stand the acid test in
the different walks of life.

In 1893, at the opening of the Cherokee Strip, Mr.
Key went to Woodward and opened for his firm the
first mercantile house in the town. The Key Building
and the Post Office Building are two of the most mod-
ern business blocks in Woodward or in Western Okla-
homa, and that is only two of the many monuments to
Mr. Key’s personal enterprise and public spirit. His
company were among the first to operate a general store
and line of lumber yards in this section of Western Okla-
homa, and in neary every live and bustling Oklahoma
town is to be found tangible evidence of the influence
and enterprise of this company. A few years ago the
company closed out its mercantile stores and is now
confining the business to a line of lumber yards.

Thus, for more than twenty years, Mr. Key has
through his individual enterprise and through the com-
pany of which he is the active head, been closely identi-
fied with the welfare and benefit of Western Oklahoma.

Those who have observed his activities and influence
most closely are positive in their assertions and belief
that no one has done more to promote the welfare of the
Town of Woodward and the schools of Woodward, or
the town and school interests of any other place in North-
western Oklahoma, where one of the York-Key Lumber
Yards is located, than Mr. Key himself. It is said that
he has always instructed his men to vote for any measure
for the permanent advancement of the town and espe-
cially the schools and county roads. He has done this
notwithstanding the fact that he had no children of his
own to educate and realized that voting for such meas-
ure would increase the taxes on his property. That is
the quality of public spirit such as few business men
can exemplify.

Mr. Key is now living retired in a comfortable home
in Galveston, Texas. He is connected with some of the

2178

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

chief financial interests of that city, and is president of
the Security Trust Company of Galveston, a three hun-
dred thousand dollar corporation; is president of the
Gulf Lumber Company of Galveston; vice president of
the City National Bank of Galveston; and a director of
the American National Insurance Company of Galveston.

Samuel Ecker. A great many citizens of Texas
County know Samuel Ecker only in his capacity of
United States Commissioner and through his active rela-
tions as a citizen of Guymon and with the real estate
and loan business there. However, he has had many
other experiences, and has traveled about the western
world a great deal, has been in many of the most
noted mining districts of both North and Central and
Southern America, and for two years he was a United
States soldier in the Philippine Islands. In fact, he
comes of a military family, and his father gained the
rank of colonel in the Confederate army during the war
between the states.

He was born June 27, 1872, at 3036 Lucas Avenue in
St. Louis, Missouri, a son of Samuel and Margaret
(Gerbig) Ecker. His father, who was born in 1837, in
France, came along to America at the age of twelve
years, locating at New Orleans.. From there he went
up the river by steamer to St. Louis, but at the outbreak
of the Civil war returned to the South and enlisted in
the Confederate army with a Louisiana regiment. He was
in active service until the close of hostilities, and was
mustered out with the rank of colonel. After the war
he returned to St. Louis, and became a hotel man. It
was in the hotel business that he was actively engaged
until he retired, and many thousands of travelers have
known him as a genial and successful bonifaee. From
St. Louis in 1888 he moved to El Paso, Texas, and was
at the head of a hotel there until it burned in 1892.
From there he went to Denver, Colorado, conducted a
hotel until 1900, and has since lived retired, his home
being now in Chicago. In 1865 Samuel Ecker, Sr., mar-
ried Miss Margaret Gerbig, who was born in Germany
November 20, 1845. Six children were born to their union,
two sons and four daughters, namely: Emma Margaret,
born February 9, 1886, is now the wife of Major James
E. Normoyle of the United States Army and they have
one child named Margaret; Anna Laura, born February
12, 1868, is the wife of Eugene C. Morton of Chicago and
their one child is named Eugene Ecker; Samuel, Jr.;
Helen Marie, born February 17, 1876, is unmarried and
living with her parents in Chicago; Jessie Dorothy,
born February 20, 1878. is also at home with her par-
ents; Eugene Chester, born December 20, 1880, recently
retired from the United States regular army with the
rank of second lieutenant.

Samuel Ecker, Jr., was reared and educated in his
native city of St. Louis, and completed his education in
the Christian Brothers College. After that he spent
four years in Mexico, in the gold mines of that country.
He continued his adventurous life in the Latin Ameri-
can Republic by a prospecting tour through Central and
South America, but finally returned to the States and
was living at Pueblo, Colorado, at the outbreak of the
Spanish-Ameriean war. At the first call for volunteers
he enlisted in Company A of the First Colorado Regi-
ment, United States Volunteer Infantry. He was mus-
tered in May 1, 1898, the day of Dewey’s great victory
in Manila Bay, and soon afterwards sailed as a private
on June 15th for the Philippine Islands. He was gone
two years, and participated in many of the campaigns
which finally brought about the subjugation of the Fil-
ipinos and eventually returned with his command to
San Francisco, where he was mustered out in September,
1900. At that time he was regimental sergeant major.

After leaving the army Mr. Ecker engaged in the real
estate and oil business in Indiana for three years. In
1903 he came to Oklahoma, was at Oklahoma City for
several years, and during 1905-06 was an assistant secre-
tary to the secretary of the State School Land Com-
mission. In 1907 he located at Guymon, and with that
city he has since been closely identified not only as a
business man but as an upbuilder of the town. In 1910
he was appointed United States Commissioner for the
Western District of Oklahoma. Politically he has always
been active as republican, and for six years has been
chairman of the Texas County Central Committee. Fra-
ternally he is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason
and Shriner and also a member of the Benevolent and
Protective Order of Elks. He and his family are mem-
bers of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

On December 25, 1907, at Guthrie, Oklahoma, Mr.
Ecker married Miss Joan Massey. She was born in
Marshall County, Kansas, August 14, 1883, a daughter
of John and Said (Allen) Massey, the former a native
of Ireland and the latter of Illinois. Her parents came
to Logan County, Oklahoma, at the original opening on
April 22, 1889, and her father and mother are now
living retired in Guthrie. Mr. and Mrs. Ecker have one
child, Helen Marie, who was born at Guymon, March 4,
1909.

William H. Lewis, of La verne has been a partici-
pant in the pioneer activities of two states, Kansas
and Oklahoma. He came to Oklahoma with the
opening of the Cherokee strip in 1893, and for many
years was a factor in business and public affairs
in old Woods County. He moved to Laverne with the
opening of that town, as is now proprietor of the
Laverne Electric Light, Ice and Power Company.

Still a comparatively young man, with all the vigor
of his prime, he was born August 22, 1870, at New
Waterford, Ohio, a son of Stephen and Mary (Schrum)
Lewis. His father, who is now living retired at Alva,
Oklahoma, is a veterafi of the Civil war, having been
for three years a member of the Twelfth Ohio Infantry
under the late President William McKinley, who was a
major in that regiment. Stephen Lewis was born in
Indiana April 5, 1836, and in 1859 was married in Ma-
honing County, Ohio, to Miss Mary Ann Schrum. She
was born in Mahoning County, Ohio, April 10, 1838, a
daughter of Joseph Schrum, a native of Germany. She
died at Alva, Oklahoma, September 14, 1900. Through
practically all her years she was a devoted member of
the Christian Church. There were ten children, six sons
and four daughters namely: Myron, now deceased; Ollie,
the wife of Henry Moore, of Ellsworth, Kansas; Rhoda,
wife of W. S. Kessler, a retired farmer at Guthrie; Wil-
liam H. ; Ida, wife of John G. Smith of Alva, Oklahoma;
Frank J., farmer at Waynoka, Oklahoma; Charles P.
of Beaver, Oklahoma; Elmira, wife of Christopher Web-
ber, a merchant at Alva; Clark and Arthur, both of
whom are merchants at Canadian, Texas.

In 1876, when Wiliam H. Lewis was six years old,
his parents removed to Russell County, Kansas, where
his father took up a tract of Government land. Later
they went to Fort Kit Carson, Colorado, where at the
age of twelve years William participated in a buffalo
hunt. About the same time he made a 300 mile
horseback ride back to civilization in Kansas. The
first school he ever attended was at Bunker Hill,
Kansas, where he entered as a student at the age of
fourteen. After attending there one year he entered
the law office as office boy of Judge James Lewis, an
uncle, at Scotia, Nebraska. Having read law three
years he was admitted to the Nebraska bar, but has
never followed the law as a profession.

I P1
! ®
at

M
i da

: lat
un:
vet
I gra
1 isi

! mat
j | ;■ •

imdi
I r self
gove
! oftl
| ; later
. task
' Gove
1!

I IS
[ Jame
neers
' a str
f Linco
[illinoi
t Boseb
J. (
North
was a
' Dakot
; later \
t ity an
, 1889
i agency
I of Gen
[licaalf
he was r
dent 0
Preside)
Mud dn
[' tendenc
'I excepfio
f In Ml
Iffirilized

Congress

Nth tie

appointe.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2179

as
he 1
ay
its
he
he

gar
'ew j
ml
Ira,
ten I
itry
■ 3 !
. in
ill-
She
8, a
She
jugh
r of
sons

lie,

ioda,

Wil

oma;

s?;

ff ell-
ill of

• Old,

where
Later
it the
luffalo
rail!
Thl

ns, a>
tw
at la

With all these varied activities and experiences William
H. Lewis lived the first twenty-three years of his life,
and was about that age when in 1893 he participated
in the opening of the Cherokee strip in Oklahoma. He
secured a claim in the southwest portion of Woods
County, and remained there to develop a good farm and
cultivate it for ten years. During the following three
years he conducted a real estate business, and also had
a grocery store at Alva, of which city he was a resident
until 1912. Then with the opening of the new town-
site of Laverne he joined his fortunes with a new
community, and took an active part in one of Okla-
homa’s leading agricultural industries by buying and
shipping broom corn on a large scale. In 1915 he se-
cured a franchise for an electric system in Laverne,
built the plant, and gave that town the first electric
light service in that section of the state. In 1915 Mr.
Lewis increased his public utility by the erection of a
modern building in which he installed an eight ton ice
plant. The business is now conducted under the firm
name of W. H. Lewis & Son. Fraternally Mr. Lewis is
an Odd Fellow.

On March 18, 1894, at Alva, Oklahoma, he married
Miss Marcie Keith, who was born in Kentucky in 1878, a
daughter of Bev. E. E. Keith of Courtland, Kansas, also
a native of Kentucky, and Mrs. Lewis is a niece of the
late Governor Gobel of Kentucky. The one son of their
union is Elmer Eeed Lewis, who was born at Alva No-
vember 3, 1896, was educated in the Alva public schools,
graduating from high school at the age of sixteen, and
is now actively associated with his father in business.

James George Wright. Peculiar qualities are de-
manded in those dealing with the Government wards, the
Indians. Not only must a man be capable, but he has to
understand the Indian character and while proving him-
self their friend, impress upon them the dignity of the
government. J. George Wright, formerly commissioner
of the Five Civilized Tribes at Muskogee, Oklahoma, and
later superintendent of the Osage Indian Agency at Paw-
huska, Oklahoma, is one of the most efficient of the
Government’s trusted officers.

Mr. Wright was born at Naperville, DuPage County,
Illinois, January 8, 1860, being the son of the late
James G. Wright and Almira (Van Osdel) Wright, pio-
neers of Naperville. The father a farmer and banker,
a strong republican, was postmaster under President
Lincoln and served six terms in the State Assembly of
Illinois and later as United States Indian Agent at the
Eosebud Eeservation in Dakota.

J. George Wright attended the public school and the
Northwestern College at Naperville, Illinois. In 1883 he
was appointed clerk of the Eosebud Indian Agency, in
Dakota, where his father was Indian agent, and
later was made agent in charge. Showing marked abil-
ity and tact in handling these Sioux Indians, he was in
1889 appointed United States Indian agent of the
agency by President Harrison upon the recommendation
of Gen. George Crook and others, and though a repub-
lican he was reappointed by President Cleveland. In 1896
he was appointed United States Indian inspector by Presi-
dent Cleveland, reappointed by President McKinley and
President Eoosevelt, serving in such capacity until 1907,
and during most of this period he had the superin-
tendeney of Indian matters in Indian Territory with the
exception of the allotments of land.

In 1907 he was appointed as commissioner of the Five
Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma. In 1914, by an act of
Congress, this office was abolished by its consolidation
with the office of superintendent and Mr. Wright was
appointed to his present position as superintendent of

the Osage agency and assumed its duties in February,
1915, with headquarters at Pawhuska.

A man of marked ability, thoroughly conversant with
all matters pertaining to the care and supervision of the
Indians, Mr. Wright has served the Government faith-
fully and acceptably for a period of thirty-three years.

William S. Mathews. Among the prominent men of
the Osage Tribe during the last half century probably
none was more distinguished for his personal individual-
ity and his varied service in business and public affairs
than William Shirley Mathews, who died at his home
in Pawhuska March 15, 1915, at the age of sixty-six
years and six months. To the modern City of Pawhuska
Judge Mathews was perhaps best known as a banker,
but during his long residence in the Osage country had
filled nearly all the important posts of honor and respon-
sibility in the tribal government, and possessed that
strength of character, judgment and ability which made
him a natural leader of his people.

The mother of Judge Mathews was a half-blood
Osage Indian, and this fact accounts for his member-
ship in the tribe and also his primary qualification
for the various honors which he received at the hands
of his people. William Shirley Mathews was born near
the old Creek Agency near Muskogee September 15,
1848. His father was born in Kentucky but in the early
days moved to Indian Territory, and was long identified
with the Osage tribe, at first in Kansas near Oswego,
and later in the Indian Territory. The ancestry of
this branch of the Mathews family extends back to
Judge Mathews’ great-great-grandfather, John Math-
ews, who served as a sergeant in General Washington’s
army during the Bevolution. Judge Mathews’ mother
was also of prominent stock. She was a daughter of
William Shirley Williams, of Vermont, who discovered
and named Williams’ Peak in the moutains of Colorado.

Up to the beginning of the Civil war the Mathews fam-
ily resided near Oswego, Kansas, and Judge Mathews
gained his1 early education at the hands of the Jesuits
in charge of the old Osage Mission where the present
town of St. Paul, Kansas, is located. During the war the
family removed to Texas, but after its close Judge
Mathews came to Indian Territory and worked as a
cattle herder in the Cherokee Nation. He was employed
by a number of the big cattle outfits of Texas, and
frequently took cattle over the trails through Indian
Territory to Kansas, his most frequent route being the
old military trail that passed through Fort Gibson.

From 1874 until his death Judge Mathews was a resi-
dent of Pawhuska, the old capital of the Osage Nation.
It should be remembered that Pawhuska was in no sense a
city at that time nor for many years afterwards, since the
real municipal history of that community covers hardly
more than ten years. The first two years he spent at
Pawhuska was in the employ of Isaac T. Gibson, the old
Indian agent. He was also interested in cattle ranch-
ing until an injury resulting from a fall and causing
the injury of one leg caused him to give up ranching
and he finally turned his energies almost altogether to
banking. He was one of the original founders of the
Osage Mercantile Company, and also helped organize
the First National Bank at Pawhuska, but subsequently
sold his stock in that institution. He was one of the
organizers of the First State Bank at Hominy and the
bank at Grayhorse, but disposed of his interests in those
towns when he organized what is now the Citizens
National Bank at Pawhuska. This was organized in
August, 1905, and he became its first president. After
the reorganization of the bank in 1909, Judge Mathews
remained one of its directors until his death.

2180

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Pawliuska had no more public spirited and enterpris-
ing citizen in promoting its general upbuilding than
Judge Mathews. He was always generous of his time
and means to forward improvements in which he
believed, and was also willing to serve in public offices
that meant only work and neither compensation nor any
special honor. Por two terms he was a member of the
city council, and at the time of his death was serving
as a member of the board of education. Earlier, in the
Osage tribe, he filled the office of national treasurer
from 1882 to 1886. From 1890 to 1892 he was chief
justice of the Osage Nation, and from 1894 to 1896 was
national attorney. He was also a member of the
national council several times before allotment and twice
afterward. The tribe frequently chose him to look after
the interests of the nation in Washington. He was
a man of strict and rigid integrity, and commanded
the respect of all who knew him or had business rela-
tions with him. Judge Mathews was deeply interested
in Osage history and tribal affairs, and was regarded
as one of the authorities whose knowledge of Osage
annals was almost enclyclopedic.

Judge Mathews was affiliated with Pawhuska Lodge No.
31, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and his family
were members of the Catholic Church. At his funeral the
service was preached by the pastor of the local Catholic
Church, and as a tribute to his long and useful life the
public schools and various business houses closed their
doors. Judge Mathews was married April 11, 1887, to
Miss Eugenia Girard. Mrs. Mathews, who is still living
at Pawhuska, was born in Missouri and is of French
ancestry. Her five children are also still living, namely:
Sarah Josephine, John Joseph, Marie Imogene, Lillian
Bernard and Florence Julia.

Ralph E. Campbell, whose commission as United
States district judge for the eastern district of Okla-
homa commenced in November, 1907, was born in Butler
County, Pennsylvania, May 9, 1867. His parents were
Washington and Ann Eliza Campbell. Judge Campbell
received his degrees of B. S. from the Indiana Normal
University in 1891, A. B. from the same institution in
1892, and LL. B. from the University of Kansas, in
1894. For several years he had a leading connection with
the legal department of the Colorado, Oklahoma and Gulf
Railroad, being its assistant general solicitor at South
MeAlester, Indian Territory, and at Little Rock, Arkan-
sas, from 1895-1901, and general solicitor of that cor-
poration in Oklahoma Territory during 1901-03. From
1905 to 1907 he was engaged in general practice at South
MeAlester, in the fall of that year being appointed to the
Federal bench, his commission dating from the following
January and his headquarters being Muskogee.

Frank Dale. One of the leading lawyers and jurists
of the Southwest, Frank Dale, of Guthrie, is a native of
Illinois, born in DeKalb County, November 26, 1849. He
laid the basis of his education in the public schools of
Leland, Illinois, and settled at Wichita, Kansas, in 1872.
Four years later he was admitted to the bar in that
city and in 1880-05 served as prosecuting attorney for
Wichita and Sedgwick counties. Judge Dale was ap-
pointed register of the United States land office at
Wichita, 1885, and held the position until 1889, when
he moved to Guthrie, Oklahoma. He then and there
resumed practice; from May to September, 1893, was
associate justice of the Territorial Supreme Court and
chief justice, from 1893-98. At the conclusion of his
judicial term, he continued the practice of his profession,
being a member of the law firm, Dale & Bierer, of
Guthrie.

J esse J. Dunn. Although comparatively a young man
during his activities in Oklahoma, Judge Dunn made a
decided impress upon both the territory and the state.
He was born in Channahon, Illinois, October 2, 1867, the
son of James McCann and Alta F. (Lewis) Dunn. Judge
Dunn obtained his higher education at the Illinois State
Normal School, the Garden City (Kansas) Business Col-
lege and the University of Kansas, graduating from the
last named in 1893 with the degree of LL. B. He served
as county attorney of Woods County, Oklahoma Territory
from 1896-1900; was chairman of the democratic terri-
torial committee in 1904, and as chairman of the demo-
cratic state committee in 1906 conducted the campaign
for the election of delegates to the constitutional con-
vention and wrote the platform on which the contest was
waged. His term as associate justice of the state
Supreme Court commenced in 1907 and concluded in 1913.
He resigned as chief justice in 1908. After his retire-
ment from the Supreme bench Judge Dunn moved to
Oakland, California, where he is now practicing his
profession.

Robert McIntyre. The late Robert McIntyre,
Methodist Episcopal bishop of Oklahoma, was born at
Selkirk, Scotland, November 20, 1851. He graduated
from Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, in 1877, and
received his D. D. degree from the University of Denver.
In 1878 Bishop McIntyre was ordained to the Methodist
ministry and served as pastor of churches at Easton,
Marshall, Charleston, Urbana and Chicago, Illinois; at
Denver, Colorado, and Los Angeles, California. His
active ministry was concluded in 1908, when he was
elected bishop of Oklahoma. From that time virtually
until his death at Chicago, August 31, 1914, he ably
served the church in that capacity, with headquarters at
Oklahoma City. Bishop McIntyre was an able writer, as
well as preacher and administrator of church affairs.
Among his literary productions he was the author of the
poems “At Early Candle Light” (1899) and “A
Modern Apollos” (1900).

Tams Bixby. Although preferring to be known simply
as a “newspaper man,” Tams Bixby has left a decided
impress on both Indian Territory and Oklahoma State.
He is a Virginian, born at Staunton, December 12, 1855,
but was educated in the public schools of Red Wing,
Minnesota. Mr. Bixby entered the newspaper field early
in life/ and became a leading republican of the state.
In 1888-9 he served as secretary of the railroad and
warehouse commission of Minnesota and has acted as
private secretary of three governors — William R. Mer-
riam, in 1889-92; Knute Nelson, in 1892-6; and David M.
Clough, in 1896-7. Throughout these periods, he had
been acquiring leadership in the field of journalism and in
1896 became editor and proprietor of the Red Wing
(daily) Republican. In 1888-9, or the year previous to
becoming the gubernatorial secretary, Mr. Bixby served
as secretary of the railroad and warehouse commission of
Minnesota, and at various times was chairman of the
republican county committee, secretary of the state repub-
lican league and secretary and chairman of the republican
state central committee of Minnesota.

Mr. Bixby ’s record as a factor in the development of
the southwestern county commenced in 1897 when he was
appointed a member of the commission of the Five Civ-
ilized Tribes of the Indian Territory. He served as
chairman of that body from the year named until 1905
and was a member of the commission for two years there-
after. He was general manager of the Pioneer Press
Company of St. Paul in 1907-9, and since the latter year
has been editor and proprietor of the Daily Phoenix, at
Muskogee.

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2181

Charles D. Carter. The congressman from the third
Oklahoma district was long identified with the govern-
mental and educational affairs of the Chickasaw Nation
before he entered national politics. He was born near
Boggy depot, at the old fort in the Choctaw Nation,
Indian Territory, August 16, 1868, and is the son of
•Winsor and Serena Josephine (Guy) Carter. Mr. Carter
was educated in the district schools and at the Chickasaw
Manual Labor Academy, Tishomingo, Indian Territory,
and in December, 1891, married Miss Gertrude Wilson, of
Ardmore, who died in January, 1901. Until 1892 he
worked on a ranch and clerked in a store, and in the
year named became auditor of public accounts of the
Chickasaw Nation, holding that office for two years.
From 1894 to 1896 he served as superintendent of schools
for the Indian Territory ; was a member of the Chickasaw
Council in 1897, and in 1900-04 mining trustee of the
territory. From June to December, 1906, he was secre-
tary of the first democratic executive committee for the
proposed State of Oklahoma, and in 1907 commenced his
terms of service as congressman from the third district
which will cover the sixtieth to the sixty-fourth con-
gresses, inclusive, and conclude with the year 1917. Since
1905 he has been a member of the Carter & Cannon Fire
Insurance Company, Ardmore, and is a director of the
City National Bank of that place. He is a leading
Methodist and identified with Masonry and the order of
Elks, having served as exalted ruler in the latter organi-
zation.

Thomas H. Doyle. Judge Doyle, who presides over
the Oklahoma Court of Appeals, is a man of active middle
age, born in Worcester County, Massachusetts, December
21, 1863. He obtained the bulk of his education in the
public schools, and was admitted to practice at the
Kansas bar in 1887. Judge Doyle served in the House
of Representatives of Oklahoma Territory in 1897-1901,
and during the former year was speaker of that body.
From the Fifty-seventh to the Fifty-ninth congresses,
inclusive (1901-07), he was a non-partisan delegate at
Washington in the cause of joint statehood; in 1908
served as delegate-at-large and chairman of the Oklahoma
delegation to the democratic national convention held at
Denver, Colorado, and in 1912 was honorary vice chair-
man of the delegation which represented Oklahoma in
the democratic national convention which assembled at
Baltimore in 1912. In January, 1908, he had been chosen
associate justice of the Oklahoma Court of Appeals and
has been presiding judge since January, 1915. His term
expires in January, 1917.

Charles Hodge Filler. One of the fine old pio-
neers of Eastern Oklahoma was the late Charles Hodge
Miller, who died at Yale, Oklahoma, February 12,
1910, aged sixty-six years. His had been a varied
and eventful career, one of many experiences and
vicissitudes, but through it all he carried the char-
acter of an upright and generous hearted gentleman,
and left a large circle of friends to cherish his man-
hood and the honorable part he played during a
lifetime.

He was born in the Cherokee Nation of Georgia, a
son of Jacob and Sarah (Fields) Miller. After the
discovery of gold on the Pacific coast the father set
out for California, and was never heard of again by
members of his family. Thus Charles H. Miller grew
up with scanty advantages of school but with the
practical training that comes to every pioneer youth,
and with a discipline in the manliness and honor that

count most in the world. He attended school at
Coweta Mission and Greenfield, Missouri.

When a mere boy he left school to enlist in the
Northern Army in Company H of the Fourteenth Mis-
souri Volunteer Cavalry. He served throughout the
war, and after leaving the Missouri regiment he
enlisted in Company G of the Fifth Regiment, United
States Artillery. At the close of his period of enlist-
ment he was honorably discharged from the service at
Little Rock, Arkansas, November 4, 1868, being
recommended as a good soldier in both the volunteers
and the regulars.

After his army career he went East and for a time
ran a steamboat on the St. Lawrence River. From
there he removed to Pennsylvania, and was connected
with the powder mills at Wapwallopen in that state.
He held various positions of trust in Pennvslvania,
and from there he came to Eastern Oklahoma thirty-
two years ago. He arrived at Muskogee in October of
that year and thence came to Red Fork near Tulsa,
where for a number of’ years he was proprietor of a
hotel. Eventually he acquired considerable interest
as a ranch owner and stockman in the old Creek
Nation, and it was with those interests he was chiefly
busy during his later years. When not looking after
his stock and land he made his home for the last two
years of his life with his daughter, Mrs. O. C. Dale,
in Yale, Oklahoma.

Because of his long and honorable service in the
army, four years in the volunteers and three years in
the regulars, Mr. Miller always enjoyed a special
place of honor among the Grand Army Veterans, and
his old comrades as well as hundreds of friends and
fellow citizens attended his funeral and paid the
proper tribute of respect when he was buried at Yale.

In politics he was a republican, though most of his
people were democrats. At Wapwallopen, Pennsyl-
vania, Charles H. Miller married Civilla Mowery,
daughter of Philip and Lydia Mowery. There were
three children: Izora Miller, now the wife of Oliver C.
Dale, president of the Yale Oil and Gas Company at
Tulsa; Ambrose Miller, who is treasurer of the Yale Oil
and Gas Company, and married Miss Alice jTage; and
Chester Arthur Miller, who died in Pennsylvania,
when about four years of age. Mr. Miller was also
survived by his sister, Mrs. Lizzie Montgall, of
Okmulgee. The late Mr. Miller was on the ground
during the original opening of Oklahoma Territory,
being one of the first men in Guthrie, though he did
not homestead any land.

Thomas P. Gore. United States Senator Gore is a
Mississippian, born in Webster County, December 10,
1870. Although he lost the sight of both eyes, by acci-
dents, before he was twelve years of age, he made rapid
progress in his studies, and in 1890 graduated from the
Normal School at Walthall, his native state. In 1892
Cumberland University, Tennessee, conferred the degree
of B. L. upon him, and in the same year he was admitted
to the bar. While pursuing his law studies he also taught
school for about a year.

In 1895 Mr. Gore moved to Texas and at once became
prominent in independent political movements. He served
as delegate to the populist national convention of 1896,
which met in St. Louis, and in 1898 became the con-
gressional nominee of the people’s party for the sixth
district, but was defeated in the election. Joining the
democracy in 1899, during the following year he was
an active campaigner in South Dakota, and also served
his party in that capacity in Illinois, Ohio, New York and
Indiana, during the year 1904.

2182

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

Mr. Gore had moved to Oklahoma in 1901, and in the
following year was elected to the Territorial Council,
serving in that body until 1905. He commenced his
senatorial career in November, 1907, and in 1909 was
elected for the full six years ’ term. He was re-elected in
1915 for the term ending 1921. In 1912 Senator Gore
served as a member of the executive committee of the
democratic national committee, and is an acknowledged
leader in the upper house of Congress.

Charles West. A leading member of the bar and for
eight years attorney general of the state, Charles West is
a native of Savannah, Georgia, born March 16, 1872. He
graduated from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore,
in 1891, with the degree A. B., and in 1892-4 pursued
post-graduate work at the University of Leipzig and his
alma mater. Mr. West was admitted to the bar of
Oklahoma Territory in 1895 and practiced for a number
of years at Pound Creek and Enid. In 1907 he was
elected attorney general of the state, and at the con-
clusion of his term, in 1915, located for the resumption
of private practice at Oklahoma City. At present he is
the senior member of the firm of West, Hull & Hagan.

Mr. West has served as president of the Attorney
Generals’ Association (1911-12) ; is a lecturer on law at
the State University; is a member of the National Tax
Association, and in 1898-1910 was especially active in
national guard matters. In the latter year he retired
with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Joseph A. Gill, ex-United States district judge of
Indian Territory, has been an active factor in the bench
and bar of the West for over thirty years. He was
born in Wheeling, West Virginia, February 17, 1854, and
received his scholastic education in the public schools of
Springfield, Illinois, and the Illinois Industrial Uni-
versity at Champaign. After teaching school and study-
ing law for several years, in 1880 he was admitted to
the bar at Springfield, and practiced in that city until
1883. Since the latter year he has been a resident of
the West. From 1883-7 he practiced his profession at
Astoria, Oregon, and from 1887-99 at Colby, Kansas. He
was appointed United States district judge for the
Northern district of Indian Territory in 1899, and occu-
pied that bench until 1908. Judge Gill also served as one
of the three commissioners charged with the organiza-
tion of Indian Territory as part of the State of Okla-
homa. Since his retirement from the bench, in 1908, he
has been engaged in practice at Vinita. The judge is a
member of the Missionary Baptist Church and a leading
Mason (thirty-second degree Shriner).

Robert L. Williams. The present incumbent of the
gubernatorial chair, Robert L. Williams, was born at
Brundige, Alabama, December 20, 1868. He received his
higher education at the Southern University of Alabama,
which conferred upon him the degree of M. A. in 1894.
He was admitted to the bar in 1891, and first practiced
at Troy, Alabama. In 1896 he became a resident of
Atoka, Indian Territory, and six months later moved to
Durant. He served as city attorney of that place in
1899; was a member of the Indian Territory Democratic
Committee in 1902-4 and of the democratic national com-
mittee in 1904-8. In 1906 he had been sent as a delegate
to the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention, and in the
following year became chief justice of the state Supreme
Court. He served, by re-election, until his resignation
from the bench in March, 1915. In the latter year he was
elected governor of Oklahoma for the term ending 1919.
Although his official residence is at Oklahoma City, his
home is still at Durant.

Col. Sidney Suggs. Since early territorial days the
name of Sidney Suggs has figured prominently in many
varied business activities and in the civic life of Southern
Oklahoma, particularly the country around Ardmore.
His ability to handle large affairs has always meant
more than a private fortune. In many ways his pros-
perity has been reflected in the growth and improvement1
of every community which he has touched. Particularly
in recent years has Colonel Suggs given his advocacy and
influence to the improvement of Oklahoma highways, and
the good roads movement has no stronger and more
effectual friend than this Ardmore citizen. To him
belongs the distinction of having originated the idea of
the “Educational Mile of Road” and of having demon-
strated its feasibility by having actually constructed a
mile of highway in Seminole County, October 12, 1914.
The idea has been adopted by several counties in Okla-
homa and in one county seventy-five miles of road were
built in one year. Under this plan school boys construct
the road while the girls of the school set out trees and
shrubbery along the highway to shade and beautify it.

A native of Mississippi, Sidney Suggs was born in
1853 and is of old and prominent American stock. His
parents were Dr. Isaac T. and Jane (Fullwood) Suggs.
The name was originally spelled Sugg, but his great-
grandfather sometime before the Revolutionary war
added an s, and that method of spelling has been fol-
lowed by all his descendants. George Suggs was an officer
in the American army during the Revolution, and after-
wards established a home on the boundary line between
North and South Carolina. He married Miss Catherine
Sanders. One of their sons was Laban Suggs, grad-
father of Colonel Suggs. When eighteen years of age
Laban Suggs married lone Hood, who was then sixteen.
Her father, Capt. John Hood, a native of Ireland, came
to America about the time the Revolution started, joined
a cavalry company of which he became captain, and in
the course of one of his campaigns he stopped with his
men for a meal at the house of a family named Wallace.
The meal was cooked by little Mary Wallace, then twelve
years of age, and on leaving the house Captain Hood
told her he would return after the war, and he did so
and she became his wife. She was Irish or Scotch and
of a noble family. She was one of the heroines of the
Revolution. One time about fifteen Tories came to her
father’s house and demanded dinner, and finding some
apple brandy they became very drunk. The daughter ran
away while they were engaged in eating and drinking
and informed a band of Whigs of their presence. The
patriots made a rush on the place and captured the
entire number of Tories, two of whom they hanged for
murder. Captain Hood was a zealous patriot. After the
war, hearing a man express his loyalty to King George,
the captain seized the Tory by the hair, jerked him down
and with a handsaw commenced to saw off his head.
The fellow begged and pleaded for mercy, and finally
took the oath never to mention the name of King George
again. His neck was badly injured, but the patriotic
assailant nursed him well again and the man became a
good neighbor. Captain Hood built the first cotton gin
in the York district of South Carolina.

Dr'. Isaac T. Suggs, who was one of the family of
fourteen children born to Laban and lone Suggs, spent
his early life in South Carolina and near Yorkville
married Miss Jane Fullwood. Her ancestors came from
Holland, and her father, Robert Fullwood, was a man
of considerable prominence in South Carolina. Doctor
Suggs took his family to Mississippi soon after his
marriage in 1838, and in 1866 moved to Texas, locating
at Mount Pleasant, where he lived until his death in
September, 1887, at the age of seventy-four. His wife

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2183

ie*

re,
at I
)s-
At'
rly |
nd|
Ad
ire
in
of

ict

in f
lis
8s'
at-
rat '
Al-
ter
er- '
ten
ine
ad-
ige
ea,
me
led
iA 1
his
ice. !
he
iod
so
uid
the
to
me
ran

iig

fhe

tie

for

the

in
ad.
illy
rge
)tic
e a

gii

<eat

ille

itor

his

iig

rife

t died at the age of seventy-one in January, 1891. During
" the war Doctor Suggs served as post surgeon in charge
of the hospital at Tupelo, Mississippi.

Col. Sidney Suggs was fourteen years of age when
he came with his parents to Texas, and he continued his
education in the common schools in the eastern part of
that state. For fifteen years of his early career he
represented the Tompkins Machinery & Implement Com-
pany of Dallas. When the firm failed he was appointed
sole adjuster, and in the course of five years he cleared
up and collected a large share of the accounts left
by the firm, amounting to upwards of four hundred
‘ thousand dollars. In 1877 Col. Sidney Suggs formed a
copartenership with his brother Hugh, and for many
j. years they were closely associated in all their varied
business undertakings and on terms of such mutual con-
| fidenee as seldom exist even among brothers. Neither
party ever thought it necessary to ask for an accounting
of the other, each was interested in every venture, and
! the profits from every enterprise whether individual or
partnership was turned into a common fund for the
equal benefit of both. These brothers established and
conducted cotton gins, corn and flour mills, sawmills,
lumber yard, and were also extensively connected with
the cattle industry. Two towns in particular benefited
from their enterprise, Ardmore and Berwyn.

Colonel Suggs has long been a notable figure in
J business circles at Ardmore, and in 1897 he became
proprietor of the Ardmorite, and soon made it the lead-
ing newspaper in that section of Indian Territory.

At the age of twelve years Colonel Suggs became a
member of the old school Presbyterian Church, and
has always been .true to the Christian teachings of his
1 youth and active in membership as well as in support
of the church and benevolent activities. He is a Mason,

■ having affiliation with the Blue Lodge, Chapter, Com-
mandery and Mystic Shrine, and is affiliated with the
various branches of the Independent Order of Odd Fel-
[ lows, the Woodmen of the World, and other organizations.

In 1876 Colonel Suggs married Miss Dixie Barnhart,
who died June 6, 1891, the mother of six children named
Edna, Ella, Stella, Sidney, Yelie Charles and Kate. On
September 20, 1892, Colonel Suggs married Miss Minnie
' Murray, of North Carolina. She survived only two
months and seven days after her marriage. On June 26,

, 1895, Colonel Suggs married the widow of Judge Olive,
an attorney of Texas, and who was the mother of three
children: Zoe, Yera and John.

. Os M. Stevens. Education and financial assistance
are very important factors in achieving success in the
business world of today, where every faculty must be
brought into play, but they are not the main elements.

: Persistency and determination figure much more promi-
nently and a man possessed of these qualities is bound
to win a fair amount of success. Os M. Stevens, whose
name forms the caption for this article, practically
earned his own education and he enjoys the unique
experience of stepping from a cattle-ranch saddle into
the ink-stained interior of a printshop. The success he
has accomplishedj^culminating in his present office as
editor and managfs^of one of the leading weekly news-

I papers of Oklahomans proof that hard and consistent
work in the printshop p^njore profitable and gives better
compensation f o» '(education and character than does the
cattle range.

A native of the Olcl Dominion . State, Mr. Stevens was
born in Virginia in' 1877. His jdSrents were both honored
descendants of families - that sent warriors to the front-
in the days of the Revolution. Through his ancestors
Mr. Stevens is related to Henry Ward Beecher and to

1- •

the noted Hitt and Brace families of Virginia. The
Stevens family consists of six children, concerning whom
the following brief data are here inserted: E. P. is a
viaduct builder and inventor in Chicago ; Mattie Griffith
is a widow and makes her home in Chicago; Laura is
the wife of Mr. Hantz, of Scott Center, Kansas; Mrs.
C. M. Worter, of Chicago; Mrs. E. C. Dowd, of Guthrie,
Oklahoma; and Os M. is the subject of this sketch.

After a common-school education in the public schools
of Kansas, Mr. Stevens was for a number of years
employed on a cattle ranch. He then decided to learn
the art of printing and after an apprenticeship in a
newspaper office in Kansas, he located at Lexington,
Oklahoma, where he became one of the well known
editors and publishers of the equally well known weekly
Youall’s Doin’s, a publication that attracted unusual
attention throughout the entire state by reason of its
bizarre name and unusual contents. In 1901 he located
at Coalgate and became associated with Michael B. Hick-
man in the publication of -the Courier. When Mr. Hick-
man became owner of the Record-Register, Mr. Stevens
became editor of that paper. His editorial attitude has
always been toward high morals and one of his prin-
cipal achievements in Coal County has been that of
conducting his paper as a leader in a campaign for
prohibition and law enforcement. In addition to being
editor of the Record-Register Mr. Stevens is manager of
the Coalgate Publishing Company, a corporation of
which M. B. Hickman is president; Arthur Jones, of
Lehigh, vice president'; A. T. West, of Coalgate,
secretary; and J. I. Murray, of Coalgate, treasurer.
Mr. Stevens is doing efficient work as county probation
Officer of Coal County and in politics he is a stalwart
democrat.

June 22, 1900, at Lexington, Oklahoma, Mr. Stevens
married Miss Willia B. Hickman and to them have been
born three children, whose names and dates of birth are
here incorporated: Laur, 1901; Edna, 1903; and Ruth,
1906. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens are devout members of
the Methodist Episcopal Church and he is affiliated with
the Knights of Pythias, in which he holds the rank of
past chancellor and past district deputy grand chan-
cellor of the state.

Morris Handverker. Among the men of Lawton,
Oklahoma, who have attained business success and
prominence through the medium of hard work, business
sagacity and indomitable perseverance, Harris and
Morris Handverker’ father and son, stand in a foremost
position. In their careers, and particularly in that of
the father, are to be found lessons which prove the
value of persistence in the face of difficulties and dis-
couragements which cannot fail to be of value to the
rising generation, while the incidents of their lives must
prove of interest to all who admire the characteristics
which make up self-made manhood.

Harris Handverker was born in Poland, Russia, July 8,
1861, a son of Philip and Helen (Jaxobowitz) Hand-
verker, the former born in 1819 and died in 1892. He
was a well-to-do tanner, a man of some influence in his
community, and well versed in the Jewish Ritual. There
were seven children in the family: Cirvis, who was

married and died in Russia; Augusta, who married David
Bernstein, now retired, of Poland; Celia, who is the
wife of Jacob Hoffman, a butcher of Poland; Harris;
Leah, who was married and died in Poland; Irle, who
is the wife of Jacob Cincinnati, a tailor of Poland; and
Wilhelm, a newspaper publisher of Poland, and as such
one of the most prominent men of his locality.

Harris Handverker was educated in his native land,
and as a young man of twenty-one years decided to try
his fortunes in the United States. Arriving in New

2184

HISTORY OF .OKLAHOMA

York City, he found employment at his trade, that of
lathe turner, at which he worked for two years, and in
1884 went back to his native place where he remained
for two years. In 1886 he returned to New York City
and began to work at the cloakmaker’s trade, but after
one year went back to Russia and remained one year.
Again he came to New York City, and again, in 1890,
he went back to Poland, but in 1891 he came again to
the United States, this time to remain. After ten
months here, he sent for his wife and children, and
continued to work in New York City for one year,
accumulating enough money through hard and faithful
work to take his family to Colton, California, where he
began his career as a peddler in a modest way. He
spent one year at Colton, two years at San Bernardino
and three years at Los Angeles, and then went to San
Diego, California, where he continued peddling for one
year and then established himself in the hide business.
Having accumulated some small means, Mr. Handverker
came to Oklahoma and located in Oklahoma City, one
year before the opening of that place. He worked as a
retail clothing salesman for one year, and at the open-
ing of the reservation became a pioneer of Lawton,
August 4, 1901, and purchased a business and residence
lot, all that was allowed by law. For about three years
he continued to work for wages in the clothing business,
and then established an enterprise of his own in the
same line. He was capable, thoroughly informed, ener-
getic and courteous, and his business soon began to
prosper and to grow to large proportions, but the panic
of 1907 came on, and, with other able business men, he
failed and lost the fortune that he had so laboriously
accumulated. This misfortune would have entirely dis-
couraged and beaten the great majority of men, but Mr.
Handverker was made of sterner stuff. He failed to
acknowledge defeat, and although the blow had been a
heavy one he at once set to work to recuperate his lost
prosperity. He was content to follow general work
for two years and to accept whatever honorable employ-
ment f^ll to his lot. Mrs. Handverker owned three
building properties and in tfie fall of 1909 these were
sold and. Mr. Handverker again engaged in business on
his own account, opening a small store on C Avenue.
Again his enterprise, business judgment and tireless,
energy brought him success, and in 1911 he was com-
pelled to open larger quarters. These sufficed until
1915, when his business had grown to such large pro-
portions that he was again compelled to seek more
extensive space, and on April 1st of that year he moved
into his present establishment, at 327-329 D Avenue,
where he occupies the ground floor and a floor space of
50 by 120 feet, one of the largest stores of Lawton.
Here he has a model modern department store, stocked
with the finest of goods of every variety. His business
attracts its trade from Comanche, Cotton, Jefferson,
Tillman, Kiowa, Caddo and even more distant counties,
and no better testimonial of Mr. Handverker ’s honor-
able dealings can be found than the fact that the cus-
tomers who deal with him once remain as his patrous
afterward. In business circles, Mr. Handverker bears
the highest reputation, for he has been found faithful
in his engagements and a man in whom his associates
may place the utmost confidence. In addition to his
store on D Avenue, he owns a business property on C
Avenue, his residence in Lawton and other valuable
realty. He has not been found wanting in public spirit
when civic movements are started, and is one of the
active and working members of the Lawton Chamber of
Commerce. Fraternally, he is connected with the Wood-
men of the World, the Modern Woodmen of America
No. 10,256 and the Woodmen’s Circle, and his political
support is given to the republican party. Mr. Hand-

verker is a member of the Jewish Church, and is widely
known for his proficiency in the Jewish Ritual.

Harris Handverker was married in Poland, in 1880, to
Miss Minnie Eckstein, who was born in Poland in 1861,
daughter of the late David Eckstein, who was a tailor.
Seven children have been born to this union, namely:
Herman, who died in Russia at the age of three years;
Leah, who also died there when three years old; Samuel,
who died at Kingfisher, Oklahoma, at the age of eight
years; Morris; Frank, who died while the family was
moving from Oklahoma City to Lawton, aged fourteen
years; Helen, who is attending the Lawton High School;
and Everett, born November 11, 1900, who entered high
school in September, 1915.

Morris Handverker was born November 12, 1891, in
New York City, and was given good educational ad-
vantages, attending the public schools of Lawton and
the Lawton Business College, from which he was grad-
uated in 1908. He first became a stenographer in a
law office, where he remained a short time and then
secured a like position in the government service, follow-
ing which he became a public court stenographer. In
1909 he entered his father’s business, and in 1913 was
admitted to partnership. He has inherited many of his
father’s excellent business qualities, is a young man of
energy, enterprise and progressive spirit, and as a cour-
teous and genial gentleman has done much to attract
trade to the business. He is also a member of the
Chamber of Commerce and a republican in politics, and
was reared in the faith of the Jewish Church, to which
he belongs. His fraternal connections include member-
ship in the Woodmen of the World and in the Masons,
in which he has reached the Rose Cross (Eighteenth)
degree, being a member of Lawton' Lodge No. 183,
Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and Valley of
Guthrie Consistory No. 1. Mr. Handverker is not
married.

stat

udic

Ian

boul

E Mi

uffal

ligh

Idar
E the

Ellis;!

Is.

'a- i

Jam

Henry N. Greis. Junior member of the firm of Ross
& Greis, which controls an important business in the
drilling of oil and gas wells in the Oklahoma fields, and
with other noteworthy connection with the oil and gas
industry, Mr. Greis is recognized as one of the substan-
tial, straightforward and progressive business men of
the younger generation in the City of Tulsa, and in addi-
tion to the business associated noted above he is also
president of the Wyoming Torpedo Company and vice
president of the Central Torpedo Company, both of
which are engaged in the manufacturing of torpedoes
used in connection with the sinking of wells in oil and
gas districts. /

Mr. Greis was born in the City of Buffalo, New York,
on the 5th of July, 1880, the eldest in a family of five
children, all but one of whom are living. He is a son
of Jacob M. and Amelia (Nauert) Greis, both of whom
were born and reared in Erie County, New York, and
both are living, the father at the age of fifty-eight years
and the mother at the age of fifty-six. The political
allegiance of Mr. Greis is given to the republican party.

He whose name initiates this article acquired his early
education in the public schools and Central High School
of his native city, and there he initiated his business career
as bookkeeper and clerical assistant in the German Bank
of Buffalo, with which institution he continued to be iden-
tified four years and in which, through effective and
faithful service, he won promotion to the responsible
office of cashier. On severing this association Mr. Greis
became bookkeeper in the Marine National Bank of ,(|
Buffalo, but within a comparatively brief time he re-
signed his office and made his first independent venture, jjj ™
and that in connection with the important industry with
which he is now identified. As a contractor he engaged

actio;

ilalioi
i of

I® sf

HISTORY OP OKLAHOMA

2185

'.to

ssi,

ilot.

ars;

was

teen

mol;

l, ill
ad-
and
'tad-

then

How-

If
was
t his
in of
oar-
tact
: the
, and
which
nleN
isons,
jnth)
183,

T Of

not

Eoss
a the
a and
d gas
tan-
en of
addii
i also
rife
th of
redoes
il and
I

Yortj
it five
a son
whom
and
rears
iliticaj
party,
early
School
career
Bank
■ id®

e and
ansible
Greit
it of
here

oturfi

v with

igageJ

in the construction of oil pipe lines from points in the
oil fields of West Virginia and Maryland, and the first
1 contract with which he became thus associated was for
the building of a pipe line from the western part of
West Virginia to Cumberland, Maryland He was for
six months assistant to the superintendent of this work,
and he then returned to Buffalo. There his marriage
was solemnized in October, 1907, and shortly afterward
he came to the newly created State of Oklahoma, and
■established his residence at Bartlesville, the present
■judicial center of Washington County. There he engaged
in the invention and manufacturing of gas meters for
natural gas and in general construction work in connec-
tion with the oil and gas operations in that section of
the state. Later he established a branch business at
[Chanute, Kansas, where he maintained his residence
•about two years, since which time he has given his at-
tention principally to oil and gas development opera-
Itions, in the drilling of wells and the supplying of
■incidental appurtenances and accessories. He has been
la resident of Tulsa since 1910 and here his associated
and able coadjutor in the firm of Ross & Greis is Edward
A. Ross, the office of the firm being at 304 Drew
Building.

I Mr. Greis has gained secure place as one of the alert
and ambitious young business men of the state of his
adoption and is liberal and progressive in his civic atti-
Itude, his political allegiance being given to the demo-
cratic party. He is prominently identified with the time-
honored Masonic fraternity, in which he became and
[entered apprentice and was finally raised to the degree
of Master Mason in Dupew Lodge, No. 823, Ancient
Free & Accepted Masons, in the City of Buffalo, New
.York. From this lodge he received his dimit and became
a member of Delta Lodge, No. 425, at Tulsa. From
Mount Sinai Chapter, No. 293, Royal Arch Masons, at
Buffalo, New York, and from Wichita Commandery,
Knights Templars, in the City of Wichita, Kansas, he
received dimit to Trinity Commandery, No. 20, at Tulsa.
In Indian Consistory, Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite,
in the City of McAlester, he has received the thirty-
second degree, and to form his present affiliation with
;Akdar Temple of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles
of the Mystic Shrine, in his home City of Tulsa, he re-
ceived dimission from Abdalla Temple in the City of
Leavenworth, Kansas. He is a popular member also of
Tulsa Lodge, No. 946, Benevolent & Protective Order of
(Elks.

On the 1st of October, 1907, was solemnized the mar-'
riage of Mr. Greis to Miss Bertha DeLace Westcott, who
was born at Rochester, New York, and they have one
daughter, Elizabeth.

. James J. Moroney. By inherent predilection and
early discipline Mr. Moroney acquired in his youth a
practical experience in the domain of newspaper publish-
ing, and since the year that marked the admission of
Oklahoma to the Union he has held secure prestige as
one of the representative newspaper men of this state.
Since that year, 1907, he has been editor in chief of
the Okmulgee Democrat, which is now published in both
daily and weekly editions, and which he has brought into
special prominence and influence as an exponent of the
oil-producing industry in Oklahoma, besides making it an
effective force in exploiting the general interests of the
city and state in which it is published. In connection
with oil and gas operations, the paper has a reputation
and circulation which far transcend local limitations, and
both its daily and weekly editions have numerous sub-
scribers in the leading centers of the oil business in
other states of the Union. In the publishing of this

important and influential Oklahoma paper Mr. Moroney
now has as his valued coadjutor Bert C. Hodges, con-
cerning whom individual mention is made on other pages
of this volume.

James J. Moroney was born in the beautiful collegiate
City of Oberlin, Lorain County, Ohio, on the 22d of
January, 1868, and is a son of James P. and Mary
(Shields) Moroney, the former of whom was born in the
City of London, England, in 1838, and the latter of whom
was born in County Galway, Ireland, in 1840, she having
thus been a girl of about seven years at the time of
her parents’ immigration to the United States, in 1847,
and her future husband having come to America with
his parents in 1851, when he was about thirteen years old.
James P. Moroney was a man of most alert and vigorous
mentality, was afforded good educational advantages as a
youth, but his more liberal education was that which he
acquired through self-discipline and through his long and
effective association with the newspaper business. At
Oberlin, Ohio, on the 30th of November, 1865, was
solemnized his marriage to Miss Mary Shields, and they
passed the remainder of their lives in the old Buckeye
State, where both were called to eternal rest in the year
1898.

James P. Moroney early served an apprenticeship to
the trade of printer, and as a journeyman he went to
Ohio and engaged in the work of his trade. At Bucyrus
he founded eventually the Crawford County Democrat,
and prior to this he had been associated intimately with
the distinguished founder of the Toledo Blade, David
Locke. When the Civil war was precipitated Mr.
Moroney promptly showed his loyalty to his adopted
country, by tendering his service in defense of the
Union. In 1861 he enlisted as a member of Company I,
Forty-first Ohio Volunteer Infantry, with which gallant
command he proceeded to the front and with which he
participated in a number of important engagements, be-
sides many of minor order. At the Battle of Chicka-
mauga he was so severely wounded as to become in-
capacitated for further service in the field, and thus
was accorded an honorable discharge. After recuperat-
ing from his injury he re-enlisted, and thereafter he con-
tinued in active service with his original command until
the regiment was mustered out, at the close of the war.
Mr. Moroney was a skilled printer of the old-school
regime and developed much ability as an editor and
publisher, virtually his entire active life as a farmer
having been marked by quite close identification with
the newspaper business and by friendships with numbers
engaged in it. He was, an influential and effective ex-
ponent of the principles and policies of the democratic
party, and prior to the Civil war he had been a staunch
Union man though not an abolitionist. Of his twelve
children all are living except one and six of the number
are residents of Oklahoma, the subject of this review
having been the second in order of birth. P. H. is en-
gaged in the practice of law at Tulsa, this state ; Nora
C. is society editor of the Okmulgee Democrat; J. D.
resides at Tulsa and is actively identified with the oil
industry in that section of Oklahoma; M. F. is mayor
of Okmulgee and interested in oil and real estate
projects ; T. M. is connected with the pipe line business
at Bartlesville, this state; Ellen resides in Arizona;
William resides at Kingman, Arizona, is engaged in the
practice of law and was serving, at statehood, as county
attorney of Mohave County ; S. F. resides in the State of
California; Margaret is the wife of G. C. Conrad, of
Norwalk, Ohio; Alice is the wife of George C. Wilcox, of
Toledo, Ohio ; and Mary died in Ohio at the age of thirty
years, as the wife of P. J. Murray.

James J. Moroney attended the public schools of Ohio

2186

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

until he had completed the curriculum of the high school,
and later he pursued higher studies in the Ohio Normal
School at Lebanon, Warren County. As a youth he be-
came associated with the oil industry in his native state,
and in the eastern fields he continued his association
with this line of enterprise principally in salaried posi-
tions. He resided in the City of Toledo, Ohio, about
seven years and maintained his home at Marietta, that
state, for five years. In the meanwhile he had gained
as a boy a taste and ambition for his father’s early life
business and profession. In 1907 he came to Oklahoma
and associated himself with Dr. O. A. Lambert in the
purchase of the plant and business of the Okmulgee
Democrat, of which he has continued the editor in chief
since that time and which he has made one of the leading
papers of the state, with broad influence and remarkably
large circulation. In 1915 he, with his other partner, B.
C. Hodges, purchased Doctor Lambert’s interest in the
business. Mr. Hodges owns a half interest and is busi-
ness manager of the substantial and prosperous news-
paper and job-printing enterprise. The firm issues three
independent publications: The Okmulgee Daily Demo-

crat, The Mid-Continent Oil and Farm News, and the
Weekly Progress, besides which the firm also publishes
the Morris News, of Morris, Okmulgee County.

Mr. Moroney has been a zealous and effective worker
in advancing the cause of the democratic party and is
one of its leading and most influential representatives
in the eastern part of the state. He is identified with
independent movements in connection with the oil in-
dustry and has made his paper, the Mid-Continent Oil
and Farm News, a potent influence in connection with
both the oil and agricultural industries in Oklahoma, be-
sides which the paper has gained a wide circulation in
the oil regions of other states. He is a broad-minded,
liberal and progressive citizen and is one of the strong
and valued citizens of Oklahoma. Both he and his wife
are zealous communicants of St. Anthony ’s Church,
Eoman Catholic, in Okmulgee.

In the year 1893 was solemnized the marriage of Mr.
Moroney to Miss Mary Boland, of Toledo, Ohio, and they
are the parents of six children, — James P., William J.,
Francis, Vincent, Bernard and Anna. James P. is a
member of the class of 1917 in the school of journalism
of Missouri University; and William J. is a member of
the reportorial staff of the papers of which his father
is publisher, having a university course in view.

Beet C. Hodges. Holding prestige as half-owner and
manager of the Okmulgee Daily Democrat, at the judicial
center of Okmulgee County, Mr. Hodges is not only one
of the prominent representatives of the newspaper busi-
ness in Oklahoma but is also a specially influential figure
in the local councils and campaign activities of the
democratic party, as indicated by the fact that he has
served as chairman of the Okmulgee County Democratic
Central Committee since 1913 and has wielded much in-
fluence in the successful maneuvering of political forces
in this section of the state.

Mr. Hodges was born at Calico Bock, Izard County,
Arkansas, on the 1st of November, 1883, and is a son of
Ferd T. and Anna Elizabeth (Stark) Hodges, the former
of whom was born at Paducah, Kentucky, and the latter
near the City of Nashville, Tennessee. The father of
Mr. Hodges served throughout the Civil war as a valiant
soldier of the Confederacy, having been in the command
of General Beauregard and having taken part in many
sanguinary battles, including those of Shiloh and Gettys-
burg. He was assigned to duty as a spy, was captured
by the enemy and was sentenced to be shot, but he was
saved through his affiliation with the Masonic fraternity.

Iwrigl

laiJ

aaugl

lad i

kills

Jedi

libso

and s
miles

Bear
age 1)

and a
Jo Sa

S)f me

He entered the Confederate service when but sixteer
years of age and was three times wounded in action
After his marriage he established his residence ir
Arkansas, and he and his wife now reside at Branch
Franklin County, that state. Mr. Hodges was a railroad
contractor in the earlier period of his independent busi
ness career and later was successfully identified with th<
lumber industry in Arkansas, as the owner and operatoi
of saw mills. He is now living retired, — a man ol
broad mental ken and sterling character and a citizei
who commands unqualified popular esteem. He is
stalwart democrat in his political allegiance and is affil
iated with' the United Confederate Veterans.. Of th<
ten children seven are now living, and the subject of
this sketch was the seventh in order of birth.

Bert C. Hodges remained at the parental home unti
he had attained to the age of twenty years, and in th«i
meanwhile his principal experience had been that gainec
in connection with the work of his father’s farm. Hi1
continued his studies in the public schools until he liac
finished the curriculum of the high school, and after
leaving the farm he was employed in a general stori
for two years.

In 1904 Mr. Hodges came to Oklahoma and here hi:
first service was in connection with a restaurant a
Muskogee. He next became a solicitor for the Muskogei
Democrat, and he continued his work in this eapaeitj
after the consolidation of the paper with the Muskoge<
Times. Since 1909 he has been manager of the Okmulgee
Daily Democrat, and since January, 1915, he has beer |;s‘
owner of a half -interest in the large and importan
publishing business in which his associate is James J
Moroney, of whom specific mention is made on othei
pages of this work, the firm publishing not only the
Okmulgee Daily Democrat but also the Okmulgee Prog yj,
ress, the Mid-Continent Oil and Farm News, and the
Morris News, at Morris, Okmulgee County. Mr. Hodge:
is also the owner of a half-interest in the Wagoner Demo
crat, published at the county seat of Wagoner County

Mr. Hodges has been a most enthusiastic worker ii
behalf of the cause of the democratic party, and.
previously stated, is chairman of its central committee
for Okmulgee County. He is affiliated with both the
York and Scottish Bite bodies of the Masonic fraternity
and also with the Benevolent and Protective Order ol
Elks. He and his wife are earnest members of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, at Okmulgee, and he
is serving on its official board.

On the 28th of June, 1909, Mr. Hodges wedded Mis:
May Stinnett, who was born in Kentucky but reared ant jj“j'
educated in Texas and Oklahoma, she being a daughte:
of P. B. Stinnett, who is still a resident of the Lone
Star State. Mr. and Mrs. Hodges have a fine little son,
Bert C., Jr.

for li
after

Soei

people

ollars

Isaac T. Gibson, who died September 20, 1915, while jeeilie
visiting relatives near his former home in Iowa, hat |[jtPS
endeared himself and his memory to the Osage people
by many years of honest, constructive labor in behal:
of their welfare, and justly earned a high place ii
Oklahoma history. Affectionately known among both
the Indians and the whites as “Father Gibson,” h
helped make early history during the years when the Wl|r
Osage people were being settled in Indian Territory |ajj0
In his declining years he returned to live among th
people for whom he so patiently labored forty o
forty-five years ago.

He was born near Xenia in Greene County, - Ohio
May 11, 1831, a son of Montelian and Sarah (Embree'
Gibson, the former a native of Fairfax County, Vir

ginia, and the latter born near Jonesboro, Tennessee jfj.

0,18

Eppon

frien

onal
i tli
:equir

iy j

indue

epa

ejud

Pule

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2187

The father when a boy was indentured to a milling
firm in Virginia, and thus learned the trade of mill-
wright and miller. In 1805 he came to Ohio, and was
engaged at his trade by Thomas Embree, a prominent
land owner and miller in the Miami Valley, whose
daughter he subsequently married. Thomas Embree
had secured a military land warrant covering 1,000
acres of land and including a number of valuable
mill sites along the Miami River in Southwestern Ohio.
He divided this land among his children and Montelian
Gibson and wife made a good farm out of their portion
and also had a mill on the Little Miami River three
miles north of Xenia.

Isaac T. Gibson was the last survivor of a family of
nine children. His parents both died at Salem, in
Henry County, Iowa. When Isaac was five years of
age his parents removed to Morgan County, Indiana,
and at the age of eighteen he accompanied his mother
to Salem, Iowa, where two of his sisters lived at that
time. Mr. Gibson considered the State of Iowa his
home until 1906, though many years were spent in
other states.

As a boy he had a limited education, since he was
practically reared on the frontier, and largely edu-
cated himself. He had not only a thorough knowledge
of men and affairs, but also read extensively and was
a most interesting conversationalist. His early years
were spent on a farm and after going to Iowa he was
employed as clerk in a store at $11 a month, paying
his own board. Afterwards he engaged in business
for himself, and was a merchant for ten years, but
after his marriage returned to farming. On October
20, 1858, he married Miss Anna Mary Hiatt, who was
born in that noted Quaker community of Grant County,
Indiana, February 3, 1835, and who died in Salem,
Iowa, September 16, 1906.

For a few months after leaving the farm in Iowa
Mr. Gibson was employed in the commission business
in Chicago, but about the close of the war was
appointed at the yearly meeting of the Society of
Friends for the purpose of looking after the educa-
tional and material welfare of the colored freedmen
in the State of Missouri. This was a work which
required not only a sincere interest in the welfare of
the colored people, so recently freed from slavery, but
also a splendid moral courage in carrying out a work
which was met with strenuous opposition by most of
the white people in the southern states. On that mis-
sion Mr. Gibson established colored schools in nearly
all of. the principal towns that were located along rail-
way lines in Missouri, and was also influential in
inducing the school board of St. Louis to establish
schools for the instruction of colored children in that
.city. It was not only difficult to get money appro-
priated for such schools, but almost impossible to
secure competent white teachers in the southern
states, and this deficiency was met by the Friends
Society in agreeing to furnish teachers for the colored
people. He was one of the men who endeavored to
secure the proper expenditure of the thousands of
dollars raised by the Society of Friends for the educa-
tion of the colored people in the South. He spent
^nearly two years in the work, and almost every day
had to proceed to his duty in the face of threats on
the part of the white people, who entertained strong
prejudices against the entire freedmen movement.
While in St. Louis he discovered that the school board
was wasting funds which had been set aside for the
colored schools, and the colored people in addition to
paying taxes on $1,000,000 worth of property in the
city were also supporting half a dozen colored schools

by private subscription. Mr. Gibson found his most
difficult work in St. Louis, where the school board
raised every possible argument against the advantage
of educating the negroes, but under his courageous
direction and with the support of his Quaker teachers
he finally aroused and created a different sentiment,
and one which favored colored education.

After the conclusion of this work Mr. Gibson was
engaged in farming in Iowa until the fall of 1869. He
was then appointed United States Indian agent for
the Osage Indians and other tribes. On taking up his
duties he found the temporary agency for the Osages
located four miles east of Independence, Kansas. The
Osage Reservation at that time included a tract of
country fifty miles wide and 300 miles long, includ-
ing about a fifth of the present State of Kansas,
and bordering the north line of Indian Territory. In
the previous year, 1868, these Indians had been com-
pelled to sign a treaty with a railroad company sac-
rificing their land at 18 cents per acre. They were
forced to accept this price,’ the threat being made that
they would get nothing at all in case they refused to
accept the treaty. Through the intervention of Presi-
dent Grant agents were appointed to the Indians by
various religious bodies, and Mr. Gibson was selected
for these duties by the Society of Friends. When
he first came among the Osages they were people still
existing in a semi-barbarous condition, and lived on
buffalo meat nearly altogether. He assisted Enoch
Hoag, the superintendent of Indian Affairs in the cen-
tral superintendency, in investigating the affairs of the
Indians, and helped to demonstrate how the Indians
had been swindled out of their lands, and it was the
Hoag report which caused President Grant to with-
draw the treaty already mentioned from the United
States Senate. Later Mr. Gibson went to Washington
and assisted in securing legislation by which the
Indian Reservation might be surveyed and sold and
the Indians transferred to another reservation in
Indian Territory. This was in line with the Govern-
ment policy at that time to concentrate all the Indian
tribes possible within the borders of Indian Territory.
Mr. Gibson was the sole representative of the Osages
in Washington for several years, and was instrumental
in securing the sale of the Osage lands at a price
aggregating $1.25 per acre. The proceeds from this
sale were placed in the United States treasury at
5 per cent interest, and it was that fund, growing
from year to year that made the Osages the wealthiest
body of people in the world.

While acting as Indian agent Mr. Gibson moved the
agency to Silver Lake, a few miles south of where
Bartlesville now stands. Then, as a result of further
legislation and re-arrangement of boundaries, he
moved the agency to its present location. He selected
this site, where the city of Pawhuska now stands, on
May 1, 1872, and moved his quarters to that point on
the 15th of May. It was then a beautiful location, in
the midst of a fine valley, with the Osage hills almost
enclosing it, and with a landscape which could not
but please and charm. Mr. Gibson also established
the Indian school at Pawhuska and erected the build-
ings. Out of the $50,000 fund appropriated for the
removal of Indians to their new reservation, Mr. Gib-
son- did not use a single dollar, and that is only one
illustration out of many to prove his absolute disin-
terestedness and honesty in all his dealings with the
Indians. He was appointed local agent October 1,
1869, and was succeeded in the office on February 22,
1876.

In that time he had performed a great deal of con-

2188

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

structive work of improvement among the Osages. In
three years time he had converted them from a wild
roving tribe into peaceful and permanent settlers,
interested in the upbuilding of homes and in the arts
and pursuits of agriculture and civilization. He
induced his wards to split many thousands of rails, to
erect permanent homes, and to till the soil. When he
first came among them the Osages had a bad reputa-
tion, and he had the satisfaction of seeing that yield
to a reputation for honesty and quiet law abiding
industry. Among these people he won close friends,
and all of them admired him for his thorough honesty.
While he had opportunities to make a fortune he
actually left the agency poorer in dollars and cents
than when he had come. This is certainly a record
which makes his experience notable in the Indian
country. After the Osages moved to Indian territory
Mr. Gibson laid out a white man’s road and announced
publicly to the Indians that for those who wished to
take the white man ’s way he would secure allotments
of land and get it recorded and thus established them
severally in independent homes of their own. He
helped them in clearing up the land, in securing appro-
priate implements for them to carry on their simple
agriculture, and also induced several Indian mis-
sionaries to come and assist the women in learning the
fundamentals of housekeeping. During the first year
he induced more than fifty families to remain and con-
tinue the work of splitting rails and effecting other
permanent improvements, and during that winter these
families got out over 80,000 rails instead of going on
the annual hunt. In the next season a still larger
number remained behind and kept up their fence
building and other farm improvements. In the year
1875 those who had not accepted his plan of permanent
settlement went away to the plains for hunting, but
in the meantime the buffalo had been practically exter-
minated, and the hunters soon returned disheartened
and quite willing to accept the circumstances of civil-
ized life.

Some other points in the work of this Oklahoma
missionary are brought out in the following quotation
from a letter written by his son:

“It might be of interest to add that Father Gibson
was one of fourteen ‘ Quaker ’ Indian agents appointed
under President Grant’s so-called ‘church policy’ with
the wild tribes of Indians. The writer has in his
possession a group photograph of eleven of them
including Lawrie Tatum, agent for the Kiowas and
Comanches; Brinton Darlington for the Cheyennes
and Arapahoes; Mahlon Stubbs for the Kaws; John
D. Miles, Dr. Richards, and others, all of whom have
doubtless had honorable mention in your historical
work, since these men were among the first authorized
white settlers of the Indian Territory, as they were
the first Indian Agents to live with the tribes under
their charge. This fact was appreciated by the
Indians themselves who stated in speeches in Council
— ‘Heretofore our govenment agents have visited us
about once a year bringing us a few presents, but you
have shown enough interest in our welfare to bring
your families and live with us, showing us the white
man’s road and his religion.’

“An examination of their reports and letters to the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs at Washington, D. C.,
will indicate how largely instrumental these devoted
men were in reconciling these wild, roving, thieving,
murderous bands of Indians to their reservations in
the Indian Territory, and the changed conditions of
living so at variance with their previous customs,
habits and traditions. Verily their works do live
after them.”

In 1876 Mr. Gibson returned to Iowa and was
engaged in farming in that state until the death of1
his wife. He then lived with his sons in Kansas ana
Oklahoma. His older son is Allen H. of Coffeyville.
Kansas, and the other is Thomas Embree, of Big
Heart, Oklahoma. Mr. and Mrs. Gibson had seven
children, but four of them died in infancy, and the
daughter, Mary Elma, died at the age of twenty-eight.

both
Rev.
the C
.in 18:
came.
God
mend

Tribe
[Of a:

Rev. Joseph S. Murrow. It is impossible to charac-
terize fitly the life and service of this venerable and
dignified minister of the Gospel whose name is known,
and revered by many thousands of Oklahoma people.
No measure of gold or mundane success could be.
applied to his career. Yet on the life of two genera-
tions of people, especially the old Indian tribes of
Oklahoma, he has exercised an influence beyond all
estimates and reckonings. And it is noteworthy that
even now, when others can perceive the widespread
fruits of his ministry and when he is rounding out a
lifetime in his eighties, Reverend Mr. Murrow is.
inclined to depreciate and undervalue the effective-
ness of his life work. Such is the essential modesty,
simplicity of the man, who has no disposition to crave
the fame of men and leaves to a higher power any
judgment of his achievements.

As to those facts which are usually considered in a
biography, Joseph Samuel Murrow was born in Jeffer-
son County, Georgia, June 7, 1835. His grandfather,
William Murrow, was one of the followers of General
Francis Marion in the War of the Revolution. His
father, John Murrow, married Mary Amelia Badger,
and this couple had six children.

He received a meager education in the public
schools of his native community, and a better training
in the Springfield Academy in Effingham County. Later
he was a student in Mercer University, one of the
leading Baptist schools in Georgia. From early child-
hood he was possessed of an earnest desire to become
a minister, and this desire, augmented by the teach-
ings of a noble father already in the work, was a
great help to the ambitious youth.

At the age of nineteen in 1854 he united with the
Green Fork Baptist Church and the following year
was licensed to preach. It was after that time, in
1856, that he matriculated as a student in Mercer
University.

Ordained to the ministry in September, 1857, at
Macon, Georgia, he was appointed by the Domestic
and Indian Mission Board of the Southern Baptist
Convention and supported by the Rehoboth Associa-
tion as a missionary to the Indians in the West. On
November 13, 1857, he arrived at old North Fork
town, now Eufaula. At that time there were no rail-
roads west of the Mississippi River. He spent five
weeks making the trip.

Some years ago Reverend Mr. Murrow furnished an
interview to a correspondent who wrote up the
substance of the interview under the title “Rem-
iniscences of a Missionary Among South-West Wild
Indians.” In that article Mr. Murrow was quoted
as saying : “I was one of the earliest of the Bap-
tist missionaries to come among the Indians of the
Indian Territory in the Southwest. Preceding me
were Rev. Evan Jones who came out with the Chero-
kees in 1832 and remained with them until after the
war, when he died, still in the service. Later his work
was taken up by his son John B. Jones. Their work
was exclusively among the Cherokees. Another was
Rev. H. F. Buckner, who came out from Kentucky in
1849 and for thirty-one years did noble work among
the Creeks. He too died in the service. I knew them

organ

reuini

skip:
days:
On
row ai
Fork '
month
iugon
Ratio
(laugh
ritory
fa \
A.
row i
establ
As
Rover
break
a des
snasio
every
them
attem]
side,
the n
jat all,
,was u
'snasio:
that ii
Iside o:
were (
actor
of reg
the S(
half o
taws :
loeatei
solidly
eountr
immed
team
worst
of th
avoide
far mi
“In
to a]
that t:
powers
snpplie
old m(
Comani
Ben hi
1

he Os;
mid i
l

for Ch:
(rate I

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2189

kv it

both well and was quite intimately associated with
Eev. Mr. Buckner. Rev. Ramsay Potts came among
the Choctaws in 1832 and Rev. Joseph Smedley came
in 1835. They had both retired from the work before I
came. All of these men were noble ambassadors of
God and no words of praise are too strong in com-
mendation of their good work among these people.

‘ ‘ My work has been among all of the Five Civilized
Tribes ind among the blanket or wild Indians as well.
Of all the missionaries representing several church
organizations in the early days of this work I alone
remain to tell in person anything of the trials, hard-
ships, joys and successes and failures of those pioneer
days. ’ ’

On coming to Indian Territory Reverend Mr. Mur-
row and his wife settled in a little log cabin in old North
Fork town in the Creek Nation. His wife died there ten
months later. He aided Mr. Buckner in his work, travel-
ing on his pony all over the Creek, Seminole and Choctaw
Nations. In 1859 he married Miss Clara Burns,
daughter of Rev. Willis Burns, who came to the ter-
ritory as a missionary in 1858. Of this union four chil-
dren were born; one only is still living, a daughter, Mrs.
W. A. McBride, of Atoka. After his marriage Mr. Mur-
row immediately moved to the Seminole Nation and
established the mission work in that tribe.

As to the conditions among the Indians in 1861
Reverend Mr. Murrow is quoted as saying: “At the
breaking out of the Civil war the Five Tribes were in
a desperately agitated state Great pressure, per-
suasion, cajoling, bribing, coaxing, threatening and
every conceivable influence was brought to bear upon
them from both the Union and the Confederacy in
attempts to persuade them to cast their lot with either
side. The chiefs and old men of the tribes and, for
the most part the women, were against taking sides
at all, preferring to remain absolutely neutral. This
was undoubtedly the wise policy, but continued per-
suasion and pressure so wrought upon the young men
that in the end all of the tribes took up arms for one
side or the other, being used mostly as scouts or else
were organized into bands of raiders, the Indian char-
acter not being adaptable to the rigorous restrictions
of regular army life. The Creeks, the Cherokees and
the Seminoles divided in their allegiance, about one
half of each tribe going to either side. The Choc-
taws and Chickasaws, these tribes being allied and
located in the southern part of the territory, went
solidly with the Confederacy. During the war the
country was devastated by raiders and skirmishes, and
immediately following the close of hostilities it
became a rendezvous for a horde of outlaws of the
worst kind. Had the tribes all remained neutral much
of this suffering and privation would have been
avoided and the Indian people would have advanced
far more rapidly in Christianity and education.

“In 1862 at the request of the Seminole Council, I
was appointed Confederate States Indian Agent for
that tribe. The following year I received additional
powers, including the purchase and distribution of
supplies and provisions to the women, children and
old men of several tribes, including Creeks, Osages,
Comanches, Wichitas and others, whose able bodied
men had enlisted with the Confederate army. These
Comanches mostly belonged to To-sho-way’s band and
the Osages to Black Dog’s band. They were all very
wild and savage. They had never heard of the
Christian religion. So I continued to be a missionary
for Christ as well as a representative of the Confed-
erate Government, and endeavored as best I could

to feed their souls with spiritual food as well as to
care for their temporal wants. Like all agents sim-
ilarly placed I was often called upon to withstand
temptation in the shape of bribes offered by con-
tractors for supplies, such as accepting poor and dis-
eased beef for good and dividing1 the profit with the
contractor, but I thank God that I was able, through
His spirit, to conquer and keep my hands clean and
free, of the contamination of bribery in any form.
My reports were always made out to the last cent.
Sometimes I paid out great sums of money. Once I
received over forty thousand dollars as a single pay-
ment of ‘head money’ to members of the tribes.
These sums were not always all Confederate money
but sometimes included sums of gold.

“After the war I returned to my missionary work
among the Five Tribes and was busy most of the time
in reorganizing the demoralized churches in the Choc-
taw and Creek tribes. My wife died in 1868. In 1870
I suffered from a severe disease of the eyes brought
on by excessive labor and neglect, and was compelled
to return to my home in Georgia, where friends placed
me in a hospital for the blind in the City of Atlanta.
I was absent from my mission work for six months.
During this time I had ample time to look over the
Indian field of work and I became impressed with the
thought that something should be done for the wild
Indians of the western part of the Indian Territory.’’

As a result of the plans thus formulated and his
exertions a mission was commenced among these wild
or blanket Indians in 1874, and it has continued to the
present time.

After four years of work among the Creeks and four
years with the Seminoles, Doctor Murrow came to the
Choctaw Nation and in 1867 located at what is now
the City of Atoka, a place to which he gave the name
and of which he will always be regarded as the
founder. When he located there only two white fami-
lies were living anywhere in that locality. As the
location was on the direct trail and mail route of the
Government, Mr. Murrow determined to have a post-
office established there and after writing the petition
and the necessary correspondence was successful and
the postoffice was named Atoka.

In July, 1872, Reverend Mr. Murrow issued a call
to the churches of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations
to meet in Atoka for the purpose of organizing the
Choctaw and Chickasaw Baptist Association. Sixteen
churches responded. The organization thus established
did much for the two nations and sent from its ranks
many of the present strong Baptist bodies of the old
territory and the new state. In 1876 he introduced a
preamble and resolution in the annual meeting of the
Choctaw and Chickasaw Association, looking to the
immediate organization of all the Baptist associations
of the territory into a general convention. This was
done for the purpose of breaking up tribal walls in
religious work, bringing about a more fraternal feel-
ing and a broader acquaintance between the workers
in the field and to secure a more active co-operation
and interest in the support and maintenance of mission
work among the blanket Indians and other needy
fields. This was not effected until 1881, when the
Baptist Missionary and Educational Convention was
organized and rapidly grew into a great power for
good. Mr. Murrow was for seventeen years president
of this convention, giving much of his time, means
and prayers to its work.

In 1879 in the same association he introduced a
resolution recommending the establishment of a Bible
School for the instruction of native preachers in Bible

2190

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

doctrine and Baptist faith and practice. Further con-
ferences with Rev. A. C. Bacone and Rev. Daniel Rogers
led to the establishment of Indian University at
Bacone, Indian Territory, which has also been a
potent factor for good in Oklahoma.

For many years Reverend Mr. Murrow ’s missionary
work was done under the auspices of the mission board
of the Southern Baptist Church. In 1889 he changed
his relationship to the Baptist Home Mission Society
of New York, and for fourteen years had general
supervision of all Indian missionary work for the
Baptist Church in Oklahoma and Indian Territory.
His work during these years of trying circumstances
and self sacrifices was arduous and difficult, but was
none the less effective. He organized more than sev-
enty-five Baptist churches in the Indian Territory, and
assisted with his own hands and money in the build-
ing of nearly that many houses of worship. He
assisted in, the ordination of more than seventy
preachers, mostly Indians, and baptized not less than
2,000 people, most of whom were also Indians.

In 1887, largely due to Reverend Mr. Murrow’s
leadership, the Atoka Baptist Church successfully
inaugurated the Atoka Baptist Academy. This splen-
did school was conducted under the auspices of the
American Baptist Home Mission Society for eighteen
years, and was then merged into or absorbed by the
Murrow Indian Orphans Home. The founding of this
home has been considered by Mr. Murrow as his last
and best effort for the assistance of the people to
whom he has given nearly sixty years of service.

His work in connection with the Orphans Home
has been practically continuous since January 1, 1903.
He secured as a permanent site a large farm located
in the Choctaw Nation. He has been indefatigable
in the practical work of the school and in securing
support for it from over the country. He enlisted
the sympathy of President Roosevelt and many fore-
most Americans, and in the years before Oklahoma
statehood had secured contributions of about $20,000
for the buying of property and making improvements
suitable to the work and the purposes of the home.

On June 20, 1888, at Bacone College at Muskogee,
Reverend Mr. Murrow married Kathrina Lois Ellett,
who was born near Cleveland, Ohio. She was a zealous
Christian worker in behalf of the Indians before her
marriage, and since then has loyally aided and abetted
Reverend Mr. Murrow in his continued efforts in
behalf of the uplift and betterment of the Indian
people in Oklahoma.

Reverend Mr. Murrow is one of the oldest and most
distinguished Masons of Oklahoma. He organized the
first Masonic Lodge in the territory after the war, locat-
ing it at Boggy Depot. For more than thirty years he
was grand secretary of the Blue Lodge of the territory,
and he assisted in organizing and at one time was secre-
tary of the Grand Lodge and the Grand Chapter and grand
recorder of the Grand Commandery of the Grand
Council. He also organized the first council of Royal
and. Select Masters in Oklahoma, and served as grand
master of the Grand Council until April, 1912. In the
Scottish Rite he attained the very great distinction
of the thirty-third degree.

W. A. Smith, of Bartlesville, who has been exten-
sively indentified with the oil development of Okla-
homa for more than ten years, has a well earned repu-
tation of a man who does things in a large way, and
whose activities are a matter of public interest because
they are so closely connected with the public welfare.

His success and prosperity are the result of hard
experience and practical work in the oil regions of
many diverse sections. He has used his means lib-
erally and elsewhere and he is well known both in
Oklahoma and in other states.

His birth occurred at Buffalo, New York, October
31, 1869. His parents, Herbert G. and Rosalie (Clark)
Smith, were natives of Erie County, New York and
his father for the past eight years has been a citizen
of Bartlesville. Herbert G. Smith was born in Erie
County, New York, on a farm, February 2, 1850, and
lived there until twenty-two years of age. His par-
ents, William and Rachel (Healy) Smith, also natives
of .New York State, were early residents and farmers
of Erie County, and William Smith died in 1870 and
his wife in 1885. Their seven children were: Chester,
who was killed in the battle of Gettysburg; Myra
deceased; Albert, deceased; Herbert G.; Chloe’
deceased; Annie, deceased; and William, who died in
infancy. Herbert G. Smith at the age of twenty -two
located on a farm in the State of Michigan, after-
wards returned to New York and lived on the home
farm three years, and next engaged in the oil business
at Bradford, Pennsylvania, following which his opera-
tions took him into Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, out
to Kansas, and since 1907 his home and headquarters
have been in Bartlesville. He is a republican voter
but has never been active in polities, and is a member
of the Order of the Maccabees, while his wife is a
Presbyterian. His wife, whose maiden name was
Rosalie Clark, was born in Erie County, New York
February 2, 1851, a daughter of Amo's and Louisa
(Fuller) Clark, also a native of New York State. Her
mother died in 1859 and her father in 1902, and their
four children were: Ellen, deceased; Etta, wife of
Alonzo Wilkinson of Montgomery County, Missouri;
Adelbert, who died in infancy; and Mrs. H. G. Smith.

The only child of his parents, W. A. Smith grew up
in Western New York and also in Western Pennsyl-
vania. At the age of sixteen he left school and
became associated with his father in the oil business
in_ Pennsylvania and Indiana. Thus for more than
thirty years his activities have been concentrated
along the line of oil development, and there is no man
in Oklahoma of broader and more active experience in
this industry. More than ordinary responsibilities
came to him at an early age. While in Indiana he
took the position of general superintendent for the
West Indian Oil Syndicate, operating in the Barba-
does and on the coast of Venezuela. He remained in
South America about three years and was also identi-
fied to some extent with placer mining. Returning to
the United States he was for about three years in the
oil fields of West Virginia, and then went out to
Kansas. He is a man of cosmopolitan experience and
training, has known all sorts and conditions of men,
and he has the bearing and address of the man who
has traveled widely and has seen much of the world
and of life.

Since 1905 he has operated with Bartlesville as his
headquarters. In the subsequent decade he has been
among the foremost in several lines of development
and Washington County in particular owes much to
his enterprise. He was one of the promoters in build-
ing the street railway and the interurban line at
Bartlesville, and was treasurer of the company and
a director until the plant was sold to a syndicate of
New York capitalists. The directors of the company
had raised among themselves the money necessary to

Virg

|of mai
[to be

Witica
wt, 1
fish bel
pmenl
paracti
PPpositi,
west (

The ele<
hnska, i

Mm
W ord

phieven
fel’s |
Merest i

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

2191

build these lines, and the business was always a pay-
ing proposition.

Mr. Smith and John Irwin built at Bartlesville the
fine Smith-Irwin Block, but Mr. Smith has since sold
his interest and it is now known as the Brin-Irwin
Building. His interests as an oil man are widely
extended, not only in the region surrounding Bartles-
ville but also in Okmulgee County, Oklahoma, in
Texas and. even in California. He has the distinction
of having opened the Copan Oil & Gas Company, drilled
the first well and brought in one of the best oil pools
in the country. He is the owner also of a large orange
grove in the San Joaquin Valley of California.

Mr. Smith is a republican, a member of the Masonic
Order and the Benevolent and Protective Order of
Elks, and also of the Bartlesville Country Club.

His first wife was Eva Miller of Claysville, Penn-
sylvania. The only child of that union, Herbert
Leman, was born at Pennville, Indiana, July 6, 1894,
and was reared by his grandparents, Herbert G. Smith
and wife. Mrs. Smith died July 15, 1894, a few days
after the birth of her son.

On November 28, 1903, Mr. Smith married Mrs.
Sarah Rebecca (Cole) Cook. Both as a home maker
and in social affairs Mrs. Smith has been well known
in Bartlesville for the past ten years. She represents
an old and quite prominent American family. She
was born January 14, 1871, a daughter of Alfred H.
and Dorcas M. (Reynolds) Cole, natives of Ohio and
West Virginia, respectively. Her father was born at
Powhattan Point, Ohio, October 9, 1842, and is now
living retired at Parkerville, West Virginia. His
wife was born March 6, 1846, at St. Mary’s, West
Virginia. The old Cole homestead is still owned by
a member of the family and a piece of rock blasted
from the famous Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts is
lying at the foot of what is known as Cole ’s Hill. The
nine children of the Cole family were: Charles, Cora,
Mrs. Smith, Lillian, Walter, Sylvia, Martha, Chester,
and one that died in infancy. Mrs. Smith was first
married September 29, 1887, to James H. Cook, and
her children by that union are Louis Alfred and
Calvin Cole Cook. Louis Alfred was born February
14, 1889, in Findlay, Ohio, now lives in Okmulgee
County, Oklahoma, and married Ethel Saunders of
Lexington, Missouri. Calvin C. Cook, born January
10, 1891, in Parkersburg, West Virginia) now lives in
the San Joaquin Valley of California and married
Lula Brooks.

James A. Weiselogel. In these days when revela-
tions of political corruption are so common as to occa-
sion no surprise, and to be a politician, is, in the minds
of many very respectable but undiscriminating people,
to be a suspicious character, it is pleasing to find a
man brave enough and strong enough to enter the
political field, not for purposes of self-aggrandize-
ment, but in order to abolish old abuses and estab-
lish better and cleaner conditions in municipal gov-
ernment. And when such a one, by sheer force of
character, wins a clean cut victory against a strong
opposition entrenched in the very seat of government,
honest citizens may well feel hopeful for the future.
The election of James A. Wieselogel as mayor of Paw-
huska, Osage County, Oklahoma, which occurred in
the spring of the year, 1915, was a step in the right
direction and an encouragement to the friends of law
and order in this county. As this was a notable
achievement, a few words in regard to Mayor Weise-
logel’s personality and previous career will be of
interest to the readers of this volume.

I Vol. V— 28

James A. Weiselogel was born at Linn Creek, Cam-
den County, Missouri, October 21, 1886, the son of
Michael and Laura E. (McIntyre) Weiselogel. The
father, born in • Baden, Germany, in 1852, at the age
of twenty-one years came to the United States, land-
ing at New York. After awhile he removed to Mis-
souri, where he married, residing for a number of
years in Camden County. About 1893 he made another
change of location, this time going to Newkirk, Okla-
homa, of which place he has since been a resident,
being now a retired merchant there. His wife, mother
of the subject of this sketch, was born in Indiana in
1858 and subsequently moved to Missouri, where, as
already intimated, she became the wife of Michael
Weiselogel. They became the parents of five children,
all of whom are now living, namely D. W., a resident
of Tulsa, Oklahoma; Effie, wife of Elner Gearhart;
James A., the direct subject of this biography; J. M.,
who is proprietor of the Eagle Cafe in Pawhuska; and
Clara, who resides at home with her parents.

James A. Weiselogel resided with his parents until
reaching the age of twenty years, at which time he
came to Oklahoma. He acquired his elementary edu-
cation in the common schools, afterwards attended the
high school for awhile and then finished his studies
by attendance for one year at the Presbyterian
Academy at Newkirk. His father being a merchant,
he began industrial life in his store and thus acquired
a practical knowledge of mercantile affairs and gen-
eral business methods, of which he subsequently
availed himself, working as clerk in stores in various
places for several years. He then returned home for
a visit with his parents, remaining with them for some
time. Returning to Oklahoma, he located in Fairfax,
where, in company with O. C. Miller, he engaged in
the restaurant business, which they conducted together
successfully for about a year. At the end of that time
Mr. Weiselogel sold out his interest and went to
Oklahoma City, where, for a few months he was
employed as a clerk. He then accepted a position as
travelling man for the Great Western Sales Company,
his headquarters being with the company ’s office at
Omaha, Nebraska. Subsequently he was transferred
to Wichita, Kansas, from which point he worked for
the same company until the summer of 1911. In June
of that year he made his advent in Pawhuska, Okla-
homa, finding employment in a restaurant, where he
remained for eighteen months. In August, 1912, he
bought a restaurant and conducted it successfully until
the spring of 1915. During this time he had made
a wide acquaintance and impressed his personality
upon many of the leading citizens of the town, taking
an interest in public affairs and discussing the political
situation, especially with those citizens who desired
to see a reform movement inaugurated. The greatest
obstacle to such a movement was the liquor interest,
which held the city in its grip and was supported by
many citizens who were either its open friends, or who
were not farsighted enough to see that a “wide
open ’ ’ town kept away the more reputable class of
settlers and was inimical to the city’s future progress,
as well as to its present prosperity. Indeed, the situa-
tion was rendered more acute from the fact that
the Department of the Interior demands that the
towns in the state keep “dry” under the warning that
if they do not the department will remove the
Indians elsewhere, which would naturally work a great
injury to legitimate trade. On the advice of his
friends, therefore, Mr. Weiselogel declared himself a
candidate for mayor at the election to be held April
6, 1915. He made his own canvass chiefly and!

2192

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA

was so successful in impressing the voters with the
necessity of having. a clean town, uneontaminated by
the liquor trade, that he was triumphantly elected on
the republican ticket, having a majority of thirty-two
votes. This result was the more impressive, as Paw-
huska has a usual democratic majority of about 200.
Taking office May 3, 1915, Mayor Weiselogel at once
set about his duties in a progressive spirit and,
although little more than a month has elapsed (at this
writing) since he assumed the chair as presiding
officer of the city government, the hostile forces have
been obliged to capitulate and Pawhuska is now one
of the ‘ ‘ driest ’ ’ towns of its size in Oklahoma. The
beneficial results are already observable. The police
force has been reformed and the city is now in a
much more clean and orderly condition than it was
under the old regime. Something yet remains to be
done, but Mr. Weiselogel is not th£ man to falter or
turn his hand from the work until the highest degree
of efficiency in every department of the city govern-
ment, which is a commission government, has been
attained. And when attained, it may safely be said,
it will be maintained. Mayor Weiselogel is unmar-
ried, but as he is still a young man, that fault, if it
be one, may be remedied in the future. He has
advanced in the Masonic order as far as the Chapter,
and belongs also to the Eastern Star, the Benevolent
and Protective Order of Elks, the Knights of Pythias
and the society known as Homesteaders, of all of
which he is a useful and active member. To be any-
thing else would be foreign to his nature, which is
essentially progressive and wedded to high ideals of
life and duty.

Benjamin P. Burwell. The late Judge Burwell, who
served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of
Oklahoma for a decade, 1898-1908, was a Pennsylvanian,
born in Armstrong County, April 15, 1866, a son of
Joseph Yarenton and Maxia (Lanham) Burwell. He was
educated in the public and normal schools of West Vir-
ginia. The earlier years of his manhood were spent in
Kansas, and in 1888 he married Miss Agnes J. Carnahan,
of Hope, that state. Mr. Burwell was admitted to the
bar in 1890, practiced at Gypsum City, Kansas, for about
a year thereafter, and in 1891 moved to Oklahoma City,
where he afterward engaged in practice and in the per-
formance of his judicial duties. In 1892 he was an un-
successful candidate for probate judge, and after his
retirement from the Supreme bench of Oklahoma in
1908 continued in active practice of his profession until
the time of his death, April 2, 1916.

Clinton A. Galbraith. Judge Galbraith has a sub-
stantial record both as a jurist and as lawyer, although
he has never occupied the bench in Oklahoma. He was
born in Hartsville, Indiana, on March 6, 1860, and

graduated from the college at that place in 1883. Eor I
the remainder of that year and a portion of 1884 he was |
a law student at the University of Michigan and after- 1
ward studied alone and under private tutorship, judge 1
Galbraith was admitted to the bar in 1888; served as D
attorney general of Oklahoma Territory from 1893-7, and
in April, 1898, located at Hilo, Hawaiian Islands. He
was associate justice of the Hawaiian Supreme Court
from 1900-4, and in the latter year returned to Oklahoma
for the practice of his profession, fixing his residence at
Ada. In September, 1913, Judge Galbraith was ap-
pointed a Supreme Court Commissioner; was reappointed
in March, 1915, and is now presiding judge of Division
No. 2. Although his official residence is Oklahoma City
his home is still Ada.

Joseph B. Thoburn was born at Bellaire, Ohio,
August 8, 1866, the son of Maj. Thomas C. and Mary
Eleanor (Crozier) Thoburn. His parents migrated to
Kansas in March, 1871, settling on a homestead in
Marion County. His early life was spent on the farm.
Subsequently he learned the printer ’s trade. He grad-
uated from the Kansas Agricultural College in 1893.

In 1894 he was married to Miss Callie Conwell, of
Manhattan, Kansas. They have two daughters, Mary
Eleanor and Jeanne Isabel.

Mr. Thoburn located at Oklahoma City in 1899,
where he was engaged in printing and newspaper writ-
ing for several years. In 1902 he assumed the duties of
the secretaryship of the local commercial club, which fl
position he filled until March 1, 1903, a reorganization
being effected during that interval. In the meantime,
in December, 1902, he had been chosen as the secre-
tary of the Territorial Board of Agriculture — being
the first to fill that position and serving in that
capacity until July, 1905.

During the past ten years Mr. Thoburn ’s time and
attention have been devoted almost exclusively to the
work or research and writing along the lines of local
and western history. In 1913, he was elected a member
of the faculty of the University of Oklahoma, where
his work has been more nearly that of a curator than
an instructor, his field of effort being widened to
include American archaeology and ethnology as well
as local history. He has been one of the most active
members of the board of trustees of the Oklahoma His-
torical Society for many years past.,

Mr. Thoburn is a member of the Methodist Epis-
copal Church, a Mason and a Modern Woodman. He
is also a member of the Oklahoma Society of the Sons
of the American Revolution. As the work incident
to the collection of the material and writing the text
of the Standard History of Oklahoma required all of
his time for a year, he has been on leave of absence
from his regular duties at the university during the
scholastic year 1915-6.

1526

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Texts

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

See other formats